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:
You can take everything from me except the freedom to look up at the sky occasionally.
Surely there is not a Muslim in the world who does not aspire to freedom in principle.
The statue of Freedom has not been cast yet, the furnace is hot, we can all still burn our fingers.
For this reason, whoever desires liberty, should understand these vital facts, viz.
Freedom is heaviest when you finally have nothing left to lose.
To choose evil is to choose freedom—“freedom, emancipation from all restraint.”
Risk-savvy citizens are indispensable pillars of a society that is ready for positive liberty.
Liberty, as such, is only the negative of duty, the absence of restraint or compulsion.