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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:

Remote from liberty and truth,
By fortune's crime, my early youth
Drank error's poisoned springs.

Robert Nugent, 1st Earl Nugent

They [the Pilgrims] believed in freedom of thought for themselves and for all other people who believed exactly as they did.

Will Cuppy The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950)

To get to a place where you could love anything you chose—not to need permission for desire—well now, that was freedom.

Toni Morrison

If someone tells you you are too weak to live with freedom, they have turned you into a child.

Alan Charles Kors College (2005)

True freedom is to share
All the chains our brothers wear.

James Russell Lowell Stanzas on Freedom (1843)

I believe that the royal family are a focus of patriotism, of loyalty, of affection and of esteem. That is a rare combination, and we should value it highly.

Margaret Thatcher

We shall distinguish in Robespierre two men, apostle of liberty, and Robespierre the most infamous of tyrants.

François-Noël Babeuf

We want freedom by any means necessary. We want justice by any means necessary. We want equality by any means necessary.

Malcolm X By Any Means Necessary (1970)

Two things form the bedrock of any open society—freedom of expression and rule of law. If you don't have those things, you don't have a free country.

Salman Rushdie

Where are the real sources of human dignity, freedom and modern democracy, if not in the concept of infinity to which all men are equal?

Louis Pasteur Discours de réception de Louis Pasteur (1882)

Such is my thesis, that the licensing of weapons is subversive of liberty and self-defeating in its pious purpose.

Robert A. Heinlein Grumbles from the Grave (1989)

On the mountains there is freedom!
The world is perfect everywhere,
Save where man comes with his torment.

Friedrich Schiller

I am jealous of men. I envy the man his physical freedom to lead a double life.

Sylvia Plath

Freedom of expression gives the essential democratic opportunity, but self-restraint is the essential civic discipline.

Charles Evans Hughes Charles Evans Hughes (1951)

In Islam, if one operates against the interests of the country, one's freedom will be limited. This is both logical and spiritual.

Ali Khamenei

As long as there's hate in your heart, there'll be hate in the world. You can't fight for peace and you cannot capture freedom.

Charles Manson Interview track from Charles Manson Sings (2006)

I don't necessarily believe that the sting of failure is a bad thing. It gives you a certain amount of freedom to just say fuck it!

Billy Corgan

Absolute discretion is a ruthless master. It is more destructive of freedom than any of man's other inventions.

William O. Douglas

That kind of patriotism which consists in hating all other nations.

Elizabeth Gaskell

This hand, the rule of tyrants to oppose
Seeks with the sword fair freedom's soft repose.

Algernon Sidney

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