Quotes About Independence

Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"49

Where Pierpont had the fortitude to confront Junius, Jack silently hoped for approval and leaned on his mother for emotional support.

The most perplexing issue for Rockefeller was how to square philanthropy with self-reliance.

His constant nightmare was that he would promote dependence, sapping the Protestant work ethic.

Every nation has a right to carve out its own happiness in its own way."25

It was a lesson in self-reliance.

Shaped by a childhood of uncertainty, he aspired to be self-sufficient in business

When Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence, slaves constituted 40 percent of the population of his home state, Virginia.

Thomas Jones, a Loyalist judge in New York, wrote that not "a stick of wood, a spear of grass or a kernel of corn could the troops in New Jersey procure without fighting for it.

To believe America able to withstand England is a dreadful infatuation.

For Hamilton, Jefferson's desire to overturn the Judiciary Act was an insidious first step toward destroying the Constitution: "Who is so blind as not to see that the right of the legislature to abolish the judges at pleasure destroys the independence of the judicial department and swallows it up in the impetuous vortex of legislative influence?"34 Without an independent judiciary, the Constitution was a worthless document.

Even as a teenager, Rockefeller demanded to be treated with adult dignity.

From the outset, the young Hamilton had phenomenal stamina for sustained work: ambitious, orphaned boys do not enjoy the option of idleness.

I do not know of any firm to suggest at the moment, but why not run them ourselves?

Such repeated shocks must have stripped Alexander Hamilton of any sense that life was fair, that he existed in a benign universe, or that he could ever count on help from anyone. That this abominable childhood produced such a strong, productive, self-reliant human being—that this fatherless adolescent could have ended up a founding father of a country he had not yet even seen—seems little short of miraculous.

United Colonies of America.

That this abominable childhood produced such a strong, productive, self-reliant human-being - that this fatherless adolescent could have ended up a founding father of a country he had not yet even seen - seems little short of miraculous.

I would have to confess that in the land of the toubabu, I had managed to save only myself.

I wouldn't wish beauty on any woman who has not her own freedom, and who chooses not the hands that claim her.

Some say that I was once uncommonly beautiful, but I wouldn't wish beauty on any woman who has not her own freedom, and who chooses not the hands that claim her.

I worked thirteen years, got me nowhere. I feel like I tried it their way, and to hell with them. Now I'm going to try it my way.

I'm twenty-nine, yes really, I'm from Aspen, Colorado, I'm six feet one, yes really, I've been at Quantico two years, yes I date guys, no I dress like this just because I like it, no I'm not married, no I don't currently have a boyfriend, and no I don't want to have dinner with you tonight.

Either way Reacher figured he might as well find out. He had no place to go, and all the time in the world to get there, so detours cost him nothing.

So like I said, what are you running from?" "From being like people, I guess.