Today is the 4th of July (or it will be soon, depending on what day you read this).
It’s Independence Day in the US, the anniversary of the day in 1776 when the Founding Fathers signed The Declaration of Independence and established The United States as an independent nation, free from British rule.
So in today’s post I’d like to share 101 of the most powerful, positive, funny and inspirational 4th of July quotes on freedom from people all across time and the world.
I hope you’ll find something helpful here for your celebrations but also something inspiring that you can use beyond this day to find more freedom for yourself to live the life you deep down want.
Inspirational 4th of July Quotes on Freedom
“Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.”
– Abraham Lincoln
“Where liberty dwells, there is my country.”
– Benjamin Franklin
“In the truest sense, freedom cannot be bestowed; it must be achieved.”
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
“The function of freedom is to free someone else.”
– Toni Morrison
“This nation will remain the land of the free only so long as it is the home of the brave.”
– Elmer Davis
“I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom.”
– Bob Dylan
“We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.”
– William Faulkner
“For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.”
– Nelson Mandela
“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it.”
– Thomas Paine
“Freedom is never granted. It is earned by each generation.”
– Hillary Clinton
“Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.”
– Mahatma Gandhi
“Freedom lies in being bold.”
– Robert Frost
“The history of free men is never really written by chance but by choice; their choice!”
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
“If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”
– George Washington
“I know but one freedom and that is the freedom of the mind.”
– Antoine de Saint-Exupery
“In the face of impossible odds, people who love their country can change it.”
– Barack Obama
“True independence and freedom can only exist in doing what’s right.”
– Brigham Young
“The best freedom is being yourself.”
– Jim Morrison
“Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
– Benjamin Franklin
“The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty.”
– James Madison
“Give me liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.”
– John Milton
“If you assume that there is an instinct for freedom, there are opportunities to change things, there’s a chance you may contribute to making a better world. The choice is yours.”
– Noam Chomsky
“A free bird leaps on the back of the wind and floats downstream till the current ends and dips his wing in the orange sun rays and dares to claim the sky.”
– Maya Angelou
“The rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened.”
– John F. Kennedy
Positive and Uplifting Quotes on Freedom
“The secret of happiness is freedom, the secret of freedom is courage.”
– Carrie Jones
“Doing what you like is freedom. Liking what you do is happiness.”
– Frank Tyger
“Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people.”
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
“Freedom is what we do with what is done to us.”
– Jean-Paul Sartre
“May we think of freedom, not as the right to do as we please, but as the opportunity to do what is right.”
– Peter Marshall
“Liberty has been planted here; and the more it is attacked, the more it grows and flourishes.”
– Samuel Sherwood
“Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better.”
– Albert Camus
“America is another name for opportunity.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
“I’ve found that there is always some beauty left – in nature, sunshine, freedom, in yourself; these can all help you.”
– Anne Frank
“Just living is not enough, one must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower.”
– Hans Christian Andersen
“Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.”
– Virginia Woolf
“America was built on courage, on imagination and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand.”
– Harry S. Truman
“Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it. The history of liberty is a history of resistance.”
– Woodrow Wilson
“I believe in America because we have great dreams, and because we have the opportunity to make those dreams come true.”
– Wendell L. Wilkie
“It will be celebrated with pomp and parade, bonfires and illuminations from one end of this continent to the other.”
– John Adams
“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will.”
– Charlotte Brontë
“We hold our heads high, despite the price we have paid because freedom is priceless.”
– Lech Walesa
“Freedom and democracy are dreams you never give up.”
– Aung San Suu Kyi
“The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.”
– Aung San Suu Kyi
“Freedom is the open window through which pours the sunlight of the human spirit and human dignity.”
– Herbert Hoover
“Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have.”
– Harry Emerson Fosdick
“Dreams are the foundation of America.”
– Lupita Nyong’o
“All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.”
– Winston Churchill
Funny 4th of July Quotes and Freedom Sayings
“You have to love a nation that celebrates its independence every July 4th, not with a parade of guns, tanks and soldiers who file by the White House in a show of strength and muscle, but with family picnics where kids throw Frisbees, the potato salad gets iffy and the flies die from happiness. You may think you have overeaten, but it is patriotism.”
– Erma Bombeck
“When you’re born, you get a ticket to the freak show. When you’re born in America, you get a front-row seat.”
– George Carlin
“Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.”
– George Bernard Shaw
“I always have the most fun on the Fourth of July. You don’t have to exchange any gifts. You just go to the beach and watch fireworks. It’s always fun.”
– James Lafferty
“You get to cook outside, blow stuff up, wear shorts. Easter should be taking notes!”
– Jay Pritchett from Modern Family
“Laughter is America’s most important export.”
– Walt Disney
“It’s Fourth of July weekend, or, as I call it, Exploding Christmas.”
– Stephen Colbert
“America’s a family. We all yell at each other. It all works out.”
– Louis C.K.
“The United States is the only country with a known birthday.”
– James G. Blaine
“If our Founding Fathers wanted us to care about the rest of the world, they wouldn’t have declared their independence from it.”
– Stephen Colbert
“A real patriot is the fellow who gets a parking ticket and rejoices that the system works.”
– Bill Vaughan
“If summer had one defining scent, it’d definitely be the smell of barbecue.”
– Katie Lee
“All great change in America begins at the dinner table.”
– Ronald Reagan
“You wonder sometimes how our government puts on its pants in the morning.”
– Jon Stewart
“Oh my God! You look like the Fourth of July. Makes me want a hot dog real bad.”
– Paulette from Legally Blonde 2
“Thanksgiving without turkey is like Fourth of July with no apple pie, or Friday with no two pizzas.”
– Joey (from the TV-show Friends)
“It’s a party in the U.S.A.”
– Miley Cyrus
“History began on July 4th, 1776. Everything before that was a mistake.”
– Ron Swanson (from the TV-show Parks & Recreations)
“Happy 4th of July! Drink until you see stars… and stripes!”
– Unknown
Inspirational 4th of July Quotes on Family and Friendship
“What was important wasn’t the fireworks, it was that we were together this evening, together in this place, looking up into the sky at the same time.”
– Banana Yoshimoto
“America is a tune. It must be sung together.”
– Gerald Stanley Lee
“Then join hand in hand, brave Americans all! By uniting we stand, by dividing we fall.”
– John Dickinson
“The Fourth of July should be celebrated with big hearts.”
– Camila Alves
“People in power are trying to convince us that the villain in our American story is each other. But that is not our story. That is not who we are. That’s not our America. Our United States of America is not about us versus them. It’s about we the people!”
– Camila Alves
“One flag, one land, one heart, one hand, one nation, evermore!”
– Oliver Wendell Holmes
“We shall go wild with fireworks… and they will plunge into the sky and shatter the darkness.”
– Natsuki Takaya
“Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.”
– Abraham Lincoln
“No one loses anyone, because no one owns anyone. That is the true experience of freedom: having the most important thing in the world without owning it.”
– Paulo Coelho
“America, for me, has been the pursuit and catching of happiness.”
– Aurora Raigne
“When you get to know a lot of people, you make a great discovery… It takes all the people – black and white, Catholic, Jewish and Protestant, recent immigrants and Mayflower descendants – to make up America.”
– Judy Garland
“My favorite thing about the United States? Lots of Americans, one America.”
– Val Saintsbury
“The fact is, with every friendship you make and every bond of trust you establish, you are shaping the image of America projected to the rest of the world.”
– Michelle Obama
Short 4th of July Quotes on Freedom
“She had not known the weight until she felt the freedom!”
– Nathaniel Hawthorne
“You never completely have your rights, one person, until you all have your rights.”
– Marsha P. Johnson
“From every mountainside, let freedom ring.”
– Martin Luther King Jr.
“He who is brave is free.”
– Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept.”
– Angela Davis
“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
– George Orwell
“We will never have true civilization until we have learned to recognize the rights of others.”
– Will Rogers
“He only earns his freedom and his life who takes them every day by storm.”
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“Thought is free.”
– William Shakespeare
“I have tasted freedom. I will not give up that which I have tasted.”
– Harvey Milk
“The land of opportunity.”
– Bob Poser
“Freedom, in any case, is only possible by constantly struggling for it.”
– Albert Einstein
“Freedom is never given; it is won.”
– A. Philip Randolph
“Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.”
– John F. Kennedy
“Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.”
– Martin Luther King Jr.
“Life without liberty is like a body without spirit.”
– Kahlil Gibran
“Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.”
– George Washington
“Power can be taken, but not given. The process of the taking is empowerment in itself.”
– Gloria Steinem
“Humanity has won its battle. Liberty now has a country.”
– Marquis de Lafayette
“Where freedom is, there is my nation.”
– Benjamin Franklin
“Freedom is the power to say no.”
– James Clear
“Freedom is something that dies unless it’s used.”
– Hunter S. Thompson
Want more inspiration for your summer? Then check out the short July quotes here, these inspirational July quotes, the short summer quotes in this post and the inspirational summer quotes here. Plus, this one with lots of funny summer quotes.