Independence Quotes - page 41
I am not of those who believe in lackadaisical methods. On the contrary, I advocate a vigorous, thorough, exact mental training which shall fit the mind to expand upon and grasp large things and yet properly to perceive in their just relation the significance of small ones to discriminate accurately as to quantity and quality and thus to develop individual judgment, capacity and independence.
But at the same time I am of those who believe that gentleness is a greater, surer power than force, and that sympathy is a safer power by far than is intellect. Therefore would I train the individual sympathies as carefully in all their delicate warmth and tenuity as I would develop the mind in alertness, poise and security.
Nor am I of those who despise dreamers. For the world would be at the level of zero were it not for its dreamers gone and of today. He who dreamed of democracy, far back in a world of absolutism, was indeed heroic, and we of today awaken to the wonder of his dream.
Louis Sullivan
The North is fighting for no sentimental cause-for no victory of a 'higher civilization'. It is fighting for a very ancient and vulgar object of war-for that which Russia has secured in Poland-that which Austria clings to in Venetia-that which Napoleon sought in Spain. It is a struggle for empire, conducted with a recklessness of human life which may have been paralleled in practice, but has never been avowed with equal cynicism. If any shame is left in the Americans, the first revision they will make in their constitution will be to repudiate formally the now exploded doctrine laid down in the Declaration of Independence, that 'Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed'.
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury
Why is it that, next to the birthday of the Savior of the world, your most joyous and most venerated festival returns on this day [the Fourth of July]? Is it not that, in the chain of human events, the birthday of the nation is indissolubly linked with the birthday of the Savior? That it forms a leading event in the progress of the Gospel dispensation? Is it not that the Declaration of Independence first organized the social compact on the foundation of the Redeemer's mission upon earth? That it laid the cornerstone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity?
Jesus Christ
He became a lawyer and in 1929 joined the Indian National Congress movement. He was jailed several times in the struggle for Indian independence. He served in the United Provinces (now Uttar Pradesh) state assembly from 1937 on and was chief minister of Uttar Pradesh in 1967–68 and 1970.
Charan Singh
When German sovereigns acceded to the throne of Britain, they were astonished to discover what George II used to call ‘that damned House of Commons'; but they learnt the lesson that the House of Commons had its way in the end. In former times and in modern times there has been a procession of occasions when the nations of the continent forgot or ignored the House of Commons to their cost, because to forget or ignore the people of Britain themselves, who, however late they awaken, will not suffer themselves to be parted from their heritage of parliamentary self-government and national independence.
Enoch Powell
He abhors the label right and calls himself a Tory radical. For him the essence of Powellism is its frankly Gaullist emphasis on national independence and its marking out of political ground in which a realistic patriotism can flourish again. But paradoxically it is not rightist in the old-style Tory sense. Mr. Powell, unlike the true Tory right, calls for a withdrawal from Empire not even into Europe but into Britain... Mr. Powell is seen by his lieutenants as the latter-day Joe Chamberlain in the Tory Party, the boy from "Brum" who, though he is unlikely ever to lead his party, will change its orientation and nature by driving it into a Gaullist radicalism rather than on to the right.
Enoch Powell
A year ago we had undertaken no specific commitments on the Continent of Europe, beyond those which had then existed. ... To-day we are bound by new agreements for mutual defence with Poland and Turkey; we have guaranteed assistance to Greece and Rumania against aggression. ... We know that, if the security and independence of other countries are to disappear, our own security and our own independence will be gravely threatened. We know that if international law and order is to be preserved, we must be prepared to fight in its defence.
Edward Wood
When, about 560 [BC], Croesus began to subject to Lydian rule the Greek coast of Asia from Cnidus to the Hellespont, Miletus saved its independence by refusing to help her sister states. But in 546 Cyrus conquered Lydia, and without much difficulty absorbed the faction-torn cities of Ionia into the Persian Empire. The great age of Miletus was over. Science and philosophy, in the history of states, reach their height after decadence has set in; wisdom is a harbinger of death.
Will Durant
As to the Navy, we must keep ahead of the German Navy... If our Fleet was not superior to the German Fleet, our very independence would depend on Germany's goodwill; and even granting that people like Jagow would not take advantage of such a situation, there must be others who would take advantage of it, or be compelled by public opinion in Germany to do so. The Prussian mentality is such that to be on really good terms with it one must be able to deal with it as an equal.
Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey of Fallodon
I feel that the continuance of the independence and integrity of the Netherlands depends upon our success in this war... If Germany were to win in this war, she would doubtless retain Belgium, or at least Antwerp, and Dutch independence would be a thing of the past: it never could emerge from the German shadow, and would soon be absorbed. Our victory, on the other hand, would assure not only Dutch integrity, but Dutch independence and freedom.
Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey of Fallodon
Without a doubt, President Yeltsin - with all the human weaknesses no one is free of - was one of the truly great men of our age. When all was uncertain in the disintegrating Soviet Union, he was the one to set a new course by abolishing the Soviet Union and recognising the independence of the three Baltic States. His repudiation of Communism was unequivocal, and he clearly directed the new Russia towards ever closer cooperation with the rest of Europe. He was a great person in the history of Russia and of Europe.
Boris Yeltsin
A measure which makes at once 4,000,000 people voters who were heretofore declared by the highest tribunal in the land not citizens of the United States, nor eligible to become so (with the assertion that "at the time of the Declaration of Independence the opinion was fixed and universal in the civilized portion of the white race, regarded as an axiom in morals as well as in politics, that black men had no rights which the white man was bound to respect"), is indeed a measure of grander importance than any other one act of the kind from the foundation of our free Government to the present day.
Ulysses S. Grant
The persecution of Julian Assange is the conquest of us all: of our independence, our self respect, our intellect, our compassion, our politics, our culture. So stop scrolling. Organise. Occupy. Insist. Persist. Make a noise. Take direct action. Be brave and stay brave. Defy the thought police. War is not peace, freedom is not slavery, ignorance is not strength. If Julian can stand up, so can you: so can all of us.
Julian Assange
Although Baruch Spinoza is one of the great thinkers of the European philosophical tradition, he was not a professional scholar – he earned his modest living as a lens grinder. So, unlike many thinkers of his time, he was unconstrained by allegiance to a church, university or royal court. He was free to be faithful to the pursuit of truth. This gives his philosophy a remarkable originality and intellectual purity – and it also led to controversy and charges of heresy. In the 19th century, and perhaps even more recently, "Spinozist" was still a term of abuse among intellectuals. In a sense, Spinoza was always an outsider – and this independence is precisely what enabled him to see through the confusions, prejudices and superstitions that prevailed in the 17th century, and to gain a fresh and radical perspective on various philosophical and religious issues.
Baruch Spinoza
His steady physical and psychological deterioration has led to hallucinations and depression. He takes antidepressant medication and the antipsychotic quetiapine. He has been observed pacing his cell until he collapses, punching himself in the face and banging his head against the wall. He has spent weeks in the medical wing of Belmarsh. Prison authorities found "half of a razor blade” hidden under his socks. He has repeatedly called the suicide hotline run by the Samaritans because he thought about killing himself "hundreds of times a day.” The executioners have not yet completed their grim work. Toussaint L'Ouverture, who led the Haitian independence movement, the only successful slave revolt in human history, was physically destroyed in the same manner, locked by the French in an unheated and cramped prison cell and left to die of exhaustion, malnutrition, apoplexy, pneumonia and probably tuberculosis.
Julian Assange
'Every Hindu knew not only that he belonged to a particular caste but also that others belonged to other castes of whose respective places in a broader scheme of things he had some idea, whether vague or stereotyped. Hardly anything corresponding to this exited in the case of those we know today as tribes. The consciousness of the distinct and separate identity of all the tribes of India taken as a whole is a modem consciousness, brought into being by the colonial state and confirmed by its successor after independence.
Andre Beteille
If you think about all the gains our society has made, from independence to now, it wasn't government. It was activism. People think, "Oh, Teddy Roosevelt established Yosemite National Park, what a great president." BS. It was John Muir who invited Roosevelt out and then convinced him to ditch his security and go camping. It was Muir, an activist, a single person.
John Muir
The incorporation of every indidual in a collective mechanism of production, would mean the renunciation (or surrender) for man himself of its independence and his dignity as a rational (or thinking, or reasonable) being. The results (or consequences) of such a state of things would be: regression (or retrogression) and deterioration in every fields (or domain) of life. For the true progress consist in the accomplishment of higher ends, et these would be directly (or right off) made impossible in a coercive social mechanism. Let us think to the fate that, in these conditions, new truths would have in store ("Qu'on songe au sort qui, dans ces conditions, serait réservé à des vérités nouvelles", Fr.)
African Spir
