Independence

1052 – “As the United States is the freest of all nations, so, too, its people sympathize with all people struggling for liberty and self-government; but while so sympathizing it is due to our honor that we should abstain from enforcing our views upon unwilling nations and from taking an interested part, without invitation, in the quarrels between different nations or between governments and their subjects. Our course should always be in conformity with strict justice and law, international and local.”

-Ulysses S Grant, 18ht President of the United States of America

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929 – The Monroe Doctrine

“We owe it, therefore, to candor and to the amicable relations existing between the United States and those powers to declare that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety. With the existing colonies or dependencies of any European power we have not interfered and shall not interfere, but with the Governments who have declared their independence and maintained it, and whose independence we have, on great consideration and on just principles, acknowledged, we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them, or controlling in any other manner their destiny, by any European power in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States.”

-James Monroe, 5th President of the United States

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787 – “Liberty sets the mind free, fosters independence and unorthodox thinking and ideas. But it does not offer instant prosperity or happiness and wealth to everyone. This is something that politicians in particular must keep in mind.”

–Boris Yeltsin, 1st President of the Russian Federation
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404 – “Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good.”

–Thomas Paine [Often misquoted, see Source Notes]

Note: The original quote contained two long “S”es ( ſ ). One in happineſs and one in perſon.

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131 – “A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance.”

“ऐसा पल आता है, मगर इतिहास में ऐसा पल बहुत कम आता है, जब हम पुराने से बाहर निकल कर नये युग में कदम रखते हैं, जब एक युग समाप्त हो जाता है, तब एक देश की लम्बे समय से दबी हुई आत्मा मुक्त होती है.”

Jawaharlal Nehru

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