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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:

Since my birth, there has been no freedom in this country. Here, bought judges ruin people’s lives.

Face

Your freedom is different. People are watching you without you having any idea that people are watching you.

Lieke Martens

In my honest opinion, young people don't need advice, just opportunities. They need space, access to funding and freedom to choose their own career paths.

Yvonne Khamati

Social media is a very important tool too, we can’t underestimate the age of information. Anyone who fears social media, fears the freedom knowledge brings.

Laila Johnson-Salami

When sound thought works its way through the world,
and love stands highest,
peace, freedom and reconciliation will spring up.

Ljubka Šorli

Oppose any kind of hostage taking since freedom is essential and it is part of the dignity of all God's children.

Nel Hedye Beltrán Santamaria

The worst enemy of truth and freedom in our society is the compact majority. Yes, the damned, compact, liberal majority.

Henrik Ibsen

To accept a favor is to sell one's freedom.

Publilius Syrus

Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.

Barry Goldwater

Prosperity or egalitarianism you have to choose. I favor freedom you never achieve real equality anyway: you simply sacrifice prosperity for an illusion.

Mario Vargas Llosa

For thirty years the Cubans fought alone for their independence; thirty years of struggle that strengthened our love for freedom and independence.

Fidel Castro At the United Nations (1960)

Lucretius and his tradition taught Shelley that freedom came from understanding causation.

Harold Bloom The Anatomy of Influence (2011)

Philadelphia now has only two attractions left: the Liberty Bell and myself.

Ping Bodie

The choice is not between order and liberty. It is between liberty with order and anarchy without either.

Robert H. Jackson

Each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom.

W. H. Auden Another Time (1940)

In limitations he first shows himself the master,
And the law can only bring us freedom.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Was Wir Bringen (1802)

By liberty, then, we can only mean a power of acting or not acting, according to the determinations of the will.

David Hume An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748)

Zeal is not of necessity religion, neither is it always of the same essence with poetry or patriotism.

Herman Melville Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866)

Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.

Virginia Woolf A Room of One's Own (1929)

Private ownership of tools, a basis of freedom when tools are simple becomes a basis of enslavement when tools are complex.

Upton Sinclair I, Governor of California and How I Ended Poverty (1933)

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