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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.

Random quote on Independence Day

Most quoted on independence day:

But this is America. There is no them; there's only us. One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty, and justice, for all.

Bill Clinton A Place Called Hope (1992)

The person must give himself an external sphere of freedom in order to have being as Idea.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Elements of the Philosophy of Right (1820)

Eternal vigilance, as they say, is the price of freedom. Add intellectual integrity to the cost basis.

Stephen Jay Gould Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998)

If freedom is to be saved and enlarged, poverty must be ended. There is no other solution.

Aneurin Bevan In Place of Fear (1952)

To be free, you have only to make the decision to be free. Freedom is waiting for you — anytime you're ready for it.

Harry Browne How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World (1973)

The object of liberty is to give men and women a chance to be their best selves. That is its first and last purpose.

Dorothy Thompson Dorothy Thompson's Political Guide: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)

I am an individual and a believer in liberty.

Charlie Chaplin

The secret of liberty is to enlighten men, as that of tyranny is to keep them in ignorance.

Maximilien Robespierre

In health there is liberty. Health is the first of all liberties, and happiness gives us the energy which is the basis of health.

Henri-Frédéric Amiel Journal Intime (1882)

Individual freedom and individual equality cannot co-exist. I dare say no one since Thomas Jefferson has really believed it.

Katharine Fullerton Gerould Modes and Morals (1920)

When a man talks with absolute sincerity and freedom he goes on a voyage of discovery. The whole company has shares in the enterprise.

John Jay Chapman

Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army. If we retrench the wages of the schoolmaster, we must raise those of the recruiting sergeant.

Edward Everett The Common School Journal and Educational Reformer (1852)

Instinct is blind;—a consciousness without insight. Freedom, as the opposite of Instinct, is thus seeing, and clearly conscious of the grounds of its activity.

Johann Gottlieb Fichte The Characteristics of the Present Age (1806)

He is equally great whether his theme be religion, patriotism, or love. As a political poet he is one of the greatest of all time.

Walther von der Vogelweide

I have the consolation to believe, that, while choice and prudence invite me to quit the political scene, patriotism does not forbid it.

George Washington Farewell Address (1796)

By leveraging their freedom from the bonds of location, corporations could now dictate the economic policy of governments.

Joel Bakan The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power (2004)

We have, Marx asserts, built a vast social enterprise which dominates us, delimits our freedoms and ultimately visits upon us the worst forms of degradation.

David Harvey The Limits To Capital (2006)

Not only does each person have the freedom and the right to say what they think for the common good, they have a duty to do so.

Pope Francis

What devious designs freedom requires. One must worry about the strength of a principle when it must compromise itself so often to survive.

Pierce Brown Dark Age (2019)

I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible...

Peter Thiel

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