Gather gear by every wile
That's justified by honor;
Not for to hide it in a hedge,
Nor for a train attendant;
But for the glorious privilege
Of being independent. [ Burns ]

All we ask is to be let alone. [ Jefferson Davis ]

How happy is he born or taught,
That serveth not another's will;
Whose armor is his honest thought
And simple truth his utmost skill! [ Sir Henry Wotton ]

Hail! Independence, hail!
Heaven's next best gift,
To that of life and an immortal soul! [ Thomson ]

Ourselves are to ourselves the cause of ill;
We may be independent if we will. [ Churchill ]

... but while
I breathe Heaven's air, and Heaven looks down on me.
And smiles at my best meanings, I remain
Mistress of mine own self and mine own soul. [ Tennyson ]

The inevitable consequence of poverty is dependence. [ Johnson ]

Independence, like honor, is a rocky island, without a beach. [ Napoleon ]

Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants, and to serve them one's self? [ Emerson ]

The king is the least independent man in his dominions; the beggar the most so. [ J. C. and A. W. Hare ]

To be truly and really independent is to support ourselves by our own exertions. [ Porter ]

For my own private satisfaction, I had rather be master of my own time than wear a diadem. [ Bishop Berkeley ]

Respect my independence! Lisette alone has the right to smile when I say: I am independent! [ Beranger ]

The man is best served who has no occasion to put the hands of others at the end of his own arms. [ Rousseau ]

I would rather sit on a pumpkin, and have it all to myself, than to be crowded on a velvet cushion. [ Thoreau ]

It is not the greatness of a man's means that makes him independent, so much as the smallness of his wants. [ Cobbett ]

The greatest of all human benefits, that at least without which no other benefit can be truly enjoyed, is independence. [ Parke Godwin ]

Liberty is quite as much a moral as a political growth, - the result of free individual action, energy, and independence. [ Samuel Smiles ]

Let Fortune do her worst, whatever she makes us lose, as long as she never makes us lose our honesty and our independence. [ Pope ]

I never thrust my nose into other men's porridge. It is no bread and butter of mine: Every man for himself and God for us all. [ Cervantes ]

Train your son and daughter to an employment, to frugality, to hold the high front and to walk the fearless step of independence. [ Timothy Flint ]

These two things, contradictory as they may seem, must go together, - manly dependence and manly independence, manly reliance and manly self-reliance. [ Wordsworth ]

The word independence is united to the accessory ideas of dignity and virtue. The word dependence is united to the ideas of inferiority and corruption. [ Bentham ]

There is a great difference between nationality and race. Nationality is the miracle of political independence. Race is the principle of physical analogy. [ Earl of Beaconsfield ]

Extremes touch: he who wants no favors from Fortune may be said to have obtained the very greatest that she can bestow, in realizing an independence which no changes can diminish. [ Chatfield ]

The idle man stands outside of God's plan, outside of the ordained scheme of things; and the truest self-respect, the noblest independence, and the most genuine dignity, are not to be found there. [ J. G. Holland ]

We hold these truths to be self-evident: 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. [ Thomas Jefferson ]

From the year 1789 to the year 1860 no nation has ever known a more unbounded prosperity, a fuller space of happiness. In the short space of seventy years, within the turn of a single life, the nation, poor, weak and despised, raised itself to the pinnacle of power and of glory. [ Robert C. Winthrop ]

To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live, according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically. [ Thoreau ]

Men pursue riches under the idea that their possession will set them at pace, and above the world. But the law of association often makes those who begin by loving gold as a servant finish by becoming themselves its slaves; and independence without wealth is at least as common as wealth without independence. [ Colton ]