Quotes About Independence

I am, of course, a rogue. A rapscallion. A musician. I would bring her nothing but poverty, shame, and bruised shins from my flailing limbs. She is the better for our parting.

Nobody seemed to understand that the only person I could count on not to bring up my dad, not to feel sorry for me, or make The Face -other than my mother- was me.

Dreams, and plans, and a stark desire to change your life, all on your own. I wanted that too, but I didn't want to have to run away to do it.

accepting help doesn't have to mean giving up control

That was the thing about being alone, in theory or in principle. Whatever happened—good, bad, or anywhere in between—it was always, if nothing else, all your own.

I didn't care that they snickered when I answered yes, or spoke in hushed tones. Because now, I didn't care what they thought. It wasn't new, this realization that I would never be like them. What was different now was that I was glad.

I'm not very good at accepting help, I said. It's an issue.

Children brought up in the company of adults learn better than most the power of solitude.

Help your puppy get used to being ignored sometimes.

Let the statues crumble. You have always been the place.

Some men would want to hold you like the answer. You are not the answer.

I like to be in charge of my destiny.

If you've given me up, I'll be okay without you! I am one of a kind And I've got my crew. It's true, I'm one of a kind And I've got my crew.

I'm still irritated at the end of the day when my brother, Jonah, and I are standing outside school, waiting for our dad to pick us up. It doesn't help when Brandon says, "Bye, Crabby Abby," as he strolls past me. He walks home from school by himself. Either his parents trust him to make his way home alone or they think he's awful, too, and are hoping he gets kidnapped.

You know your country has a checkered past when you find yourself sitting around pondering the humanitarian upside of sticking with the British Empire.

Considering Independence Hall was also where the founders calculated that a slave equals three-fifths of a person and cooked up an electoral college that lets Florida and Ohio pick our presidents, making an adolescent who barely spoke English a major general at the age I got hired to run the cash register at a Portland pizza joint was not the worst decision ever made there.

Parliament would abolish slavery in the British Empire in 1833, thirty years before President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. A return to the British fold in 1778 might have freed American slaves three decades sooner, which is what, an entire generation and a half? Was independence for some of us more valuable than freedom for all of us? As the former slave Frederick Douglass put it in an Independence Day speech in 1852, 'This is your Fourth of July, not mine'.

I did not hesitate to be disagreeable to preserve my independence.

The newly dubbed General Lafayette was only nineteen years old. Considering Independence Hall was also where the founders calculated that a slave equals three-fifths of a person and cooked up an electoral college that lets Florida and Ohio pick our presidents, making an adolescent who barely spoke English a major general at the age I got hired to run the cash register at a Portland pizza joint was not the worst decision ever made there.

So, the moral of that story, other than never underestimate an independent bookseller, was that the Continental Army and its commander in chief had a soft spot for Chief Artillery Officer Henry Knox.

Of course Americans celebrate Independence Day as opposed to Yorktown Day. Who wants to barbecue a hot dog and ponder how we owe our independence to the French navy? Who wants to twirl sparklers and dwell on how the French government's expenditures in America contributed to the bankruptcy that sparked the French Revolution that would send Rochambeau to prison, Lafayette into exile (then prison), and our benefactor His Most Christian Majesty Louis XVI to the guillotine.

Another reason I'm intrigued with the hanged of Salem, especially the women, is that a number of them aroused suspicion in the first place because they were financially independent, or sharp-tongued, or kept to themselves. In other words, they were killed off for living the same sort of life I live right now but with longer skirts and fewer cable channels.

A humble, bootstrappy patriot, Knox wooed, then married Lucy Flucker, the highbrow daughter of the Loyalist governor of the province of Massachusetts.

The fact that a child that age was allowed to go out looking for the four-legged serial killer that the king has dispatched his personal gun-bearer to track down speaks of an older, hands-off parenting style.