Independence generally refers to the state or condition of being free from outside control, influence, or reliance on others. It can be applied to various aspects of life, including individual freedom, political autonomy, economic self-sufficiency, and personal decision-making.
Individual Independence: It refers to the ability of individuals to think, act, and make choices freely without undue interference or coercion from others. It encompasses personal freedom, autonomy, and the ability to pursue one’s own goals and aspirations.
Political Independence: This pertains to the sovereignty and self-governance of a nation or a community. It involves having the authority to make decisions, establish laws, and govern oneself without being subject to the control of external entities.
Economic Independence: It denotes a state where individuals, communities, or countries are self-reliant in terms of economic resources and capabilities. It involves having a robust and diversified economy that can sustain itself without significant reliance on external aid or support.
Personal Independence: This encompasses the ability of an individual to take care of themselves, make decisions, and be responsible for their own well-being. It includes aspects such as financial independence, emotional independence, and the ability to meet one’s own needs without excessive dependence on others.
Independence is often regarded as a fundamental value and is considered crucial for the preservation of individual rights, cultural identity, and the overall development and well-being of individuals and communities.
Independence Quotes
1. “Let all your views in life be directed to a solid, however moderate, independence; without it, no man can be happy, nor even honest.”
— Junius
2. “Independence is of more value than any gifts, and to receive gifts is to lose it.”
— Saadi
3. “It’s easy to be independent when you’ve got money. But to be independent when you haven’t got a thing that’s the Lord’s test.”
— Mahalia Jackson
4. “Independence may be found in comparative as well as in absolute abundance; I mean where a person contracts his desires within the limits of his fortune.”
— William Shenstone
5. “A great step towards independence is a good-humored stomach.”
— Seneca
6. “There is often as much independence in not being led, as in not being driven.”
— Tryon Edwards
7. “To be independent is the business of a few only; it is the privilege of the strong.”
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
8. “The greatest of all human benefits, that, at least, without which no other benefit can be truly enjoyed, is independence.”
— Parke Godwin
9. “Self-government, self-discipline, self-responsibility is the triple safeguards of the independence of man.”
— Bernice Moore
10. “Every human has four endowments – self-awareness, conscience, independent will, and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom… The power to choose, to respond, to change.”
— Stephen Covey
11. “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
12. “My mother told me to be a lady. And for her, that meant be your own person, be independent.”
— Ruth Bader Ginsburg
13. “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
14. “What then is freedom? The power to live as one wishes.”
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
15. “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
16. “Independence is a heady draught, and if you drink it in your youth, it can have the same effect on the brain as young wine does. It does not matter that its taste is not always appealing. It is addictive and with each drink you want more.”
— Maya Angelou
17. “The best teamwork comes from men who are working independently toward one goal in unison.”
— James Cash Penney
18. “Without moral and intellectual independence, there is no anchor for national independence.”
— David Ben-Gurion
19. “A tragic irony of life is that we so often achieve success or financial independence after the chief reason for which we sought it has passed away.”
— Ellen Glasgow
20. “Originality is independence, not rebellion; it is sincerity, not antagonism.”
— George Henry Lewes
21. “Mickey Mouse is, to me, a symbol of independence. He was a means to an end.”
— Walt Disney
22. “Independence? That’s middle-class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.”
— George Bernard Shaw
23. “The most dangerous thing in the world is the sin of self-reliance and the stupor of worldliness.”
— John Piper
24. “The important consequences to the American States from this Declaration of Independence, considered as the ground and foundation of a future government, naturally suggest the propriety of proclaiming it in such a manner as that the people may be universally informed of it.”
— John Hancock
25. “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
26. “Independence I have long considered as the grand blessing of life, the basis of every virtue; and independence I will ever secure by contracting my wants, though I were to live on a barren heath.”
— Mary Wollstonecraft
27. “There is no dignity quite so impressive, and no one independence quite so important, as living within your means.”
— Calvin Coolidge
28. “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.”
— Lionel Trilling
29. “Those who won our independence… valued liberty as an end and as a means. They believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty.”
— Louis D. Brandeis
30. “It matters enormously to a successful democratic society like ours that we have three branches of government, each with some independence and some control over the other two. That’s set out in the Constitution.”
— Sandra Day O’Connor
31. “The class of citizens who provide at once their own food and their own raiment, may be viewed as the most truly independent and happy.”
— James Madison
32. “The four cornerstones of character on which the structure of this nation was built are Initiative, Imagination, Individuality, and Independence.”
— Eddie Rickenbacker
33. “I have grown up alone. I’ve taken care of myself. I worked, earned money, and was independent at 18.”
— Ingrid Bergman
34. “We must 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.”
— Montesquieu
35. “Impatience is the mark of independence, not of bondage.”
— Marianne Moore
36. “The truth is that since childhood I had cultivated an existential independence. It came from perceiving the adults around me as unreliable, and without it, I felt I wouldn’t have survived. I cared deeply for everyone in my family, but in the end, I depended on myself.”
— Sonia Sotomayor
37. “Independence is happiness.”
— Susan B. Anthony
38. “Diversity: the art of thinking independently together.”
— Malcolm Forbes
39. “Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the danger of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of ‘crackpot’ than the stigma of conformity.”
— Thomas J. Watson
40. “Injustice, in the end, produces independence.”
— Voltaire
41. “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
42. “True independence and freedom can only exist in doing what’s right. Brigham Young Charity is injurious unless it helps the recipient to become independent of it.”
— John D. Rockefeller
43. “There is an inverse relationship between reliance on the state and self-reliance.”
— William F. Buckley, Jr.
44. “Throughout the day no time for memorandums now. Go ahead! Liberty and independence forever.”
— Davy Crockett
45. “It is very nearly impossible… to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind.”
— James Baldwin
46. “I have an independent streak. You know, it’s kind of hard to tell an independent woman what to do.”
— Betty Ford
47. “It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one’s dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent.”
— W. Somerset Maugham
48. “Independence means you decide according to the law and the facts.”
— Stephen Breyer
49. “Part of your heritage in this society is the opportunity to become financially independent.”
— Jim Rohn
50. “I am no bird, and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will.”
— Charlotte Bronte
51. “I will be vigilant to protect the independence and integrity of the Supreme Court, and I will work to ensure that it upholds the rule of law and safeguards those liberties that make this land one of the endless possibilities for all Americans.”
— John Roberts
52. “You cannot build character and courage by taking away a man’s initiative and independence.”
— William J. H. Boetcker
53. “The most unpardonable sin in society is the independence of thought.”
— Emma Goldman
54. “I admire the courage and self-reliance it takes to start your own business and make it succeed.”
— Martha Stewart
55. “The world is independent of my will.”
— Ludwig Wittgenstein
56. “Communication is a continual balancing act, juggling the conflicting needs for intimacy and independence. To survive in the world, we have to act in concert with others, but to survive as ourselves, rather than simply as cogs in a wheel, we have to act alone.”
— Deborah Tannen
57. “It is easy to be independent when you’ve got money. But to be independent when you haven’t got a thing, that’s the Lord’s test.”
— Mahalia Jackson
58. “Nature never said to me: Do not be poor; still less did she say: Be rich; her cry to me was always: Be independent.”
— Nicolas Chamfort
59. “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
60. “What you get free costs too much.”
— Jean Anouilh
61. “The most effective check and balance on government has been an independent press which maintains its credibility by ensuring that its criticism is balanced and based on fact-based indeed on solid journalistic work.”
— Malcolm Turnbull
62. “Self-reliance – that’s a dirty word to Democrats. They want people to believe that self-reliance means you don’t do anything with anybody. They don’t want it thought of as accepting responsibility for one’s life. Enterprise. Imagination. Independence. Entrepreneurism.”
— Rush Limbaugh
63. “There’s no such thing as an independent person.”
— Peter Jennings
64. “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
65. “The only part of the conduct of anyone, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.”
— John Stuart Mill
66. “We do need a return to individual integrity, self-reliance, and old-fashioned gumption. We really do.”
— Robert M. Pirsig
67. “Work is about more than making a living, as vital as that is. It’s fundamental to human dignity, to our sense of self-worth as useful, independent, free people.”
— William J. Clinton
68. “The good man is he who rules himself as he does his own property: his autonomous being is modelled on material power.”
— Theodor W. Adorno