Notice how they’ll accept anything except a man who stands alone. They recognize him at once...There’s a special, insidious kind of hatred for him. They forgive criminals. They admire dictators. Crime and violence are a tie. A form of mutual dependence. They need ties. They’ve got to force their miserable little personalities on every single person they meet. The independent man kills them—because they don’t exist within him and that’s the only form of existence they know. Notice the malignant kind of resentment against any idea that propounds independence. Notice the malice toward an independent man.

- Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

The history of Kurdistan doesn’t just tell us why it hasn’t become independent so far. It also helps to make the case for Kurdistan’s independence. It is a desire founded, not just on some passing modern whim in that direction, or on spurious claims to natural and obvious borders, but on a sustained historical focus and desire by its people, on pre-existing promises, on the need for protection from the kind of atrocities that have historically been perpetrated against the Kurds, and on the rather artificial way in which Kurdistan has been denied its existence in the past.

- Davan Yahya Khalil

Without being an independent individual, without having an independent mind, you become nothing more than a trivial slave or an obscure shadow!

- Mehmet Murat ildan

To make a real independent film where the filmmaker is in charge creatively, one must sacrifice personal, financial, and physical well-being.

- Mark Polish, The Declaration of Independent Filmmaking: An Insider's Guide to Making Movies Outside of Hollywood

A free man can live on fish.Independence is better than meat

- Halldór Laxness, Independent People

We talk of independence. No man is independent. We are all interdependent; and we shall only rise as we carry others with us, and as we are assisted by others.

- James E. Talmage, A Beginner's Guide to Talmage

Talking about independence makes me wonder, Who is truly independent in this world? A farmer who grows food is dependent on a baker, a barber, a doctor, and so on. A doctor is dependent on other people of different professions in order to survive. I am dependent and will be dependent on certain caregivers and therapists. Those caregivers and therapists need people like me to earn their bread and butter and draw their salaries. So no one is doing any favors when choosing whatever his means of livelihood is.

- Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadhyay, How Can I Talk If My Lips Don't Move: Inside My Autistic Mind

Independence that has declared its ‘independence’ from the sure and certain compass of sound morals is nothing more than rogue greed having scantily dressed itself in the garb of independence while running off the cliff of anarchy.

- Craig D. Lounsbrough

In part, that's because when we delay marriage, it's not just women who become independent. It's also men, who, like women, learn to clothe and feed themselves, to clean their homes iron their shirts and pack their own suitcases.

- Rebecca Traister, All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation

He saw in happiness the seeds of independence, and in independence the seeds of revolt.

- Mervyn Peake, Titus Groan