We must have constantly present in our minds the difference between independence and liberty. Liberty is a right of doing whatever the laws permit, and if a citizen could do what they forbid he would no longer be possessed of liberty.

- Charles de Montesquieu

I wanted to be an independent woman, a woman who could pay for her bills, a woman who could run her own life - and I became that woman.

- Diane von Furstenberg

Throughout the day no time for memorandums now. Go ahead! Liberty and independence forever.

- Davy Crockett

Without moral and intellectual independence, there is no anchor for national independence.

- David Ben-Gurion

I don't think it's a Western thing to really talk about intrinsic motivation and the drive for autonomy, mastery and purpose. You have to not be struggling for survival. For people who don't know where their next meal is coming, notions of finding inner motivation are comical.

- Daniel H. Pink

A free and truly independent press - fiercely independent when necessary - is the red beating heart of freedom and democracy.

- Dan Rather

True freedom is the capacity for acting according to one's true character, to be altogether one's self, to be self-determined and not subject to outside coercion.

- Corliss Lamont

The bedrock of our democracy is the rule of law and that means we have to have an independent judiciary, judges who can make decisions independent of the political winds that are blowing.

- Caroline Kennedy

The American Revolution and Declaration of Independence, it has often been argued, were fueled by the most radical of all American political ideas.

- Carl Bernstein

I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will.

- Charlotte Bronte

I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America.

- Alexis de Tocqueville

There is no dignity quite so impressive, and no one independence quite so important, as living within your means.

- Calvin Coolidge

I have an independent streak. You know, it's kind of hard to tell a independent woman what to do.

- Betty Ford

True independence and freedom can only exist in doing what's right.

- Brigham Young

At the bottom of education, at the bottom of politics, even at the bottom of religion, there must be for our race economic independence.

- Booker T. Washington

A primary function of art and thought is to liberate the individual from the tyranny of his culture in the environmental sense and to permit him to stand beyond it in an autonomy of perception and judgment.

- Beverly Sills

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.

- B. R. Ambedkar

One single vision fills all minds: that of our independence endangered. One single duty imposes itself upon our wills: the duty of stubborn resistance.

- Albert II of Belgium

Conservatives understand that the power that binds our republic together is fierce independence held high on the shoulders of compassion.

- Allen West

America is a country that seems forever to be toddler or teenager, at those two stages of human development characterized by conflict between autonomy and security.

- Anna Quindlen