Quotes about independent
page 5

Colette Dowling photo

“Males are educated for independence from the day they are born.”

Source: The Cinderella Complex: Women's Hidden Fear of Independence (1981), p. 16

K. R. Narayanan photo
Bernard Lewis photo
Daniel Dennett photo

“Evolution embodies information in every part of every organism. … This information doesn't have to be copied into the brain at all. It doesn't have to be "represented" in "data structures" in the nervous system. It can be exploited by the nervous system, however, which is designed to rely on, or exploit, the information in the hormonal systems just as it is designed to rely on, or exploit, the information embodied in your limbs and eyes. So there is wisdom, particularly about preferences, embodied in the rest of the body. By using the old bodily systems as a sort of sounding board, or reactive audience, or critic, the central nervous system can be guided — sometimes nudged, sometimes slammed — into wise policies. Put it to the vote of the body, in effect….When all goes well, harmony reigns and the various sources of wisdom in the body cooperate for the benefit of the whole, but we are all too familiar with the conflicts that can provoke the curious outburst "My body has a mind of its own!" Sometimes, apparently, it is tempting to lump together some of the embodied information into a separate mind. Why? Because it is organized in such a way that it can sometimes make independent discriminations, consult preferences, make decisions, enact policies that are in competition with your mind. At such time, the Cartesian perspective of a puppeteer self trying desperately to control an unruly body-puppet is very powerful. Your body can vigorously betray the secrets you are desperately trying to keep — by blushing and trembling or sweating, to mention only the most obvious cases. It can "decide" that in spite of your well-laid plans, right now would be a good time for sex, not intellectual discussion, and then take embarrassing steps in preparation for a coup d'etat. On another occasion, to your even greater chagrin and frustration, it can turn a deaf ear on your own efforts to enlist it for a sexual campaign, forcing you to raise the volume, twirl the dials, try all manner of preposterous cajolings to persuade it.”

Daniel Dennett (1942) American philosopher

Kinds of Minds (1996)

W. Edwards Deming photo
Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux photo

“The judicial ought to be kept entirely distinct from the legislative and executive power in the State. This separation is necessary both to secure the independence of the judicial functions and to prevent their being influenced by the interests of party or by the voice of the people.”

Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux (1778–1868) English barrister, politician, and Lord Chancellor of Great Britain

The British Constitution (1844), 322, 323; reported in James William Norton-Kyshe, The Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904), p. 2-8.

Joseph Hopkinson photo
Lloyd Kaufman photo
Jussi Halla-aho photo
Antonin Scalia photo

“We are not talking here about a federal law prohibiting the States from regulating bubble-gum advertising, or even the construction of nuclear plants. We are talking about a federal law going to the core of state sovereignty: the power to exclude. […] The Court opinion’s looming specter of inutterable horror—‘[i]f [Section] 3 of the Arizona statute were valid, every State could give itself independent authority to prosecute federal registration violations’—seems to me not so horrible and even less looming. But there has come to pass, and is with us today, the specter that Arizona and the States that support it predicted: A Federal Government that does not want to enforce the immigration laws as written, and leaves the States’ borders unprotected against immigrants whom those laws would exclude. So the issue is a stark one. Are the sovereign States at the mercy of the Federal Executive’s refusal to enforce the Nation’s immigration laws? […] Arizona bears the brunt of the country’s illegal immigration problem. Its citizens feel themselves under siege by large numbers of illegal immigrants who invade their property, strain their social services, and even place their lives in jeopardy. Federal officials have been unable to remedy the problem, and indeed have recently shown that they are unwilling to do so. […] Arizona has moved to protect its sovereignty—not in contradiction of federal law, but in complete compliance with it. The laws under challenge here do not extend or revise federal immigration restrictions, but merely enforce those restrictions more effectively. If securing its territory in this fashion is not within the power of Arizona, we should cease referring to it as a sovereign State.”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Concurring in part and dissenting in part, Arizona v. United States (2012) : 567 U.S. ___ (2012); decided June 25, 2012.
2010s

Will Arnett photo
Jeremy Corbyn photo
Theo van Doesburg photo
John Boyle O'Reilly photo

“For all time to come, the freedom and purity of the press are the test of national virtue and independence. No writer for the press, however humble, is free from the burden of keeping his purpose high and his integrity white.”

John Boyle O'Reilly (1844–1890) Irish-born poet and novelist

Quoted in Roche, James Jeffrey (1891). Life of John Boyle O'Reilly, together with his complete poems and speeches edited by Mrs John Boyle O'Reilly. New York. p 195.

Calvin Coolidge photo

“It is these two thoughts of union and peace which appear to me to be especially appropriate for our consideration on this day. Like all else in human experience, they are not things which can be set apart and have an independent existence. They exist by reason of the concrete actions of men and women. It is the men and women whose actions between 1861 and 1865 gave us union and peace that we are met here this day to commemorate. When we seek for the chief characteristic of those actions, we come back to the word which I have already uttered — renunciation. They gave up ease and home and safety and braved every impending danger and mortal peril that they might accomplish these ends. They thereby became in this Republic a body of citizens set apart and marked for every honor so long as our Nation shall endure. Here on this wooded eminence, overlooking the Capital of the country for which they fought, many of them repose, officers of high rank and privates mingling in a common dust, holding the common veneration of a grateful people. The heroes of other wars lie with them, and in a place of great preeminence lies one whose identity is unknown, save that he was a soldier of this Republic who fought that its ideals, its institutions, its liberties, might be perpetuated among men. A grateful country holds all these services as her most priceless heritage, to be cherished forevermore.”

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

1920s, Freedom and its Obligations (1924)

Harry Turtledove photo
Jean-François Millet photo

“[Theophile] Gautier's article is very good. I begin to feel a little more contented. His remarks about my thick colours are also very just. The critics who see and judge my pictures are not forced to know that in painting them I am not guided by a definite intention, although I do my utmost to try and attain the aim which I have in sight, independently of methods. People are not even obliged to know why it is that I work in this way, with all its faults.”

Jean-François Millet (1814–1875) French painter

Quote of Millet in his letter of 23 March 1851; as quoted by Julia Cartwright in Jean Francois Millet, his Life and Letters, Swan Sonnenschein en Co, Lim. London / The Macmillian Company, New York; second edition, September 1902, p. 112
the most famous painting of Millet 'The Sower', reviewed in an article then by Gautier, was exhibited for the first time in 'The Salon' of Paris, at the End of 1850
1851 - 1870

Eduardo Torroja photo
Lyndon B. Johnson photo
John Adams photo

“My best wishes, in the joys, and festivities, and the solemn services of that day on which will be completed the fiftieth year from its birth, of the independence of the United States: a memorable epoch in the annals of the human race, destined in future history to form the brightest or the blackest page, according to the use or the abuse of those political institutions by which they shall, in time to come, be shaped by the human mind.”

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

Reply to an invitation to 50th Independence Day celebrations from a committee of the citizens of Quincy, Massachusetts (7 June 1826); quoted in "Eulogy, Pronounced at Bridgewater, Massachusetts" http://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC02570179&id=17ge0_OSAfIC&pg=RA1-PA160&lpg=RA1-PA160&dq=%22solemn+services+of+that+day+on+which+will+be+completed+%22&num=100 (2 August 1826) by John A. Shaw, in A Selection of Eulogies, Pronounced in the Several States, in Honor of Those Illustrious Patriots and Statesmen, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson (1826) http://www.gutenberg.org/files/18196/18196.txt
1820s

Frank Klepacki photo

“Several implications follow from Hayek's insights into the nature of capitalism.(a) The claim "I deserve my pretax income" is not generally true. Nor should the basic organization of property rules be based on considerations of moral desert. Hence, claims about desert have no standing in deciding whether taxation for the purpose of funding social insurance is just.
(b) The claim that people rocked by the viccisitudes of the market, or poor people generally, are getting what they deserve is also not generally true. To moralize people's misfortunes in this way is both ignorant and mean. Capitalism continuously and randomly pulls the rug out from under even the most prudent and diligent people. It is in principle impossible for even the most prudent to forsee all the market turns that could undo them. (If it were possible, then efficient socialist planning would be possible, too. But it isn't.)
(c) Capitalist markets are highly dynamic and volatile. This means that at any one time, lots of people are going under. Often, the consequences of this would be catastrophic, absent concerted intervention to avert the outcomes generated by markets. For example, the economist Amartya Sen has documented that sudden shifts in people's incomes (which are often due to market volatility), and not absolute food shortages, are a principal cause of famine.
(d) The volatility of capitalist markets creates a profound and urgent need for insurance, over and above the insurance needs people would have under more stable (but stagnant) economic systems. This need is increased also by the fact that capitalism inspires a love of personal independence, and hence brings about the smaller ("nuclear") family forms that alone are compatible with it. We no longer belong to vast tribes and clans. This sharply reduces the ability of individuals under capitalism to pool risks within families, and limits the claims they can effectively make on nonhousehold (extended) family members for assistance. To avoid or at least ameliorate disaster and disruption, people need to pool the risks of capitalism.”

Elizabeth S. Anderson (1959) professor of philosophy and womens' studies

How Not to Complain About Taxes (III): "I deserve my pretax income" http://left2right.typepad.com/main/2005/01/how_not_to_comp_1.html (January 26, 2005)

John Adams photo
Frederick Douglass photo
Nathan Bedford Forrest photo
Robert G. Ingersoll photo

“The Declaration of Independence announces the sublime truth, that all power comes from the people. This was a denial, and the first denial of a nation, of the infamous dogma that God confers the right upon one man to govern others.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Individuality http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/robert_ingersoll/individuality.html (1873).
Context: The Declaration of Independence announces the sublime truth, that all power comes from the people. This was a denial, and the first denial of a nation, of the infamous dogma that God confers the right upon one man to govern others. It was the first grand assertion of the dignity of the human race. It declared the governed to be the source of power, and in fact denied the authority of any and all gods. Through the ages of slavery — through the weary centuries of the lash and chain, God was the acknowledged ruler of the world. To enthrone man, was to dethrone God.

Friedrich List photo

“We have already observed that the fortunes or misfortunes of individuals are dependent upon the maintenance of the independence and progress of the whole nation.”

Friedrich List (1789–1846) German economist with dual American citizenship

Source: The Natural System of Political Economy (1837), p. 33

William Whewell photo
George Holmes Howison photo
George Klir photo
Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar photo

“Unlike a drop of water which loses its identity when it joins the ocean, man does not lose his being in the society in which he lives. Man's life is independent. He is born not for the development of the society alone, but for the development of his self.”

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891–1956) Father of republic India, champion of human rights, father of India's Constitution, polymath, revolutionary…

As quoted in Book Of Happiness, by Jagdish Gupta https://books.google.co.in/books?id=H7cwBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA101&lpg=PA101&dq=Unlike+a+drop+of+water+which+loses+its+identity+when+it+joins+the+ocean,+man+does+not+lose+his+being+in+the+society+in+which+he+lives.+Man%27s+life+is+i&source=bl&ots=eVeEf_7dR3&sig=88DaiaoPeTdFtzRM73yLcZmasVg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CEMQ6AEwB2oVChMIh7H05PiSyAIVRNSOCh2zIABs#v=onepage&q=Unlike%20a%20drop%20of%20water%20which%20loses%20its%20identity%20when%20it%20joins%20the%20ocean%2C%20man%20does%20not%20lose%20his%20being%20in%20the%20society%20in%20which%20he%20lives.%20Man%27s%20life%20is%20i&f=false
Variant: Unlike a drop of water which loses its identity when it joins the ocean, man does not lose his being in the society in which he lives. Man's life is independent. He is born not for the development of the society alone, but for the development of his self.

Herbert A. Simon photo
Norodom Sihanouk photo

“I want my country to be independent, always independent. I have to defend my convictions as a patriot and as a national leader. I have done my best, but as a human being I cannot be perfect, nobody is perfect.”

Norodom Sihanouk (1922–2012) Cambodian King

As quoted by David Ablin and Marlowe Hood (March 14, 1985), "The Lesser Evil: An Interview with Norodom Sihanouk" http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1985/mar/14/the-lesser-evil-an-interview-with-norodom-sihanouk/?pagination=false, The New York Review of Books.
Interviews

William Saroyan photo
Reinhard Selten photo
Fidel Castro photo

“We are united in our determination to change the present system of international relations, based as it is on injustice, inequality and oppression. In international politics we act as an independent world force.”

Fidel Castro (1926–2016) former First Secretary of the Communist Party and President of Cuba

On Behalf of the Movement of Nonaligned Countries (1979)

Ma Ying-jeou photo
Sukarno photo
Koenraad Elst photo

“In Swami Dayananda's view, the term Arya was not coterminous with the term Hindu. The classical meaning of the word Arya is 'noble'. It is used as an honorific term of address, used in addressing the honoured ones in ancient Indian parlance. The term Hindu is reluctantly accepted as a descriptive term for the contemporary Hindu society and all its varied beliefs and practices, while the term Arya is normative and designates Hinduism as it ought to be…. Elsewhere in Hindu society, 'Arya' was and is considered a synonym for 'Hindu', except that it may be broader, viz. by unambiguously including Buddhism and Jainism. Thus, the Constitution of the 'independent, indivisible and sovereign monarchical Hindu kingdom' (Art.3:1) of Nepal take care to include the Buddhist minority by ordaining the king to uphold 'Aryan culture and Hindu religion' (Art.20: 1)…. The Arya Samaj's misgivings about the term Hindu already arose in tempore non suspecto, long before it became a dirty Word under Jawaharlal Nehru and a cause of legal disadvantage under the 1950 Constitution. Swami Dayananda Saraswati rightly objected that the term had been given by foreigners (who, moreover, gave all kinds of derogatory meanings to it) and considered that dependence on an exonym is a bit sub-standard for a highly literate and self-expressive civilization. This argument retains a certain validity: the self-identification of Hindus as 'Hindu' can never be more than a second-best option. On the other hand, it is the most practical choice in the short run, and most Hindus don't seem to pine for an alternative.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

2000s, Who is a Hindu, (2001)

Robert Erskine Childers photo
John McCarthy photo

“[This] is or should be our main scientific activity — studying the structure of information and the structure of problem solving processes independently of applications and independently of its realization in animals or humans.”

John McCarthy (1927–2011) American computer scientist and cognitive scientist

John McCarthy (1974), quoted in: Joscha Bach (2009) Principles of Synthetic Intelligence PSI, p. 233
1970s

George W. Bush photo
Nathanael Greene photo
Chester Bowles photo
Henry George photo

“Men must have rights before they can have equal rights. Each man has a right to use the world because he is here and wants to use the world. The equality of this right is merely a limitation arising from the presence of others with like rights. Society, in other words, does not grant, and cannot equitably withhold from any individual, the right to the use of land. That right exists before society and independently of society, belonging at birth to each individual, and ceasing only with his death.”

Henry George (1839–1897) American economist

Part I : Declaration, Ch. IV : Mr. Spencer's Confusion as to Rights
A Perplexed Philosopher (1892)
Context: Men must have rights before they can have equal rights. Each man has a right to use the world because he is here and wants to use the world. The equality of this right is merely a limitation arising from the presence of others with like rights. Society, in other words, does not grant, and cannot equitably withhold from any individual, the right to the use of land. That right exists before society and independently of society, belonging at birth to each individual, and ceasing only with his death. Society itself has no original right to the use of land. What right it has with regard to the use of land is simply that which is derived from and is necessary to the determination of the rights of the individuals who compose it. That is to say, the function of society with regard to the use of land only begins where individual rights clash, and is to secure equality between these clashing rights of individuals.

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury photo
Eduardo Torroja photo
Eric Holder photo
George W. Bush photo
Martin Firrell photo

“Let’s speak of justice as present in the world, as independent and self-perpetuating.”

Martin Firrell (1963) British artist and activist

"Complete Hero" (2009)

Arthur James Balfour photo
Henri of Luxembourg photo
Éamon de Valera photo
Everett Dean Martin photo
Max Müller photo
Louis Brownlow photo
Burkard Schliessmann photo
Hillary Clinton photo
Burkard Schliessmann photo

“The trends that produced Schumann’s early piano works started out not so much from Weber’s refined brilliance as from Schubert’s more intimate and deeply soul-searching idiom. His creative imagination took him well beyond the harmonic sequences known until his time. He looked at the fugues and canons of earlier composers and discovered in them a Romantic principle. In the interweaving of the voices, the essence of counterpoint found its parallel in the mysterious relationships between the human psyche and exterior phenomena, which Schumann felt impelled to express. Schubert’s broad melodic lyricism has often been contrasted with Schumann’s terse, often quickly repeated motifs, and by comparison Schumann is often erroneously seen as short-winded. Yet it is precisely with these short melodic formulae that he shone his searchlight into the previously unplumbed depths of the human psyche. With them, in a complex canonic web, he wove a dense tissue of sound capable of taking in and reflecting back all the poetical character present. His actual melodies rarely have an arioso form; his harmonic system combines subtle chromatic progressions, suspensions, a rapid alternation of minor and major, and point d’orgue. The shape of Schumann’s scores is characterized by contrapuntal lines, and can at first seem opaque or confused. His music is frequently marked by martial dotted rhythms or dance-like triple time signatures. He loves to veil accented beats of the bar by teasingly intertwining two simultaneous voices in independent motion. This highly inde-pendent instrumental style is perfectly attuned to his own particular compositional idiom. After a period in which the piano had indulged in sensuous beauty of sound and brilliant coloration, in Schumann it again became a tool for conveying poetic monologues in musical terms.”

Burkard Schliessmann classical pianist

Talkings about Chopin and Schumann

Gancho Tsenov photo
George III of the United Kingdom photo

“I was the last to consent to the separation; but the separation having been made and having become inevitable, I have always said, as I say now, that I would be the first to meet the friendship of the United States as an independent power.”

George III of the United Kingdom (1738–1820) King of Great Britain and King of Ireland

Source: To John Adams, as quoted in Adams, C.F. (editor) (1850–56), The works of John Adams, second president of the United States, vol. VIII, pp. 255–257, quoted in Ayling, p. 323 and Hibbert, p. 165.

Karl Jaspers photo
Samuel P. Huntington photo
Vladimir Lenin photo
Jerzy Vetulani photo
Edsger W. Dijkstra photo
Calvin Coolidge photo

“We are obliged to conclude that the Declaration of Independence represented the movement of a people. It was not, of course, a movement from the top. Revolutions do not come from that direction. It was not without the support of many of the most respectable people in the Colonies, who were entitled to all the consideration that is given to breeding, education, and possessions. It had the support of another element of great significance and importance to which I shall later refer. But the preponderance of all those who occupied a position which took on the aspect of aristocracy did not approve of the Revolution and held toward it an attitude either of neutrality or open hostility. It was in no sense a rising of the oppressed and downtrodden. It brought no scum to the surface, for the reason that colonial society had developed no scum. The great body of the people were accustomed to privations, but they were free from depravity. If they had poverty, it was not of the hopeless kind that afflicts great cities, but the inspiring kind that marks the spirit of the pioneer. The American Revolution represented the informed and mature convictions of a great mass of independent, liberty-loving, God-fearing people who knew their rights, and possessed the courage to dare to maintain them.”

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)

John Austin (legal philosopher) photo
Maurice Merleau-Ponty photo
Dan Balz photo
Robert Burns photo
Hendrik Verwoerd photo

“The tendency in Africa for nations to become independent and, at the same time, the need to do justice to all, does not only mean being just to the black man of Africa but also being just to the white man of Africa. They are the people, not only in the Union but throughout major portions of Africa, who brought civilisation here, who made possible the present development of black nationalism by bringing the natives education, by showing them the Western way of life, by bringing to Africa industry and development, by inspiring them with the ideals which Western civilisation has developed for itself.”

Hendrik Verwoerd (1901–1966) Prime Minister of South Africa from 1958 until his assassination in 1966

As Prime Minister in Parliament on 3 February 1960, in his impromptu reply to Harold Macmillan’s ‘Wind of Change’ speech, 10 quotes by Hendrik Verwoerd (Politics Web) https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/hendrik-verwoerd-10-quotes-hendrik-verwoerd-politics-web-20-september-2016, sahistory.org.za (20 September 2016)

Thich Nhat Hanh photo

“The leaf and his body were one. Neither possessed a separate permanent self. Neither could exist independently from the rest of the universe.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Old Path White Clouds : Walking in the Footsteps of the Buddha (1991)

Humberto Maturana photo
John Allen Fraser photo

“The purpose of privilege is not to place parliamentarians above the law, but rather to allow them to carry out their duties independently and effectively, in the national interest.”

John Allen Fraser (1931) Canadian politician

Source: The House Of Commons At Work (1993), Chapter 10, The Business of the House, p. 152

John Turner photo
Thomas M. Disch photo

“He especially liked ads for shampoos and hair coloring. The women in them seemed to regard their hair as independent, capricious entities, whom they must placate and provide with food.”

Thomas M. Disch (1940–2008) Novelist, short story writer, poet

"The Black Cat".
The Man Who Had No Idea (and other stories) (1982)

Peter Sloterdijk photo
John Buchan photo
Margaret Chase Smith photo
Roger Shepard photo
Vladimir Lenin photo
Daniel Barenboim photo

“The Declaration of Independence was a source of inspiration to believe in ideals that transformed us from Jews to Israelis. … I am asking today with deep sorrow: Can we, despite all our achievements, ignore the intolerable gap between what the Declaration of Independence promised and what was fulfilled, the gap between the idea and the realities of Israel? Does the condition of occupation and domination over another people fit the Declaration of Independence? Is there any sense in the independence of one at the expense of the fundamental rights of the other? Can the Jewish people whose history is a record of continued suffering and relentless persecution, allow themselves to be indifferent to the rights and suffering of a neighboring people? Can the State of Israel allow itself an unrealistic dream of an ideological end to the conflict instead of pursuing a pragmatic, humanitarian one based on social justice. I believe that despite all the objective and subjective difficulties, the future of Israel and its position in the family of enlightened nations will depend on our ability to realize the promise of the founding fathers as they canonized it in the Declaration of Independence. I have always believed that there is no military solution to the Jewish Arab conflict, neither from a moral nor a strategic one and since a solution is therefore inevitable I ask myself, why wait?”

Daniel Barenboim (1942) Israeli Argentine-born pianist and conductor

Statement at the Knesset upon receiving the Wolf Prize, May 9, 2004, transcript online https://electronicintifada.net/content/daniel-barenboims-statement-knesset-upon-receiving-wolf-prize-may-9-2004/5080 (16 May 2004) at The Electronic Intifada.

Ulysses S. Grant photo