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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:

Unlimited freedom, absolute democracy, are reefs upon which all the republics have come to grief.

Simón Bolívar

Choice depends on the freedom to choose and if you are shackled with debt you don’t have the freedom to choose.

Tony Benn Interview with Michael Moore in the movie Sicko (2007)

Metaphysics has as the proper object of its enquiries three ideas only: God, freedom, and immortality.

Immanuel Kant Critique of Pure Reason (1781)

William Penn summed up the ideal of human liberty in the remark: 'Men must either be governed by God or they must be ruled by tyrants.'

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

Scientology is used to increase spiritual freedom, intelligence, ability and to produce immortality.

L. Ron Hubbard Dianetics And Scientology Technical Dictionary (1975)

Liberty is not collective, it is personal. All liberty is individual liberty.

Calvin Coolidge Authority and Religious Liberty (1924)

Each person designs his own life, freedom gives him the power to carry out his own designs, and power gives the freedom to interfere with the designs of others.

Eric Berne What Do You Say After You Say Hello? (1973)

Power is so pleasant that men quickly learn to be greedy in the enjoyment of it, and to flatter themselves that patriotism requires them to be imperious.

Anthony Trollope The Prime Minister (1876)

We are squandering our wealth in many respects, to the extent that we persist in our imperial delusions, we're also going to squander our freedom.

Andrew Bacevich

I believe that only in that atmosphere of intellectual freedom can we solve the problems before us now.

Rachel Carson Man Against Himself (1963)

The enemies of Freedom do not argue; they shout and they shoot.

William Ralph Inge The End of an Age, and Other Essays (1948)

Every now and then, you get people who tend to forget what this country is about, which is a melting pot of races and cultures and freedom of speech.

Maynard James Keenan

What is the essence of America? The essence of America is finding and maintaining that perfect, delicate balance between freedom "to" and freedom "from."

Marilyn vos Savant

There's a fine line between giving the sense of freedom and being too free.

Joe Satriani

Liberty must be allowed to work out its natural results; and these will, ere long, astonish the world.

James Buchanan Presidential Leadership : Rating the Best and the Worst in the White House (2004)

I am a free woman who asserts her freedom by telling her story.

J. M. Coetzee Foe (1986)

Politicians who attack the dream of a federal Europe are racist bigots intent on undermining the Continent's freedom and peace.

Jacques Delors

Philadelphia freedom, I love you, yes I do.

Elton John

Freedom of expression is no longer a political nicety, but a precondition for economic competitiveness.

Alvin Toffler

The Anarchists never have claimed that liberty will bring perfection; they simply say that its results are vastly preferable to those that follow authority.

Benjamin Tucker Individual Liberty (1926)

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