Tiān gāo, huángdì yuǎn
Heaven is high and the emperor is far away
Is one of my favorite.
Another is the a misattributed quote:
Les hommes ne seront jamais libres tant que le dernier roi ne sera pas étranglé avec les entrailles du dernier prêtre.
Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.
Though the apparent original is good too.
Je ne veux ni donner ni recevoir de lois.
Et ses mains ourdiraient les entrailles du prêtre,
Au défaut d'un cordon pour étrangler les rois.
I seek neither to rule nor to serve.
And its hands would weave the entrails of the priest,
For the lack of a cord with which to strangle kings.
The second line from the US declaration of indpenedce is a banger too:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
John Brown's:
I cannot remember a night so dark as to have hindered the coming day.
Is also really good.