independence Quotes

“Until an independence is declared the continent will feel itself like a man who continues putting off some unpleasant business from day to day, yet knows it must be done, hates to set about it, wishes it over, and is continually haunted with the thoughts of its necessity.”

“Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in . . . terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress.”

“Parents rarely let go of their children, so children let go of them. They move away. The moments that used to define them—a mother’s approval, a father’s nod—are covered by moments of their own accomplishments. It is not until much later, as the skin sags and the heart weakens, that children understand; their stories, and all their accomplishments, sit atop the stories of their mothers and fathers, stones upon stones, beneath the waters of their lives.”

“There is no dignity quite so impressive, and no independence quite so important, as living within your means.”

“It is possible to conceive men arrived at a degree of freedom which should completely content them; they would then enjoy their independence without anxiety and without impatience. But men will never establish any equality with which they can be contented.”

“…as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do.”

“We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America…solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States”

“Education is experience, and the essence of experience is self-reliance.”

″‘Tell you!’ he exclaimed. ‘And what is going to happen when there is nobody to tell you? Are you never going to think for yourself?‘”

“Good children are defined as meek, considerate, unselfish and perfectly law-abiding. Such rules allow no place for vitality, spontaneity, inner freedom, inner independence and critical judgment. These rules cause parents, even well-intentioned ones, to abandon their children. Such abandonment creates the toxic shame I’ve been describing.

“Done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independance of the United States of America.”

“Job is an acronym for ‘Just Over Broke.’ ”

″‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.’ ‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.‘”

“Financial struggle is often the result of people working all their lives for someone else.”

“Nils, a woman who has once sold herself for another’s sake, doesn’t do it a second time.”

“Away from my mother, away from my grandparents, I was engaged in a fitful interior struggle. I was trying to raise myself to be a black man in America, and beyond the given of my appearance, no one around me seemed to know exactly what that meant.”

“Independence is all very well, but we animals never allow our friends to make fools of themselves beyond a certain limit; and that limit you’ve reached.”

“I am well and healthy. The food is good. Sometimes I eat turtle soup, and I know how to make acorn pancakes. I keep my supplies in the wall of the tree in wooden pockets that I chopped myself.”

“She sat down, wary, tired, astonished at the wealth of her own feeling for. She was full of need. But, she reminded herself, you’re a grown woman.”

“With each succeeding generation, the growing demand of the people that its elective officials shall not lead but merely register the popular will has steadily undermined the independence of those who derive their power from popular election. ”

“You could be the most perfect woman on the Lord’s green earth—you’re capable of interesting conversation, you cook a mean breakfast, you hand out backrubs like sandwiches, you’re independent (which means, to him, that you’re not going to be in his pockets)—but if he’s not ready for a serious relationship, he’s going to treat you like a sports fish.”

“I say that there is no role for women--there is, instead, a role for each woman, and she must make it for herself. ... A woman’s strength should not be in her role, whatever she chooses it to be, but in the power to choose that role.”

“The moment you feel the need to tightly manage someone, you’ve made a hiring mistake. The best people don’t need to be managed. Guided, taught, led–yes. But not tightly managed.”

“Allowing people to operate without having to explain themselves constantly turns out to be like the rule of agreement in improv. It enables rapid cognition.”

“We have to build the Republic of Heaven where we are.”

“Gloria’s independence, like all sincere and profound qualities, had begun unconsciously, but, once brought to her attention by Anthony’s fascinated discovery of it, it assumed more nearly the proportions of a formal code. From her conversation it might be assumed that all her energy and vitality went into a violent affirmation of the negative principle ‘Never give a damn.’”

“Yes, truly. I speak not as desiring more, But rather wishing a more strict restraint Upon the sisterhood, the votarists of Saint Clare.”

“That girl didn’t want to die. She just wanted out of that house. She wanted out of that decorating scheme.”

“The stronger becomes master of the weaker, in so far as the latter cannot assert its degree of independence - here there is no mercy, no forbearance, even less a respect for ‘laws.’ ”

“Our individuality is all, all, that we have.”

“With slight shades of difference, you have the same religion, manners, habits, and political principles. You have in a common cause fought and triumphed together; the independence and liberty you possess are the work of joint counsels, and joint efforts of common dangers, sufferings, and successes.”

“The unity of government which constitutes you one people is also now dear to you. It is justly so, for it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquility at home, your peace abroad; of your safety; of your prosperity; of that very liberty which you so highly prize.”

″... the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government. ”

“A farmer depends on himself, and the land and the weather. If you’re a farmer, you raise what you eat, you raise what you wear, and you keep warm with wood out of your own timber. You work hard, but you work as you please, and no man can tell you to go or come. You’ll be free and independent, son, on a farm.”

“It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”

“Her upbringing had given her an independence of mind that made her more like a girl of today than one of her own time - which was why she had walked out, and why she was not daunted by the prospect of being alone.”

“By 1778, British peace commissioners were offering to rectify all the American grievances of 1776, ignoring only the demand for independence.”

“Black people were treated different than white people, that was plain to see, but Eliza said nobody could tell her what to do or where to go, and no one would ever, ever beat her again.

“It was taken away when the British left -the people of Bombay did not want to see a foreign ruler after independence, not even a stone one.”

“Independence is a heady draft, and if you drink it in your youth, it can have the same effect on the brain as young wine does. It does not matter that its taste is not always appealing. It is addictive and with each drink you want more.”

“I must bring them all up to be useful- to depend upon themselves; there is not a moment to be lost, and not a moment shall be lost; I will do my best and trust to God”

“But human beings are not machines, and however powerful the pressure to conform, they sometimes are so moved by what they see as injustice that they dare to declare their independence. In that historical possibility lies hope.”

“So the fact that I’m me and no one else is one of my greatest assets. Emotional hurt is the price a person has to pay in order to be independent.”

The theme of this story, the struggle that every colony has had to go through to gain their independence from the corporation making the rules through government lobbies.

“I wish we could solve a mystery on our own, though.”

“I wish to hatch my own eggs; I will hatch them all by myself.”

“They still laughed at his ridiculous dignity; and they loved to tease him to see him stiffen with rage and hear his choky little growls; but they liked his independence and admired his tremendous pluck.”

School and home seemed to recede from us and their influences upon us seemed to wane.

Mrs Mooney was a butcher’s daughter. She was a woman who was quite able to keep things to herself: a determined woman.

She arranged in her mind all she was going to do and thought how much better it was to be independent and to have your own money in your pocket.

“Tomorrow”, “I will get a job, and perhaps Jonas will get one also; and then we can get a place of our own.”

“Of course,” he said at last, “we ought to inform the police, so that they can come here and watch the pond to-night.” “Of course,” grinned Bill. “But I think that perhaps it is a little early to put our theories before them.” “I think perhaps it is,” said Bill solemnly. Antony looked up at him with a sudden smile. “Bill, you old bounder.” “Well, dash it, it’s our show. I don’t see why we shouldn’t get our little bit of fun out of it.” “Neither do I. All right, then, we’ll do without the police to-night.” “We shall miss them,” said Bill sadly, “but ‘tis better so.”

“Thou must gather thine own sunshine. I have none to give thee!”

And what hast thou to do with all these iron men, and their opinions? They have kept thy better part in bondage too long already!”

“You can go through the world with your elbows out and your nose in the air, and call it independence, if you like. That’s not my way.”

“I don’t like favors, they oppress and make me feel like a slave. I’d rather do everything for myself, and be perfectly independent.”

“I don’t believe I shall ever marry. I’m happy as I am, and love my liberty too well to be in a hurry to give it up for any mortal man.”

In France the young girls have a dull time of it till they are married, when ‘Vive la liberte!’ becomes their motto. In America, as everyone knows, girls early sign the declaration of independence, and enjoy their freedom with republican zest, but the young matrons usually abdicate with the first heir to the throne and go into a seclusion almost as close as a French nunnery, though by no means as quiet.

“Fortune is precarious; and if I were a woman and fate had made me a banker’s wife, whatever might be my confidence in my husband’s good fortune, still in speculation you know there is great risk. Well, I would secure for myself a fortune independent of him, even if I acquired it by placing my interests in hands unknown to him.”

“I am my own engineer, and my own carpenter, and my own plumber, and my own gardener, and my own Jack of all Trades,” said Wemmick, in acknowledging my compliments.

Marriage had never presented itself to him as a possibility. He not only disliked family life, but a family, and especially a husband was, in accordance with the views general in the bachelor world in which he lived, conceived as something alien, repellant, and, above all, ridiculous.

He began to think of her, of what she was thinking and feeling. For the first time he pictured vividly to himself her personal life, her ideas, her desires, and the idea that she could and should have a separate life of her own seemed to him so alarming that he made haste to dispel it. It was the chasm which he was afraid to peep into.

“A man! A man! What has a man to do with us? Let him go to his own place.”

“One in ten thousand perhaps—I speak roughly, approximately—is born with some independence, and with still greater independence one in a hundred thousand.

“No, you won’t run away. A peasant would run away, a fashionable dissenter would run away, the flunkey of another man’s thought, for you’ve only to show him the end of your little finger and he’ll be ready to believe in anything for the rest of his life.