Independence Day Sayings

Celebrating liberty, freedom, and the American spirit — 771 sayings

The only freedom, therefore, which is of real value, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way.

— John Stuart Mill 1859
Justice & Rights

It is a strange desire, to seek power and to lose liberty.

— Francis Bacon 1625
Justice & Rights

The greatest glory of a free-born people is to transmit that freedom to their children.

— Francis Bacon 1601
Justice & Rights

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.

— Soren Kierkegaard 1849
Justice & Rights

Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.

— Soren Kierkegaard 1844
Justice & Rights

Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.

— Jean-Paul Sartre 1972
Justice & Rights

I am unable to refuse to accept the responsibility of my own freedom.

— Jean-Paul Sartre 1943
Justice & Rights

The discourse of truth is not always the discourse of freedom.

— Michel Foucault 1983
Justice & Rights

The only way to escape the personal consequences of freedom is to give up the very freedom itself.

— Hannah Arendt 1961
Justice & Rights

What is freedom? Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right to do wrong.

— Albert Camus Unknown
Justice & Rights

The greatest fruit of self-sufficiency is freedom.

— Epicurus c. 300 BCE
Justice & Rights

I come bearing an olive branch in one hand, and the freedom fighter's gun in the other. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand.

— Yasser Arafat 1974
War & Conflict

The happy life is to be found in the mind's freedom from disturbance.

— Seneca c. 65 AD
Justice & Rights

It is better to starve to death in freedom from grief and fear, than to live in plenty with perturbation.

— Epictetus c. 108 AD
Justice & Rights

Freedom is not the right to do what you want, but the power to do what is right.

— Epictetus c. 108 AD (approximate)
Justice & Rights

The British Empire is finished; only the Americans are too stupid to see it.

— Chiang Kai-shek 1942
Power & Leadership

Americans think they can buy friendship with money.

— Chiang Kai-shek 1950s
Money & Business

The state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another, and indeed in the democratic republic no less than in the monarchy.

— Friedrich Engels 1884
Political

Freedom is the recognition of necessity.

— Friedrich Engels 1878
Justice & Rights

The first condition of all freedom is not to be a slave.

— Friedrich Engels 1879
Justice & Rights
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