Quotes about independence (1886 quotes, page 12)

“That these ideas were prevalent in Virginia is further revealed by the Declaration of Rights, which was prepared by George Mason and presented to the general assembly on May 27, 1776. This document asserted popular sovereignty and inherent natural rights, but confined the doctrine of equality to the assertion that "All men are created equally free and independent." It can scarcely be imagined that Jefferson was unacquainted with what had been done in his own Commonwealth of Virginia when he took up the task of drafting the Declaration of Independence. But these thoughts can very largely be traced back to what John Wise was writing in 1710. He said, "Every man must be acknowledged equal to every man." Again, "The end of all good government is to cultivate humanity and promote the happiness of all and the good of every man in all his rights, his life, liberty, estate, honor, and so forth…". And again, "For as they have a power every man in his natural state, so upon combination they can and do bequeath this power to others and settle it according as their united discretion shall determine." And still again, "Democracy is Christ's government in church and state."”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

Here was the doctrine of equality, popular sovereignty, and the substance of the theory of inalienable rights clearly asserted by Wise at the opening of the eighteenth century, just as we have the principle of the consent of the governed stated by Hooker as early as 1638.
1920s, Speech on the Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (1926)

Life , Men , Democracy , Imagination

“Modern Slavs, both Bulgarians and Macedonians, cannot establish a link with antiquity, as the Slavs entered the Balkans centuries after the demise of the ancient Macedonian kingdom. Only the most radical Slavic factions—mostly émigrés in the United States, Canada, and Australia—even attempt to establish a connection to antiquity […] The twentieth-century development of a Macedonian ethnicity, and its recent evolution into independent statehood following the collapse of the Yugoslav state in 1991, has followed a rocky road. In order to survive the vicissitudes of Balkan history and politics, the Macedonians, who have had no history, need one. They reside in a territory once part of a famous ancient kingdom, which has borne the Macedonian name as a region ever since and was called ”Macedonia” for nearly half a century as part of Yugoslavia. And they speak a language now recognized by most linguists outside Bulgaria, Serbia, and Greece as a south Slavic language separate from Slovenian, Serbo-Croatian, and Bulgarian. Their own so-called Macedonian ethnicity had evolved for more than a century, and thus it seemed natural and appropriate for them to call the new nation “Macedonia” and to attempt to provide some cultural references to bolster ethnic survival..”

Eugene N. Borza (1935) American historian

"Macedonia Redux", in "The Eye Expanded: life and the arts in Greco-Roman Antiquity", ed. Frances B Tichener & Richard F. Moorton, University of California Press, 1999

History , Nature , Parting

“That mysterious independent variable of political calculation, Public Opinion.”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

"Universities, Actual and Ideal" (1874) http://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxley/CE3/U-Ac-I.html
1870s

“[Robinson Crusoe] is the true prototype of the British colonist, as Friday (the trusty slave who arrives on an unlucky day) is the symbol of the subject races. The whole Anglo-Saxon spirit is in Crusoe: the manly independence; the unconscious cruelty; the persistence; the slow yet efficient intelligence; the sexual apathy; the practical, well-balanced religiousness; the calculating taciturnity.”

James Joyce (1882–1941) Irish novelist and poet

James Joyce, “Daniel Defoe,” translated from Italian manuscript and edited by Joseph Prescott, Buffalo Studies 1 (1964): 24-25

Intelligence

“Whereas slavery, throughout its entire existence in the United States, is none other than the most barbarous, unprovoked and unjustifiable war of one portion of its citizens against another portion, the only conditions of which are perpetual imprisonment and hopeless servitude, or absolute extermination, in utter disregard and violation of those eternal and self-evident truths set forth in our Declaration of Independence. Therefore, we, citizens of the United States, and the oppressed people who, by a recent decision of the Supreme' Court, are declared to have no rights which the white man is bound to respect, together with all other people degraded by the laws thereof, do, for the time being, ordain and establish for ourselves the following Provisional Constitution and Ordinances, the better to protect our persons, property, lives, and liberties, and to govern our actions.”

John Brown (abolitionist) (1800–1859) American abolitionist

Preamble.
Provisional Constitution and Ordinances (1858)

War , People , Truth , Law

“In my talks with the African Nationalist leaders…I regarded it as my duty to remove from their minds any idea or any hope they might have had that Rhodesia's constitutional problems were going to be solved by an assertion of military power on our part, whether for the purposes of suspending or amending the 1961 Constitution, of imposing majority rule tomorrow or any other time—or for that matter of dealing with the situation that would follow an illegal assertion of independence. To quote the words I used to them: If there are those who are thinking in terms of a thunderbolt hurtling from the sky and destroying their enemies, a thunderbolt in the shape of the Royal Air Force, let me say that thunderbolt will not be coming, and to continue in this delusion wastes valuable time, and misdirects valuable energies.”

Harold Wilson (1916–1995) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in the House of Commons (1 November 1965) http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1965/nov/01/rhodesia. Rhodesia declared independence 10 days later.
Prime Minister

Hope , Quotes , Idea , Problem

“A modern theory of knowledge which takes account of the relational as distinct from the merely relative character of all historical knowledge must start with the assumption that there are spheres of thought in which it is impossible to conceive of absolute truth existing independently of the values and position of the subject and unrelated to the social context.”

Karl Mannheim (1893–1947) Hungarian sociologist

Ideology and Utopia (1929)

Truth , Knowledge

“I fear we might be losing the basic human facility to be alone - and with that you throw out independent decision-making, what to trust, what not to trust, key stuff, a perilous loss.”

Dylan Moran (1971) Irish actor and comedian

on social networking sites like Facebook
Other

Fear , Decision , Loss

“I think there is at least one moral theory of respectable lineage and good independent credentials that can accommodate such fairly minimal intuitions about us and animals. This is the theory Hume offers us. I do not consider Hume a forerunner of utilitarianism, and therefore what I shall go on to say in defense of Hume is not intended as a defense of any version of utilitarianism. I see Hume to be much closer to Aristotle than to Mill, to be offering us a theory about human virtues, not a theory about utility maximization and the duties that might involve.”

Annette Baier (1929–2012) New Zealand philosopher

Source: Knowing Our Place in the Animal World, p. 68

Thinking , Animals

“Three days after Richard Henry Lee introduced the Resolution of Independence, it was voted to appoint a committee to "prepare a declaration to the effect of the said first resolution." The committee, appointed on the following day, consisted of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston. On the 28 of June, the committee reported to Congress the draft of a declaration which, with modifications, was finally agreed to by Congress on the 4 of July. This is the document which is popularly known as the Declaration of Independence.”

Carl L. Becker (1873–1945) American historian

The Declaration of Independence: A Study in the History of Political Ideas (1922)

“The Law-Giver meant us Muslims to provide for the necessary, additional legislation through the exercise of our Ijtihad (Independent Reasoning) in consonance with the spirit of Islam.”

Muhammad Asad book The Principles of State and Government in Islam

Source: The Principles of State and Government in Islam (1961), Chapter 1: The Issue Before Us, p 14

Law , Exercises

“When I say that we owe nothing to England, I speak in regards of politics, for I am convinced, and I shall die with this conviction, that the Union of Upper and Lower Canada as well as Confederation were imposed to us with a purpose hostile to the French element and with the hope of making it disappear in a more or less distant future. I wanted to show you what our homeland could be. I have made my best to open yourselves up to new horizons and, as I let you glimpse at them, push your hearts towards the fulfilment of our national destinies. You have colonial dependence, I offer you independence; you have shame and misery, I offer you fortune and prosperity; you are but a colony ignored by the whole world, I offer you becoming a great people, respected and recognized amongst free nations. Men, women and children, the choice is yours; you can remain slaves in the state of colony, or become independent and free, amongst the other peoples that, with their powerful voices beckon you to the banquet of nations.”

Honoré Mercier (1840–1894) Canadian politician

Quand je dis que nous ne devons rien à l'Angleterre, je parle au point de vue politique car je suis convaincu, et je mourrai avec cette conviction, que l'union du Haut et du Bas Canada ainsi que la Confédération nous ont été imposées dans un but hostile à l'élément français et avec l'espérance de le faire disparaître dans un avenir plus ou moins éloigné. J'ai voulu vous démontrer ce que pouvait être notre patrie. J'ai fait mon possible pour vous ouvrir de nouveaux horizons et, en vous les faisant entrevoir, pousser vos coeurs vers la réalisation de nos destinées nationales. Vous avez la dépendance coloniale, je vous offre l'indépendance; vous avez la gêne et la misère, je vous offre la fortune et la prospérité; vous n'êtes qu'une colonie ignorée du monde entier, je vous offre de devenir un grand peuple, respecté et reconnu parmi les nations libres. Hommes, femmes et enfants, à vous de choisir; vous pouvez rester esclaves dans l'état de colonie, ou devenir indépendant et libre, au milieu des autres peuples qui, de leurs voix toutes puissantes vous convient au banquet des nations.
Speech of April 4, 1893.

Women , Men , Hostility , Children

“Therefore, the Hindus and Sikhs, the minorities in the new Muslim homeland, were not to be suffered to stay there. This “minorityism”, the name for Hindus and Sikhs, was “the major enemy of the Milltat,” as Rehmat Ali, one of the early League leaders and intellectuals and coiner of the word Pakistan, said. According to its original conception, Pakistan itself was to be larger than it turned out to be; it was to include Kashmir, Assam and Bengal in the East and Hyderabad and Malabar in the South and many independent Muslim states within the rest of the Indian territory. India, or whatever remained of India, was itself to be considered Dinia, an important Islamic concept.”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

Quoted from the preface by Ram Swarup in Gurbachan, S. T. S., & Swarup, R. (1991). Muslim League attack on Sikhs and Hindus in the Punjab 1947.

Suffering

“I suppose that the main benefit of being rich (over just being independent) is to be able to despise rich people (a good concentration of whom you find in glitzy ski resorts) without any sour grapes. It is even sweeter when these farts don't know that you are richer than they are.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

Source: Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (2012), p. 176 (footnote)

People

“Australia cannot stand aside from the struggle to resist the aggressive thrust of Communism in Asia and to ensure conditions in which stability can be achieved. Our own national security demands this course. We cannot be isolationist or neutralist, placed as we are geographically and occupying, as we do, with limited national strength, this vast continent. We cannot leave it solely to our allies – and their national servicemen [conscripts] – to defend in the region the rights of countries to their own independence and the peaceful pursuit of their national way of life.”

Harold Holt (1908–1967) Australian politician, 17th Prime Minister of Australia

statement on the creation of a self-contained Australian task force to fight in Vietnam, 8 March 1966
As prime minister
Source: The Life and Death of Harold Holt, p. 178.

Life , Peace , Way , Communication

“If we value independence, if we are disturbed by the growing conformity of knowledge, of values, of attitudes, which our present system induces, then we may wish to set up conditions of learning which make for uniqueness, for self-direction, and for self-initiated learning.”

Carl R. Rogers (1902–1987) American psychologist

On Becoming a Person (1961)
Source: page # not specified

Knowledge , Learning

“We believe that personal independence and equal human rights can never be forfeited, except for crime; that marriage should be an equal and permanent partnership, and so recognized by law; that until it is so recognized, married partners should provide against the radical injustice of present laws, by every means in their power…”

Lucy Stone (1818–1893) American abolitionist and suffragist

Marriage protest (1855)

Marriage , Law , Personality , Partnership

“There is now a strong movement in this country to bring the public school system under federal domination. The movement could not have been thought of before the government had the means for carrying out the idea; that is, before income taxation. The question is, have those who plug for nationalization of the schools come to the idea by independent thought, or have they been influenced by the bureaucrats who see in nationalization a wider opportunity for themselves? We must lean to the latter conclusion, because among the leaders of the movement are many bureaucrats. However, if the movement is successful, if the schools are brought under the watching eye of the federal government, it is a certainty that the curriculum will conform to the ideals of Big Government. The child’s mind will never be exposed to the idea that the individual is the one big thing in the world, that he has rights which come from a higher source than the bureaucracy.”

Frank Chodorov (1887–1966) American libertarian thinker

Source: The Income Tax: Root of All Evil (1954), pp. 34-35

World , School , Idea , Question

“In its main features the Declaration of Independence is a great spiritual document. It is a declaration not of material but of spiritual conceptions. Equality, liberty, popular sovereignty, the rights of man — these are not elements which we can see and touch. They are ideals. They have their source and their roots in the religious convictions. They belong to the unseen world. Unless the faith of the American people in these religious convictions is to endure, the principles of our Declaration will perish. We can not continue to enjoy the result if we neglect and abandon the cause.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Speech on the Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (1926)

People , World , Faith

“In other words, truth is simply what is: what exists in reality and can be verified by rational and independent observers.”

Jerry Coyne book Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible

Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), p. 29

Truth , Reality

“The truth is that our sovereignty was given away a long time ago, and the Lisbon Treaty was the final nail in the coffin for Ireland’s independence.”

Niamh Uí Bhriain (1970) Irish activist

Will EU Bailout Lead to Further Threats to Ireland’s Pro-Life Laws? http://www.thelifeinstitute.net/blog/2010/11/23/will-eu-bailout-lead-to-further-threats-to-irelands-pro-life-laws/ (November 23, 2010)

Truth , Time

“…the leaders of an independent Scotland will be only too happy to trade away that independence in return for admission to the fleshpots of Brussels for themselves and their families, goes without saying; they have the example of Westminster to copy.”

George MacDonald Fraser (1925–2008) English-born author of Scottish descent

To Scotland, with Love. p. 124.
The Light's On At Signpost (2002)

Family , Happiness

“The tendency has always been strong to believe that whatever received a name must be an entity or thing, having an independent existence of its own; and if no real entity answering to the name could be found, men did not for that reason suppose that none existed, but imagined that it was something peculiarly abstruse and mysterious, too high to be an object of sense. The meaning of all general, and especially of all abstract terms, became in this way enveloped in a mystical base…”

John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) British philosopher and political economist

Note to Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind http://books.google.com/books?id=GxIuAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=james+mill&ei=jsFoR7yAOYfQiwHEzdVv&ie=ISO-8859-1#PPA5,M1 (1829) by James Mill, edited with additional notes by John Stuart Mill (1869)

Men , Way , Imagination , Sense

“Within a surprisingly short space of time, however, the fortunes of the neo-roman theory began to decline and fall. … One reason for this collapse was that the social assumptions underlying the theory began to appear outdated and even absurd. With the extension of the manners of the court to the bourgeoisie in the early eighteenth century, the virtues of the independent country gentleman began to look irrelevant and even inimical to a polite commercial age. The hero of the neo-roman writers came to be viewed not as plain-hearted but as rude and boorish; not as upright but as obstinate and quarrelsome; not as a man of fortitude but of mere insensibility.”

Quentin Skinner (1940) British historian

Source: Liberty Before Liberalism (1998), pp. 96-97

Age , Appearance , Time , Heart

“Yet freedom is not the same as independence. Americans will not support those who seek independence in order to replace a far-off tyranny with a local despotism. They will not aid those who promote a suicidal nationalism based upon ethnic hatred.”

George H. W. Bush (1924–2018) American politician, 41st President of the United States

"Chicken Kiev speech" to a session of the Supreme Soviet of Ukraine, (1 August 1991)

Support , Suicide , Freedom

“[T]his Court now concludes that independent [political] expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.”

Anthony Kennedy (1936) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 50 http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/08-205.ZS.html (21 January 2010).

Appearance

“By creating the world market, big industry has already brought all the peoples of the Earth, and especially the civilized peoples, into such close relation with one another that none is independent of what happens to the others. Further, it has co-ordinated the social development of the civilized countries to such an extent that, in all of them, bourgeoisie and proletariat have become the decisive classes, and the struggle between them the great struggle of the day. It follows that the communist revolution will not merely be a national phenomenon but must take place simultaneously in all civilized countries.”

Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) German social scientist, author, political theorist, and philosopher

(1847)

People , World , Decision , Country

“Muslim power again suffered a setback after the death of Alauddin Khalji in 1316 AD. But it was soon revived by the Tughlaqs. By now most of the famous temples over the length and breadth of the Islamic empire in India had been demolished, except in Orissa and Rajasthan which had retained their independence. By now most of the rich treasuries had been plundered and shared between the Islamic state and its swordsmen. Firuz Shah Tughlaq led an expedition to Orissa in 1360 AD. He destroyed the temple of Jagannath at Puri, and desecrated many other Hindu shrines….
After the sack of the temples in Orissa, Firuz Shah Tughlaq attacked an island on the sea-coast where 'nearly 100,000 men of Jajnagar had taken refuge with their women, children, kinsmen and relations'. The swordsmen of Islam turned 'the island into a basin of blood by the massacre of the unbelievers'. A worse fate overtook the Hindu women. Sirat-i-Firuz Shahi records: 'Women with babies and pregnant ladies were haltered, manacled, fettered and enchained, and pressed as slaves into service in the house of every soldier.' Still more horrible scenes were enacted by Firuz Shah Tughlaq at Nagarkot (Kangra) where he sacked the shrine of Jvalamukhi. Firishta records that the Sultan 'broke the idols of Jvalamukhi, mixed their fragments with the flesh of cows and hung them in nosebags round the necks of Brahmins. He sent the principal idol as trophy to Medina.”

Firuz Shah Tughlaq (1309–1388) Tughluq sultan

S.R. Goel, The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India

Death , Women , Men , Fate

“If the world is an aggregate of relatively independent regions, then any assumption of universal laws is false and a demand for universal norms tyrannical: only brute force (or seductive deception) can then bend the different moralities so that they fit the prescriptions of a single ethical system. And indeed, the idea of universal laws of nature and society arose in connection with a life-and-death battle: the battle that gave Zeus the power over the Titans and all other gods and thus turned his laws into the laws of the universe.”

Paul Karl Feyerabend book Farewell to Reason

pg 99, italics are feyerabends
Farewell to Reason (1987)

Life , Death , God , World

“To the Working Men of Rochdale: A deep sympathy with you in your present circumstances induces me to address you. Listen and reflect, even though you may not approve. Your are suffering—you have long suffered. Your wages have for many years declined, and your position has gradually and steadily become worse. Your sufferings have naturally produced discontent, and you have turned eagerly to almost any scheme which gave hope of relief. Many of you know full well that neither an act of Parliament nor the act of a multitude can keep up wages. You know that trade has long been bad, and that with a bad trade wages cannot rise. If you are resolved to compel an advance of wages, you cannot compel manufacturers to give you employment. Trade must yield a profit, or it will not long be carried on…The aristocracy are powerful and determined; and, unhappily, the middle classes are not yet intelligent enough to see the safety of extending political power to the whole people. The working classes can never gain it of themselves. Physical force you wisely repudiate. It is immoral, and you have no arms, and little organisations…Your first step to entire freedom must be commercial freedom—freedom of industry. We must put an end to the partial famine which is destroying trade, and demand for your labor, your wages, your comforts, and your independence. The aristocracy regard the Anti-Corn Law League as their greatest enemy. That which is the greatest enemy of the remorseless aristocracy of Britain must almost of necessity be your firmest friend. Every man who tells you to support the Corn Law is your enemy—every man who hastens, by a single hour, the abolition of the Corn Law, shortens by so much the duration of your sufferings. Whilst the inhuman law exists, your wages must decline. When it is abolished, and not till then, they will rise.”

John Bright (1811–1889) British Radical and Liberal statesman

Address (17 August 1842), quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (London: Constable, 1913), pp, 81-82.
1840s

Men , People , Law , Hope

“IN WITNESS THEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this nineteenth day of February in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred seventy-six, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundredth.”

Gerald Ford (1913–2006) American politician, 38th President of the United States (in office from 1974 to 1977)

1970s, Proclamation 4417 (1976)

“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will, which I now exert to leave you.”

Charlotte Brontë book Jane Eyre

Jane to Mr. Rochester (Ch. 23)
Jane Eyre (1847)

Bird

“And the central assertion of his philosophy is that this inner realm is the 'spiritual world' and that once man has learned to enter this realm, he realizes that it is not a mere imaginative reflection of the external world, but a world that possesses its own independent reality.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

Source: Rudolf Steiner: The Man and His Vision (1985), p. 161

World , Imagination , Reality , Learning

“In your [ composer Schönberg's ] works, you have realized what I, albeit in uncertain form, have so greatly longed for in music. The independent progress through their own destinies, the independent life of the individual voices in your compositions, is exactly what I am trying to find in my painting.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

in his letter to Arnold Schönberg, 18 Jan. 1911; as cited in Schonberg and Kandinsky: An Historic Encounter, by Klaus Kropfinger; edited by Konrad Boehmer; published by Routledge (imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informal company), 2003, p. 9
Kandinsky visited a concert with music of Schönberg on 11 Jan. 1911 with Franz Marc, Alexej von Jawlensky, Gabriele Münter and others; they played compositions, Schönberg wrote in 1907 and 1909: his second string quartet and the 'Three piano pieces'
1910 - 1915

Life , Music , Painting

“Economic and monetary union…is incompatible with independent sovereign states with control over their own fiscal and monetary policies. It would be impossible…to have irrevocably fixed exchange rates while individual countries retained independent monetary policies…such a system could never have the credibility necessary to persuade the market that there was no risk of realignment. Thus EMU inevitably implies a single European currency, with monetary decisions…taken not by national Governments and/or central banks, but by a European Central Bank. Nor would individual countries be able to retain responsibility for fiscal policy. With a single European monetary policy there would need to be central control over the size of budget deficits and, particularly, over their financing. New European institutions would be required, to determine overall Community fiscal policy and agree the distribution of deficits between individual Member States…It is clear that Economic and Monetary Union implies nothing less than European Government…and political union: the United States of Europe. That is simply not on the agenda now, nor will it be for the forseeable future.”

Nigel Lawson (1932) British Conservative politician and journalist

Speech to the Royal Institute for International Affairs, Chatham House (25 January 1989), quoted in The View from No. 11: Memoirs of a Tory Radical (London: Bantam, 1992), p. 910.

Communication , Decision , Future , Country

“Tagore claims that the first time he experienced the thrill of poetry was when he encountered the children’s rhyme ‘Jal pare/pata nare’ (‘Rain falls / The leaf trembles') in Iswarchandra Vidyasagar’s Bengali primer Barna Parichay (Introducing the Alphabet). There are at least two revealing things about this citation. The first is that, as Bengali scholars have remarked, Tagore’s memory, and predilection, lead him to misquote and rewrite the lines. The actual rhyme is in sadhu bhasha, or ‘high’ Bengali: ‘Jal paritechhe / pata naritechhe’ (‘Rain falleth / the leaf trembleth’). This is precisely the sort of diction that Tagore chose for the English Gitanjali, which, with its thees and thous, has so tried our patience. Yet, as a Bengali poet, Tagore’s instinct was to simplify, and to draw language closer to speech. The other reason the lines of the rhyme are noteworthy, especially with regard to Tagore, is – despite their deceptively logical progression – their non-consecutive character. ‘Rain falls’ and ‘the leaf trembles’ are two independent, stand-alone observations: they don’t necessarily have to follow each other. It’s a feature of poetry commented upon by William Empson in Some Versions of Pastoral: that it’s a genre that can get away with seamlessly joining two lines which are linked, otherwise, tenuously.”

Amit Chaudhuri (1962) contemporary Indian-English novelist

On Tagore: Reading the Poet Today (2012)

Children , Memory , Time , Drawing

“The people have been telling pollsters for decades that they want someone who is an outsider, a disrupter, an independent voice who doesn’t owe anybody anything in Washington — and they finally got their wish with Donald J. Trump.”

Kellyanne Conway (1967) American strategist and pollster

People

“When one of Feuerbach’s friends attempts to get him an academic position, Feuerbach writes to him: “The more people make of me, the less I am, and vice versa. I am … something only so long as I am nothing.” Hegel felt himself free in the midst of bourgeois restriction. For him, it was by no means impossible as an ordinary official … to be something and at the same time be himself. … In the third epoch of the spirit, that is, since the beginning of the “modern” world, he says … philosophers no longer comprise a separate class; they are what they are, in perfectly ordinary relationship to the state: officially appointed teachers of philosophy. Hegel interprets this transformation as the “reconciliation of the worldly principle with itself.” It is open to each and every one to construct his own “inner world” independent of the force of circumstances which has materialized. The philosopher can now entrust the “external” side of his existence to the “order,” just as the modern man allows fashion to dictate the way he will dress. … The important thing, Hegel concludes, is “to remain true to one’s purpose” within the context of the normal life of a citizen. To be free for truth and at the same time dependent on the state—to him, these two things seemed quite consistent with each other.”

Karl Löwith book From Hegel to Nietzsche

From Hegel to Nietzsche, D. Green, trans. (1964), pp. 68-69.

Life , People , Truth , World

“In those countries, it is actually capital that rules; that is, nothing more than a clique of a few hundred men who possess untold wealth and, as a consequence of the peculiar structure of their national life, are more or less independent and free. They say: 'Here we have liberty.' By this they mean, above all, an uncontrolled economy, and by an uncontrolled economy, the freedom not only to acquire capital but to make absolutely free use of it. That means freedom from national control or control by the people both in the acquisition of capital and in its employment. This is really what they mean when they speak of liberty. These capitalists create their own press and then speak of the 'freedom of the press.' In reality, every one of the newspapers has a master, and in every case this master is the capitalist, the owner. This master, not the editor, is the one who directs the policy of the paper. If the editor tries to write other than what suits the master, he is ousted the next day. This press, which is the absolutely submissive and characterless slave of the owners, molds public opinion.
..
Yes, certainly, we jeopardize the liberty to profiteer at the expense of the community, and, if necessary, we even abolish it.
..
All my life I have been a 'have-not.' At home I was a 'have-not.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

I regard myself as belonging to them and have always fought exclusively for them. I defended them and, therefore, I stand before the world as their representative.
Speech to the Workers of Berlin (10 December 1940) (Wikisource)
1940s

Life , Men , People , Reality

“The world and the mind are states of being. The supreme is not a state. It pervades all states, but it is not a state of something else. It is entirely uncaused, independent, complete in itself, beyond time and space, mind and matter. (…) it leaves no traces. There is nothing to recognize it by. It must be seen directly, by giving up all search for signs and approaches. When all names and forms have been given up, the real is with you. You need not seek it. Plurality and diversity are the play of the mind only. Reality is one.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Reality
Source: "I am That." P.38.

World , Search , Reality , Time

“All the Hellenistic States had thus been completely subjected to the protectorate of Rome, and the whole empire of Alexander the Great had fallen to the Roman commonwealth just as if the city had inherited it from his heirs. From all sides kings and ambassadors flocked to Rome to congratulate her; they showed that fawning is never more abject than when kings are in the antechamber…w:Polybius dates from the battle of Pydna the full establishment of the universal empire of Rome. It was in fact the last battle in which a civilized state confronted Rome in the field on a footing of equality with her as a great power; all subsequent struggles were rebellions or wars with peoples beyond the pale of the Romano-Greek civilization -- with barbarians, as they were called. The whole civilized world thenceforth recognized in the Roman senate the supreme tribunal, whose commissions decided in the last resort between kings and nations; and to acquire its language and manners foreign princes and youths of quality resided in Rome. A clear and earnest attempt to get rid of this dominion was in reality made only once -- by the great Mithradates of Pontus. The battle of pydna, moreover, marks the last occasion on which the senate still adhered to the state-maxim that that they should, if possible, hold no possessions and maintain no garrisons beyond the Italian seas, but should keep the numerous states dependent on them in order by a mere political supremacy. The aim aim of their policy was that these states should neither decline into utter weakness and anarchy, as had nevertheless happened in Greece nor emerge out of their half-free position into complete independence, as Macedonia had attempted to do without success. No state was to be allowed to utterly perish, but no one was to be permitted to stand on its own resources… Indications of a change of system, and of an increasing disinclination on the part of Rome to tolerate by its side intermediate states even in such independence as was possible for them, were clearly given in the destruction of the Macedonian monarchy after the battle of Pydna, the more and more frequent and more unavoidable the intervention in the internal affairs of the petty Greek states through their misgovernment, and their political and social anarchy, the disarming of Macedonia, where the Northern forntier at any rate urgently required a defence different from that of mere posts; and, lastly, the introduction of the payment of land-tax to Rome from Macedonia and Illyria, were so many symptoms of the approaching conversion of the client states into subjects of Rome.”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

The Changing of the Relationship between Rome and Her Client-States
The History Of Rome, Volume 2. Chapter 10. "The Third Macedonian War" Translated by W.P.Dickson
The History of Rome - Volume 2

War , People , Youth , World

“First you must have faith in an eternal world independent of you; then you must have faith in your ability to perceive it, and finally you must try to explain it by means of concepts or mathematical constructions. But don't always accept traditional concepts without reexamining them. Even overthrow my relativity theory, if you find a better one.... You must believe that the world was created as a unified whole which is comprehensible to man. Of course, it's going to take an infinitely long time to investigate this unified creation. But to me that is the highest and most sacred duty—unifying physics. Simplicity is the criterion of the universe.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Source: Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein and the Poet (1983), p. 139

World , Faith , Mathematics , Universe

“Clerks spoke with the sure, clear voice of an original filmmaker. In Mallrats the voice is muffled, and we sense instead advice from the tired, the establishment, the timid and other familiar Hollywood executive types. The year that Clerks played at the Cannes Film Festival, I was the chairman of a panel discussion of independent filmmakers. Most of them talked about their battles to stay free from Hollywood's playsafe strategies. But Kevin Smith cheerfully said he'd be happy to do whatever the studios wanted, if they'd pay for his films. At the time, I thought he was joking.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/mallrats-1995 of Mallrats (20 October 1995)
Reviews, One-and-a-half star reviews

Sense , Time , Happiness

“Foreign relations. At no period in the past 12 years have our foreign relations been in such a satisfactory condition as they are at the present time. Our actions in the recent months have greatly strengthened the American policy of permanent peace with independence. The attitude which our Government took and maintained toward an adjustment of European reparations, by pointing out that it wits not a political but a business problem, has demonstrated its wisdom by its actual results. We desire to see Europe restored that it may resume its productivity in the increase of industry and its support in the advance of civilization. We look with great gratification at the hopeful prospect of recuperation in Europe through the Dawes plan. Such assistance as can be given through the action of the public authorities and of our private citizens, through friendly counsel and cooperation, and through economic and financial support, not for any warlike effort but for reproductive enterprise, not to provide means for unsound government financing but to establish sound business administration ' should be unhesitatingly provided.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Second State of the Union Address (1924)

Wisdom , Peace , Hope , Business

“[T]he word "eternal" must by him be taken to stand for what "temporal" does not and cannot stand for; namely, the unchangeable Ground presupposed by the changing temporal; the necessary as against the contingent; the independent as against the dependent; the primary as against the derivative; the self-existent as against that which exists in and through it; the genuine cause, the causa sui, as against that which is after all nothing but effect, however it may be tied, by the causa sui, in an unrupturable chain of antecedent and consequent. Or we may say it means the noumenon as against the phenomenon; or, in fine, the thing in itself as against the thing in other. That is, the relation between the eternal and the temporal is not, and cannot be, only another case of the temporal relation. The relation is just one of pure reason, and is, in fact, sui generis: the eternal does not precede the temporal by date, but only in logic; it is the sine qua non without which the temporal cannot exist, nor is even conceivable. In brief, throughout my book I mean by the "eternal" simply the Real as contrasted with the apparent; the world of self-active causes as contrasted with the world of derivative effects, in so far passive.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), Appendix D: Reply to a Review in the New York Tribune, p.412-3

Books , World , Change , Dependency

“You try to explain to people the consequences of what happens to these women when Hillary Clinton goes on the attack. It’s another woman who claims to be a woman’s advocate attacking these women. I mean, this woman absolutely terrified me. And I don’t get afraid easily. I’m pretty independent.”

Kathleen Willey (1946) White House aide

Kathleen Willey Thanks Donald Trump for Highlighting Bill Clinton’s History with Women, Urges More Victims to Come Forward https://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/01/10/exclusive-kathleen-willey-urges-clinton-sex-victims-to-break-silence-nobody-can-touch-you-now/ (January 10, 2016)

Women , People

“Taking again as an example the need to appear perfect, I would be interested primarily in understanding what this trend accomplishes for the individual (eliminating conflicts with others and making him feel superior to others), and also what consequences the trend has on his character and his life. The latter investigation would make it possible to understand, for example, how such a person anxiously conforms with expectations and standards to the extent of becoming a mere automaton, and yet subversively defies them; how this double play results in listlessness and inertia; how he is proud of his apparent independence, yet actually is entirely dependent on the expectations and opinions of others; how he is terrified lest anyone should discover the flimsiness of his moral strivings and the duplicity which has pervaded his life; how this in turn has made him seclusive and hypersensitive to criticism.”

Karen Horney book New Ways in Psychoanalysis

New Ways in Psychoanalysis (1939) pp. 281

Life , Feeling , Understanding , Appearance

“What was the origin of our slave population? The evil commenced when we were in our Colonial state, but acts were passed by our Colonial Legislature, prohibiting the importation, of more slaves, into the Colony. These were rejected by the Crown. We declared our independence, and the prohibition of a further importation was among the first acts of state sovereignty. Virginia was the first state which instructed her delegates to declare the colonies independent. She braved all dangers. From Quebec to Boston, and from Boston to Savannah, Virginia shed the blood of her sons. No imputation then can be cast upon her in this matter. She did all that was in her power to do, to prevent the extension of slavery, and to mitigate its evils.”

James Monroe (1758–1831) American politician, 5th President of the United States (in office from 1817 to 1825)

Speech in the Virginia State Convention for altering the Constitution https://books.google.com/books?id=R9ctAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA78&dq=%22The+evil+commenced+when+we+were+in+our+Colonial+state%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CD8Q6AEwBmoVChMIwM7FxfHTxwIViPM-Ch3fiQrs#v=onepage&q=%22The%20evil%20commenced%20when%20we%20were%20in%20our%20Colonial%20state%22&f=false (2 November 1829)

Evil

“The first act by virtue of which the State really constitutes itself the representative of the whole of society—the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society—this is, at the same time, its last independent act as a State. State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The State is not “abolished.””

Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) German social scientist, author, political theorist, and philosopher

It dies out.
Socialism, Utopian and Scientific (1901)

Time , Personality

“I was recognizable in Kraków because of my family. I felt it as a burden. I tried to cut myself off from the past and build something myself. Become independent.”

Tomasz Vetulani (1965) Polish artist

Tomasz Vetulani o Holandii, niskim kraju http://www.nto.pl/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110605/REPORTAZ01/762330357, nto.pl, 5 June 2011 (in Polish)

Family , Past

“Independent nationalism is unacceptable to the West, no matter where it is, and it has to be driven back into subordination. In the case of Grenada, you can do it in a weekend; in the case of the Soviet Union it may take 70 years. But these are matters of scale, the logic is essentially the same.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Forum with John Pilger and Harold Pinter in Islington, London, May 1994 https://web.archive.org/web/20000823015510/http://www.redpepper.org.uk/cularch/xalmeida.html.
Quotes 1990s, 1990-1994

“I've been flyin' down the road,
And I've been starvin' to be alone,
Independent from the scene that I've known.”

Neil Young (1945) Canadian singer-songwriter

Albuquerque
Song lyrics, Tonight's the Night (1975)

“This is what it behoves us to know: as Frenchmen, for the advantage of France; as friends of all humanity, by that just and generous sentiment which makes us feel interest in the dignity, the peace, the independence, the happiness of all nations, on whatever spot of the globe nature may have placed their country.”

Charles Dupin (1784–1873) French mathematician

Source: The Commercial Power of Great Britain, 1925, p. xi

Peace , Feeling , Nature , Country

“A fellow with a great voice shouted, "Hearken now to the words of the President of the Confederate States of America, the honorable Woodrow Wilson." The president turned this way and that, surveying the great swarm of people all around him in the moment of silence the volley had brought. Then, swinging back to face the statue of George Washington- and, incidentally, Reginald Bartlett- he said, "The father of our country warned us against entangling alliances, a warning that served us well when we were yoked to the North, before its arrogance created in our Confederacy what had never existed before- a national consciousness. That was our salvation and our birth as a free and independent country." Silence broke then, with a thunderous outpouring of applause. Wilson raised a bony right hand. Slowly, silence, of a semblance of it, returned. The president went on, "But our birth of national consciousness made the United States jealous, and they tried to beat us down. We found loyal friends in England and France. Can we now stand aside when the German tyrant threatens to grind them under his iron heel?" "No!" Bartlett shouted himself hoarse, along with thousands of his countrymen. Stunned, deafened, he had trouble hearing what Wilson said next: "Jealous still, the United States in their turn also developed a national consciousness, a dark and bitter one, as any so opposed to ours must be." He spoke not like a politician inflaming a crowd but like a professor setting out arguments- he had taken one path before choosing the other. "The German spirit of arrogance and militarism has taken hold in the United States; they see only the gun as the proper arbiter between nations, and their president takes Wilhelm as his model. He struts and swaggers and acts the fool in all regards."”

Harry Turtledove book The Great War: American Front

Now he sounded like a politician; he despised Theodore Roosevelt, and took pleasure in Roosevelt's dislike for him.
Source: The Great War: American Front (1998), p. 32

People , Pleasure , Fools , Way

“Man can have no rights apart from society or independent of society or against society.”

Mary Parker Follett The New State

Source: The New State, 1918, p. 136

“I am very independent. I can look after myself but I still need a lot of love and care.”

Scarlett Johansson (1984) American actress, model, and singer

As quoted in Wise Women : Wit and Wisdom from Some of the World’s Most Extraordinary Women (2013) by Carole McKenzie, p. 137

Love

“Whatever our constitutional arrangements and no matter how well off we are, there will always be a need for Scotland's citizens to talk about their problems. Therefore, we will always need independent, reliable and accurate advice to help guide them at certain points in their lives.”

Alex Salmond (1954) Scottish National Party politician and former First Minister of Scotland

Citizens Advice Bureaux (August 15, 2007)

Problem , Help

“(discussing the Alfred Hitchcock film Saboteur): …I saw when I was young that, in fact, when you got to the top or toward the top of things, you found, indeed, very flawed but glamorous people, people who were, in fact, not thinking about the kinds of problems that the blind man was thinking about in 1943, not acting intuitively and bravely and in some kind of harmony with nature as that blind man in Saboteur was acting, and certainly not taking on impossible tasks. People were acting in a kind of what I’ve come to call a deutero-Hemingway way: they were preserving their own vitality by being adventurous within the media. The James Stewart character is someone who roams the world, but with a camera, not a gun, and not like Schweitzer, setting up modes of change in impossible places. He’s touring the world adventurously in the interest of preserving his masculine independence, but he’s doing it with a camera.”

George W. S. Trow (1943–2006) American writer

My Pilgrim’s Progress (1999)

People , World , Way , Nature

“(…) New knowledge has led to the recognition of the theory of evolution as more than a hypothesis. It is indeed remarkable that this theory has been progressively accepted by researchers, following a series of discoveries in various fields of knowledge. The convergence, neither sought nor fabricated, of the results of work that was conducted independently is in itself a significant argument in favor of this theory.”

Pope John Paul II (1920–2005) 264th Pope of the Catholic Church, saint

(...) De nouvelles connaissances conduisent à reconnaître dans la théorie de l'évolution plus qu'une hypothèse. Il est en effet remarquable que cette théorie se soit progressivement imposée à l'esprit des chercheurs, à la suite d'une série de découvertes faites dans diverses disciplines du savoir. La convergence, nullement recherchée ou provoquée, des résultats de travaux menés indépendamment les uns des autres, constitue par elle même un argument significatif en faveur de cette théorie.
early news reports mistranslated the French phrase plus qu'une hypothèse as "more than one hypothesis". http://www.cartage.org.lb/en/themes/sciences/LifeScience/PhysicalAnthropology/EvolutionFact/Evolution/Evolution.htm
Message to the participants in the Plenary of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, 22 October 1996
Source: Libreria Editrice Vaticana http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/messages/pont_messages/1996/documents/hf_jp-ii_mes_19961022_evoluzione_fr.html (French)

Knowledge

“A system must be managed. It will not manage itself. Left to themselves in the Western world, components become selfish, competitive, independent profit centres, and thus destroy the system.... The secret is cooperation between components toward the aim of the organization. We can not afford the destructive effect of competition.”

W. Edwards Deming (1900–1993) American professor, author, and consultant

The New Economics for Industry, Government, Education (1993)

Secret , World , Selfishness

“many seemingly independent businessmen or craftsman are more or less well paid retainers of larger corporations, such as the cobbler, operating a United States shoe machine or an automobile dealer holding a license of the General Motors Corporation.”

Paul A. Baran (1909–1964) American Marxist economist

Source: The Political Economy Of Growth (1957), Chapter Four, Standstill and Movement Under Monopoly Capitalism, II, p. 84

Shoe

“As long as he lived, Yasser Arafat directed his efforts towards leading the Palestinians to independence and founding a sovereign viable Palestinian state.”

Gerhard Schröder (1944) German politician (SPD)

Jassir Arafats Streben war zeit seines Lebens darauf gerichtet, die Palästinenser in die Unabhängigkeit zu führen und einen souveränen, lebensfähigen palästinensischen Staat zu errichten.
letter of condolence to the then prime minister of the Palestinian National Authority Ahmed Qurei, 11 November 2004, quoted on zeit.de http://www.zeit.de/2004/47/Arafat_c

Effort

“The Declaration of Independence I always considered as a Theatrical Show. Jefferson ran away with all the stage effect of that; i. e. all the Glory of it.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

Letter to Benjamin Rush (21 June 1811); published in Old Family Letters: Copied from the Originals for Alexander Biddle (1892), p. 287 http://books.google.com/books?id=5d8hAAAAMAAJ&dq=%22Jefferson+ran+away+with+all+the+stage+effect+of+that%22; also quoted in TIME magazine (25 October 1943) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,796192-2,00.html
1810s

“While the written word was the foundation, it is apparent that the spoken word was the vehicle for convincing the people. This came with great force and wide range from the successors of Hooker and Wise, It was carried on with a missionary spirit which did not fail to reach the Scotch-Irish of North Carolina, showing its influence by significantly making that Colony the first to give instructions to its delegates looking to independence. This preaching reached the neighborhood of Thomas Jefferson, who acknowledged that his "best ideas of democracy" had been secured at church meetings.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Speech on the Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (1926)

People , Democracy , Idea

“The reader will, I think, soon discover that I have tried to affirm the processes of his mental development and ripening of personality---something quite independent both of the self-idolatries of the mass and of those primitive emotional fixations and stereotypes whose antiquated symbolisms linger on under the terminology of religion. If there is anything affirmative in the assertion of the meaning of spiritual maturity in the modern world, then I may hope that the effort of this book will be regarded as constructive.”

Everett Dean Martin (1880–1941)

Source: Civilizing Ourselves: Intellectual Maturity in the Modern World (1932), p. xi, Foreword

Books , World , Religion , Hope

“The first steps of the slaveholder to justify by argument the peculiar instutitions is to deny the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence. He denies that all men are created equal. He denies that he has inalienable rights.”

John Quincy Adams (1767–1848) American politician, 6th president of the United States (in office from 1825 to 1829)

As quoted in letter to the citizens of the twelfth congressional district (29 June 1839), The Hingham Patriot, MA. As quoted in Thomas Huges Rare and Early Newspaper catalog, No. 141
Letter to the 12th Congressional District (1839)

Men , Truth

“This is not the Cayce material, with information seemingly coming from some vast storehouse of knowledge. In those terms no such storehouse exists. Knowledge does not exist independently of the one who knows. Someone gave Cayce the material. It did not come out of thin air. It came from an excellent source, a pyramid gestalt personality, with definite characteristics, but the alien nature of the personality was too startling to Cayce, and he could not perceive it.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Session 417, Page 317
The Early Sessions: Sessions 1-42, 1997, The Early Sessions: Book 8

Nature , Knowledge , Personality

“A significant observation regarding… architectural representations is that each is of a different nature than the others. They are not merely a set of representations, each of which is an increasing level of detail than the previous one. Level of detail is an independent variable, varying within each architectural representation.”

John Zachman (1934) American computer scientist

Zachman (1986) as cited in: Peter Bernus, Kai Mertins, Günter Schmidt (2005) Handbook on Architectures of Information Systems. p. 544

Nature

“It is not necessary to stress the general desire of all the people of this country for the promotion of peace. It is the leading principle of all our foreign relations. We have on every occasion tried to cooperate to this end in all ways that were consistent with our proper independence and our traditional policies. It will be my constant effort to maintain these principles, and to reinforce them by all appropriate agreements and treaties. While we desire always to cooperate and to help, we are equally determined to be independent and free. Right and truth and justice and humanitarian efforts will have the moral support of this country all over the world. But we do not wish to become involved in the political controversies of others. Nor is the country disposed to become a member of the League of Nations or to assume the obligations imposed by its covenant.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Second State of the Union Address (1924)

People , Truth , World , Peace

““…Ally Adil Shah, at the persuasions of his minister, carried his arms against Bunkapoor. This place was the principal residence of Velapa Ray, who had been originally a principal attendant of Ramraj; after whose death he assumed independence… “…Velapa Ray, despairing of relief, at length sent offers for surrendering the fort to the King, on condition of being allowed to march away with his family and effects, which Ally Adil Shah thought proper to grant, and the place was evacuated accordingly. The King ordered a superb temple within it to be destroyed, and he himself laid the first stone of a mosque, which was built on the foundation, offering up prayers for his victory. Moostufa Khan acquired great credit for his conduct, and was honoured with a royal dress, and had many towns and districts of the conquered country conferred upon him in jageer…245”

Firishta (1560–1620) Indian historian

Sultãn ‘Alî ‘Ãdil Shãh I of Bijapur (AD 1557-1579) Bankapur (Karnataka)
Tãrîkh-i-Firishta

Death , Family , Victory , Despair

“…Let us ask ourselves whether in principle a "Free, Independent Armenia" is a realistic goal that would serve the interests of the Armenian people in the long run. As we seek an answer to this question, we should keep in mind that realism is a guiding principle for revolutionaries. Before advancing political slogans, one should first pose the question: Is it realizable? If it is not, then it should not be adopted.”

Monte Melkonian (1957–1993) National Hero of Armenia

Source: The Right to Struggle (1993), P. 13.

People , Question

“My position on date rape is partly based on my study of The Faerie Queen, as detailed in a full chapter in Sexual Personae: in 1590, the poet Edmund Spencer already sees that passive, drippy, naive women constantly get themselves into rape scenarios, while talented, intelligent, alert women, his warrior heroines, spot trouble coming and boldly trounce their male assailants. My feminism stresses courage, independence, self-reliance, and pride.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sex, Art and American Culture : New Essays (1992), p. 304

Women , Intelligence , Courage , Study

“In 1860, the South did not appeal to the right of revolution. They appealed to a right of secession, which they claim to be a Constitutional right under the Constitution itself. In 1776, the colonists did not claim that in breaking with Great Britain they were exercising a right granted by the British Constitution. They had conducted their struggle until that moment by appealing it through the British constitution. But when they decided on independence, they appealed instead to the laws of nature and of nature’s God.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate (2002), The Right of Secession Is Not the Right of Revolution

God , Law , Exercises , Nature

“This obedience of the delegates to the wishes of their constituents, which in some cases caused them to modify their previous positions, is a matter of great significance. It reveals an orderly process of government in the first place; but more than that, it demonstrates that the Declaration of Independence was the result of the seasoned and deliberate thought of the dominant portion of the people of the Colonies. Adopted after long discussion and as the result of the duly authorized expression of the preponderance of public opinion, it did not partake of dark intrigue or hidden conspiracy. It was well advised. It had about it nothing of the lawless and disordered nature of a riotous insurrection. It was maintained on a plane which rises above the ordinary conception of rebellion. It was in no sense a radical movement but took on the dignity of a resistance to illegal usurpations. It was conservative and represented the action of the colonists to maintain their constitutional rights which from time immemorial had been guaranteed to them under the law of the land.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Speech on the Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (1926)

People , Law , Nature , Sense

“This country has become an independent Republic with complete sovereignty. This has been laid down in our Interim Constitution. This country is to be shared by the citizens, the Arabs and the Kurds. This entity is indivisible in any way. No one can divide nor disintegrate the Republic of Iraq from the North to the South and from the East to the West.”

Abd al-Karim Qasim (1914–1963) Prime Minister of Iraq

The historical extempore speech at the Reserve Officers' College (1959)

Way , Country

“Inadequate compensation seriously compromises the judicial independence fostered by life tenure. That low salaries might force judges to return to the private sector rather than stay on the bench risks affecting judicial performance... Every time an experienced judge leaves the bench, the nation suffers temporary loss in judicial productivity. Diminishing judicial salaries affects not only those who have become judges but also the pool of those willing to be considered for a position on the federal bench.”

William H. Rehnquist (1924–2005) Chief Justice of the United States

Statement before the National Commission on Public Service http://www.uscourts.gov/Press_Releases/cj.html, July 15, 2002.
Books, articles, and speeches

Life , Suffering , Loss , Time

“If we put in the details, the singularities of the field, viz. the galactic systems and the stars, we find that there is… a tendency, called gravitation, to decrease the mutual distances of these "singularities." At short distances, within the confines of a galactic system, this second tendency is by far the strongest, and the galactic systems retain their size independent of the expansion or contraction of the universe…”

Willem de Sitter (1872–1934) Dutch cosmologist

Kosmos (1932), Above is Beginning Quote of the Last Chapter: Relativity and Modern Theories of the Universe -->

Star , Universe

“While North Carolina has the honor of first authorizing its delegates to concur with other Colonies in declaring independence, it was quickly followed by South Carolina and Georgia, which also gave general instructions broad enough to include such action. But the first instructions which unconditionally directed its delegates to declare for independence came from the great Commonwealth of Virginia. These were immediately followed by Rhode Island and Massachusetts, while the other Colonies, with the exception of New York, soon adopted a like course.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Speech on the Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (1926)

“[For the Romans] an essential element of the Law of Nature is the equality of man, specifically, equality before the law, and the principle of human rights, including the rights to property, which antedated the state, and thus are independent of it. Fifteen hundred years later these ideas would furnish the philosophical cornerstone of Western democracy.”

Richard Pipes (1923–2018) American historian

Source: Property and Freedom (1999), p.12

Law , Democracy , Idea , Nature

“Complex adaptive systems have the property that if you run them—by just letting the mathematical variable of "time" go forward—they'll naturally progress from chaotic, disorganized, undifferentiated, independent states to organized, highly differentiated, and highly interdependent states. Organized structures emerge spontaneously… A weak system gives rise only to simpler forms of self-organization; a strong one gives rise to more complex forms, like life.”

J. Doyne Farmer (1952) American physicist and entrepreneur (b.1952)

The Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific Revolution (1995)

Life , Mathematics , Nature , Strong

“My reason will still not understand why I pray, but I shall still pray, and my life, my whole life, independently of anything that may happen to me, is every moment of it no longer meaningless as it was before, but has an unquestionable meaning of goodness with which I have the power to invest it.”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Pt. VIII, ch. 19
Anna Karenina (1875–1877; 1878)

Life , Understanding

“India is an old country, but a young nation; and like the young everywhere we are impatient. I am young, and I too have a dream. I dream of an India strong, independent and self-reliant and in the front rank of the nations of the world in the service of mankind.”

Rajiv Gandhi (1944–1991) sixth Prime Minister of India

On his vision of India, in his address to the Joint meeting of the US Congress in Washington on 13 June 1985, in Emotional Impact: Passionate Leaders and Corporate Transformation (8 November 2000) http://books.google.co.in/books?id=G2QJfyzGRSIC&pg=PA97, p. 97
Quote

World , Dreams , Strong , Country

“It needs but very little consideration to reach the conclusion that all of these terms are relative, not absolute, in their application to the affairs of this earth. There is no absolute and complete sovereignty for a State, nor absolute and complete independence and freedom for an individual. It happened in 1861 that the States of the North and the South were so fully agreed among themselves that they were able to combine against each other. But supposing each State of the Union should undertake to make its own decisions upon all questions, and that all held divergent views. If such a condition were carried to its logical conclusion, each would come into conflict with all the others, and a condition would arise which could only result in mutual destruction. It is evident that this would be the antithesis of State sovereignty. Or suppose that each individual in the assertion of his own independence and freedom undertook to act in entire disregard of the rights of others. The end would be likewise mutual destruction, and no one would be independent and no one would be free. Yet these are conflicts which have gone on ever since the organization of society into government, and they are going on now. To my mind this was fundamental of the conflict which broke out in 1861.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Freedom and its Obligations (1924)

Question , Decision , Freedom

“As apt and applicable as the Declaration of Independence is today, we would do well to honor that other historic document drafted in this hall — the Constitution of the United States. For it stressed not independence but interdependence — not the individual liberty of one but the indivisible liberty of all.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1962, Address at Independence Hall

“That the people have a right to uniform government; and, therefore, that no government separate from, or independent of the government of Virginia, ought to be erected or established within the limits thereof.”

George Mason (1725–1792) American delegate from Virginia to the U.S. Constitutional Convention

Article 14
Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776)

People

“The New Englander is attached to his township because it is strong and independent; he has an interest in it because he shares in its management; he loves it because he has no reason to complain of his lot; he invests his ambition and his future in it; in the restricted sphere within his scope, he learns to rule society; he gets to know those formalities without which freedom can advance only through revolutions, and becoming imbued with their spirit, develops a taste for order, understands the harmony of powers, and in the end accumulates clear, practical ideas about the nature of his duties and the extent of his rights.”

Alexis De Tocqueville book Democracy in America

Source: Democracy in America, Volume I (1835), Chapter I-V, Chapter V.

Love , Idea , Understanding , Nature

“The tragic situation of the modern liberalised Christian mind is just that. Having accepted with fervour the moral ideal as the Divine ideal, it still remains in bondage to the old mechanical conception of the great Divine operations called Regeneration and Creation. These it still thinks, at bottom, under the category of efficient causality. It takes their names literally, in accordance with the etymology, and thus the names themselves help the evil cause of prolonging conceptions that are hostile to the dearest insights of the moral spirit quickened in the school of Christ. Eminently is this true in the case of creation, into the current conception of which, so far as I can see, there as yet enters no gleam of the change that must be made if our relations to God in the basis of existence are to be stated consistently with the independence we must have of him in the moral world. This lack of a moral apprehension of creation is as characteristic, too, of historic philosophy as it is of historic theology, or even of ordinary opinion.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), The Harmony of Determinism and Freedom, p.342-3

God , Hostility , World , School

“The dissection of words into sounds is contrary to the purpose of language and applies musical principles to an independent realm whose symbolism is aimed at a logical comprehension of one’s environment.... the value of language depends on comprehensibility rather than musicality”

Richard Huelsenbeck (1892–1974) German poet

as quoted in The Sound of Poetry / The poetry of Sound, ed. Marjorie Perloff & Craig Dworkin; University of Chicago Press, 2009, p. 310, note 22
a critic on the sound-poetry of Dadaist Hugo Ball

Music , Dependency

“The War Between the States was about independence, about self-determination, about the right of a people to break free of a government to which they could no longer give allegiance… How long is this endless groveling before every cry of 'racism' going to continue before the whole country collectively throws up?”

Patrick Buchanan (1938) American politician and commentator

Buchanan's syndicated column (28 July 1993).
1990s

War , People , Cry , Country

“What is the internally free man free from? First of all - he or she is free from fear of people and life; from conventional opinion. He or she is independent from the crowd, from stereotypical thinking. He or she is able to have their own personal point of view; free from prejudices. He or she is free from envy, selfishness and from aggressive personal drives.”

Simon Soloveychik (1930–1996) Russia writer and philosopher

Talent of Freedom. What Is Internal Freedom? http://parentingforeveryone.com/freedom/
Chelovek Svobodny (Free Man) (1994)

Life , People , Fear , Thinking

“The serious lesson of the antics in Argentina, then, is that the big issues of monetary economics--fixed vs. flexible exchange rates, whether countries should have independent currencies at all--are still wide open. It's an eternal controversy, and not even the pope can resolve it.”

Paul Krugman (1953) American economist

"Don't Laugh at Me, Argentina", Slate (July 20, 1999)

Country

“Women are in bondage; their clothes are a great hindrance to their engaging in any business which will make them pecuniarily independent, and since the soul of womanhood never can be queenly and noble so long as it must beg bread for its body, is it not better, even at the expense of a vast deal of annoyance, that they whose lives deserve respect and are greater than their garments should give an example by which woman may more easily work out her own emancipation?”

Lucy Stone (1818–1893) American abolitionist and suffragist

Letter to Susan B. Anthony (1854); as quoted in The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (1898) by Ida Husted Harper.

Women , Soul , Business , Clothes

“The relationship between Scotland and the UK and that between the ROC-Taiwan and (Mainland China) are totally different. The ROC is an independent country, so the question of announcing independence via referendum is simply a nonstarter. Any kind of referendum that aims to change the status quo would be unwise. Keeping the ROC on Taiwan as an independent, sovereign state is our topmost priority. Any idea diverging from this would be at odds with the Constitution and against our citizens’ interests.”

Jiang Yi-huah (1960) Taiwanese politician

Jiang Yi-huah (2014) cited in " ROC not Scotland, independence vote not needed: Jiang http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2014/09/17/2003599885" on Taipei Times, 17 September 2014

Idea , Question , Change , Country

“Now I had the power, I want to realize the goals of the Vietnamese revolution back in 1945. The goals were and still be right now is, they uh, independence, that means national sovereignty, the uh, freedom, and the happiness of the whole population. It was the national aim, strategically, but when I had the power the country was divided in two parts on the 17th parallel, we had insurgency in South Vietnam and I want to uh, how to said it, integrate the Front of Liberation, the non-communist people and the Front of Liberation with me and then uh…to fight the North Vietnamese if at that time, the North Vietnamese do not uh, did not want to have a peaceful solution in North Vietnam, in South Vietnam.”

Nguyen Khanh (1927–2013) South Vietnamese soldier

Assumption of power and the prospect of a march north
1980s, Interview with Nguyen Khanh (1981)

People , Peace , Freedom , Time

“The actual evolution of mathematical theories proceeds by a process of induction strictly analogous to the method of induction employed in building up the physical sciences; observation, comparison, classification, trial, and generalisation are essential in both cases. Not only are special results, obtained independently of one another, frequently seen to be really included in some generalisation, but branches of the subject which have been developed quite independently of one another are sometimes found to have connections which enable them to be synthesised in one single body of doctrine. The essential nature of mathematical thought manifests itself in the discernment of fundamental identity in the mathematical aspects of what are superficially very different domains. A striking example of this species of immanent identity of mathematical form was exhibited by the discovery of that distinguished mathematician... Major MacMahon, that all possible Latin squares are capable of enumeration by the consideration of certain differential operators. Here we have a case in which an enumeration, which appears to be not amenable to direct treatment, can actually be carried out in a simple manner when the underlying identity of the operation is recognised with that involved in certain operations due to differential operators, the calculus of which belongs superficially to a wholly different region of thought from that relating to Latin squares.”

E. W. Hobson (1856–1933) British mathematician

Source: Presidential Address British Association for the Advancement of Science, Section A (1910), p. 290; Cited in: Moritz (1914, 27): The Nature of Mathematics.

Mathematics , Nature , Appearance , Science

“A wise parent humours the desire for independent action, so as to become the friend and adviser when his absolute rule shall cease.”

Elizabeth Gaskell (1810–1865) novelist

North and South, ch. 15 (1854-5)

Parent

“It is not fair to accuse the Arabic language of being old-fashioned and static as if it were independent from what we mean and do, or unaffected by the outcome of our deeds. It is our language, and we are ultimately responsible for its static condition. It is our duty to restore it to its glory so that it can return to what it used to be hundreds of years ago – the language of science and literature, a language of building bridges to other civilizations, a language that affected others through its scientific and cultural achievements, pushing them to learn it.”

Mozah bint Nasser Al Missned (1958) wife of Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani

Speech in Doha; quoted on official website http://www.mozabintnasser.qa/en/Pages/ArticlePreview.aspx?ArticleGuid=ed017dde-d770-42a3-80e7-441a15d0a89f&Type=Speech (May 31 2012)

Literature , Fashion , Learning , Science