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:
Liberty ... is one of the most valuable blessings that Heaven has bestowed upon mankind.
He had left home to get away, not to go toward anything. There was no greater freedom than that.
The love of liberty is a common blood that flows in our American veins.
Let the pulpit resound with the doctrines and sentiments of religious liberty.
Freedom of religion is central to the ability of peoples to live together.
I’m under no illusion about the continued barriers to freedom that remain for ordinary Cubans.
Patriotism is a kind of religion; it is the egg from which wars are hatched.
The most important civil liberty... is to stay alive and to be free from violence and death...
Freedom was wonderful beyond relief. But with it came that bitch, Duty.