Independence Day Quotes
Despite the name, this is not a page about the American Fourth of July. It is built from the freedom and patriotism pages, and the writers who turn up come from all over: the Puerto Rican poet Julia de Burgos, the Italian anarchist Bruno Filippi, Shakespeare, Anna Quindlen. De Burgos has a line about an invaded nation where today’s battlefield is independence.
A few entries are there because of a keyword, not a mood. Cervantes’s remark about not thrusting his nose into other men’s porridge (Don Quixote, 1605) is about minding your own business. If you want something for a speech, sort by source grade and skip the oddities.
Most quoted on independence day:
Both are torn halves of an integral freedom, to which however they do not add up.
Some people will say, ‘Freedom of speech, Freedom of speech'. These are foolish people.
Liberal learning is both a safeguard against false ideas of freedom and a source of true ones.
But it can be laid down as a rule that those who speak most of liberty are least inclined to use it.
They are the most insidious propagandists ever to cloak self-serving greed with pseudo-patriotism.
Liberty, not communism, is the most contagious force in the world.
The Court's opinion serves up a freedom-destroying cocktail consisting of two parts patent falsity.
Freedom of choice is more to be treasured than any possession earth can give.
There can be no liberty for a community which lacks the information by which to detect lies.