Famous Quotes & Sayings

David Hockney

I did come from a pretty independent-minded family.

David Hume

Nothing is more favorable to the rise of politeness and learning, than a number of neighboring and independent states, connected together by commerce and policy.

David Duchovny

What I liked about Mulder was his quality of not caring what other people thought of him. He was very independent. He wasn't interested in women. I liked that. He had kind of an intellectual quest, but not a sexual quest. That was the challenge of Mulder. Here was a guy that got almost sexually excited about aliens. And I wanted to be able to do that!

Barry Commoner

In every case, the environmental hazards were made known only by independent scientists, who were often bitterly opposed by the corporations responsible for the hazards.

Frederic Bastiat

The sort of dependence that results from exchange, i.e., from commercial transactions, is a reciprocal dependence. We cannot be dependent upon a foreigner without his being dependent on us. Now, this is what constitutes the very essence of society. To sever natural interrelations is not to make oneself independent, but to isolate oneself completely.

Dennis C. Blair

Nothing is more important to national security and the making and conduct of good policy than timely, accurate, and relevant intelligence. Nothing is more critical to accurate and relevant intelligence than independent analysis.

Abraham Lincoln

Our adversaries [ the Confederate States of America ] have adopted some declarations of independence in which, unlike the good old one penned by Jefferson, they omit the words "all men are created equal." Why? They have adopted a temporary national constitution, in the preamble of which, unlike our good old one, signed by Washington, they omit "We, the People," and substitute "We, the deputies of the sovereign and independent States." Why? Why this deliberate pressing out of view, the rights of men, and the authority of the people?

Abraham Lincoln

Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration

Alexei Navalny

Our political leaders often talk about Russia taking an independent path, but they like to live like people in the West.

Ayn Rand

Individualism regards man-every man-as an independent, sovereign entity who possesses an inalienable right to his own life, a right derived from his nature as a rational being.

Ayn Rand

Individualism regards man - every man - as an independent, sovereign entity who possesses an inalienable right to his own life, a right derived from his nature as a rational being. Individualism holds that a civilized society, or any form of association, cooperation or peaceful co-existence among men, can be achieved only on the basis of the recognition of individual rights - and that a group, as such, has no rights other than the individual rights of its members.

Ben Folds

It's like being in the position of - in half of the industry's mind, you're kind of a cult-following, independent rocker. And on the other hand, you're a sellout. But neither one of them are right.

Calvin Coolidge

A government must govern, must prescribe and enforce laws within its sphere or cease to be a government. Moreover, the individual must be independent and free within his own sphere or cease to be an individual. The fundamental question ... is now, and always will be through what adjustments, by what actions, these principles may be applied.

Calvin Coolidge

July 4, 1776 was the historic day on which the representatives of three millions of people vocalized Concord, and Lexington, and Bunker Hill, which gave notice to the world that they proposed to establish an independent nation on the theory that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Calvin Coolidge

The American Revolution represented the informed and mature convictions of a great mass of independent, liberty-loving, God-fearing people who knew their rights, and possessed the courage to dare to maintain them.

Celinda Lake

Women are the volatile vote at the end-particularly independent, non-college-educated married women.

Catherine Ponder

The desire to be self-supporting and financially independent is a divine desire

Stephen Jay Gould

Evolution is an inference from thousands of independent sources, the only conceptual structure that can make unified sense of all this disparate information.

Stephen Jay Gould

Knowledge and wonder are the dyad of our worthy lives as intellectual beings. Voyager did wonders for our knowledge, but performed just as mightily in the service of wonder and the two elements are complementary, not independent or opposed. The thought fills me with awe a mechanical contraption that could fit in the back of a pickup truck, traveling through space for twelve years, dodging around four giant bodies and their associated moons, and finally sending exquisite photos across more than four light-hours of space from the farthest planet in our solar system.

Stephen Jay Gould

If we make this readjustment to view Homo sapiens as an ultimate in oddball rarity, and life at bacterial grade as the common expression of a universal phenomenon, then we could finally ask the truly fundamental question raised by the prospect of Martian fossils. If life originates as a general property of the material universe under certain conditions (probably often realized), then how much can the basic structure and constitution of life vary from place to independent place?

Vandana Shiva

I describe what is happening as 'food fascism' because this system can only survive through totalitarian control. With patents on seed, an illegitimate legal system is manipulated to create seed monopolies. Seed laws that require uniformity - which criminalize diversity and the use of open-pollinated seeds - are fascist in nature. Suing farmers after contaminating their crops is another aspect of this fascism. Pseudo-hygiene laws that criminalize local, artisanal food are food fascism. And attacks on scientists and the silencing of independent research are examples of knowledge fascism.

Ram Dass

I would say that the thrust of my life has been initially about getting free, and then realizing that my freedom is not independent of everybody else. Then I am arriving at that circle where one works on oneself as a gift to other people so that one doesn't create more suffering. I help people as a work on myself and I work on myself to help people.

Ludwig von Mises

In the world of reality, life, and human action there is no such thing as interests independent of ideas, preceding them temporarily and logically. What a man considers his interest is the result of his ideas.

Ludwig von Mises

The superiority of the gold standard consists in the fact that the value of gold develops independent of political actions.

Ludwig von Mises

This, then, is freedom in the external life of man-that he is independent of the arbitrary power of his fellows.

John Avlon

I'm an independent. I'm a centrist. A new generation is arriving that has grown up with a multiplicity of choice in every aspect of their lives, and yet politics is the last place that they are told that they should be satisfied with a choice between brand A and brand B. It doesn't fit the way they think. It doesn't fit the way they live.

When the doors to television were opened to me, that was quite a surprise. It's been such a gift that there was so much TV and independent film happening in New York that I could be a part of. There was something to satiate my desire to be artistic and creative, especially when it wasn't in the way I originally thought it was going to be.

Charles Churchill

Genius is independent of situation.

David Nicholls

But at the best of times she feels like a character in a Muriel Spark novel — independent, bookish, sharp-minded, secretly romantic.

Bhagat Singh

Merciless criticism and independent thinking are the two necessary traits of revolutionary thinking.

Cathy Moriarty

I like being independent; I like doing things myself. I'm an instinctual person.

Bethenny Frankel

Be independent and don't try to think someone is going to save you or look to someone else to make you happy or look to someone else to complete you.

B. R. Ambedkar

In Hinduism, conscience, reason and independent thinking have no scope for development.