Quotes about freedom

Liberty, according to my metaphysics is a self-determining power in an intellectual agent. It implies thought and choice and power.

— John Adams

Yesterday the greatest question was decided which ever was debated in America; and a greater perhaps never was, nor will be, decided among men. A resolution was passed without one dissenting colony, that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States.

— John Adams

When people talk of the freedom of writing, speaking or thinking I cannot choose but laugh. No such thing ever existed. No such thing now exists; but I hope it will exist. But it must be hundreds of years after you and I shall write and speak no more.

— John Adams

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

— John Adams

Freedom is the emancipation from the arbitrary rule of other men.

— Mortimer J. Adler

When we were told that by freedom we understood free enterprise, we did very little to dispel this monstrous falsehood. Wealth and economic well-being, we have asserted, are the fruits of freedom, while we should have been the first to know that this kind of happiness has been an unmixed blessing only in this country, and it is a minor blessing compared with the truly political freedoms, such as freedom of speech and thought, of assembly and association, even under the best conditions.

— Hannah Arendt

Democracy arose from men's thinking that if they are equal in any respect, they are equal absolutely.

— Aristotle

Within yourself deliverance must be searched for, because each man makes his own prison.

— Sir Edwin Arnold

A nation which makes the final sacrifice for life and freedom does not get beaten.

— Kemal Ataturk

He that is kind is free, though he is a slave; he that is evil is a slave, though he be a king.

— St. Augustine

The fly that touches honey cannot use it's wings; so too the soul that clings to spiritual sweetness ruins it's freedom and hinders contemplation.

— Ghose Aurobindo

Any honest examination of the national life proves how far we are from the standard of human freedom with which we began. The recovery of this standard demands of everyone who loves this country a hard look at himself, for the greatest achievements must begin somewhere, and they always begin with the person. If we are not capable of this examination, we may yet become one of the most distinguished and monumental failures in the history of nations.

— James Baldwin

The oppression of any people for opinion's sake has rarely had any other effect than to fix those opinions deeper, and render them more important.

— Hosea Ballou

Freedom all solace to man gives: He lives at ease that freely lives.

— John Barbour

What a curious phenomenon it is that you can get men to die for the liberty of the world who will not make the little sacrifice that is needed to free themselves from their own individual bondage.

— Bruce Barton

The greatest blessing of our democracy is freedom. But in the last analysis, our only freedom is the freedom to discipline ourselves.

— Bernard M. Baruch

In the last analysis, our only freedom is the freedom to discipline ourselves.

— Bernard M. Baruch

As for freedom, it will soon cease to exist in any shape or form. Living will depend upon absolute obedience to a strict set of arrangements, which it will no longer be possible to transgress. The air traveler is not free. In the future, life's passengers will be even less so: they will travel through their lives fastened to their (corporate) seats.

— Jean Baudrillard

True obedience is true freedom.

— Henry Ward Beecher

There are always risks in freedom. The only risk in bondage is breaking free.

— Gita Bellin

Liberty is being free from the things we don't like in order to be slaves of the things we do like.

— Ernest Benn

Freedom is the by-product of economic surplus.

— Aneurin Bevan

Governing sense, mind and intellect, intent on liberation, free from desire, fear and anger, the sage is forever free.

— Bhagavad Gita

It is our belief that if people are set free to express themselves to the fullest, their accomplishments will be far beyond their dreams, and they will not only contribute to the growth of the company, but will also be more useful citizens and contribute to the society at large.

— Wilton M. Blount

The free man is he who does not fear to go to the end of his thought.

— Leon Blum

Liberty is to the collective body, what health is to every individual body. Without health no pleasure can be tasted by man; without liberty, no happiness can be enjoyed by society.

— Henry Bolingbroke

The cause of freedom is the cause of God.

— Samuel Bowles

It will free man from his remaining chains, the chains of gravity which still tie him to this planet. It will open to him the gates of heaven.

— Wernher Von Braun

Freedom is poetry, taking liberties with words, breaking the rules of normal speech, violating common sense. Freedom is violence.

— Norman O. Brown

Whatever the price, identify it now. What will you have to go through to get where you want to be? There is a price you can pay to be free of the situation once and for all. It may be a fantastic price or a tiny one -- but there is a price.

— Harry Browne

So free we seem, so fettered we are!

— Robert Browning

None who have always been free can understand the terrible fascinating power of the hope of freedom to those who are not free.

— Pearl S. Buck

When ever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither is safe.

— Edmund Burke

If we wish to free ourselves from enslavement, we must choose freedom and the responsibility this entails.

— Leo Buscaglia

Yet, Freedom! yet thy banner, torn, but flying, streams like the thunderstorm against the wind.

— Lord Byron

Without freedom, no art; art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others. But without freedom, no socialism either, except the socialism of the gallows.

— Albert Camus

The only conception of freedom I can have is that of the prisoner or the individual in the midst of the State. The only one I know is freedom of thought and action.

— Albert Camus

Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better.

— Albert Camus

For me, the principal fact of life is the free mind. For good and evil, man is a free creative spirit. This produces the very queer world we live in, a world in continuous creation and therefore continuous change and insecurity. A perpetually new and lively world, but a dangerous one, full of tragedy and injustice. A world in everlasting conflict between the new idea and the old allegiances, new arts and new inventions against the old establishment.

— Joyce Cary

Liberty is one of the most precious gifts which heaven has bestowed on man; with it we cannot compare the treasures which the earth contains or the sea conceals; for liberty, as for honor, we can and ought to risk our lives; and, on for the other hand, captivity is the greatest evil that can befall man.

— Miguel De Cervantes

Freedom suppressed and again regained bites with keener fangs than freedom never endangered.

— Marcus T. Cicero

What we want is not freedom but its appearances. It is for these simulacra that man has always striven. And since freedom, as has been said, is no more than a sensation, what difference is there between being free and believing ourselves free?

— E. M. Cioran

Freedom Know this, that every man is free To choose his life and what he'll be. For this eternal truth is given, God will force no man to heaven. He'll call, persuade, direct aright, Bless with wisdom, love, and light; In nameless ways be good and kind, But never force the human mind.

— William C. Clegg

Just as war is freedom's cost, disagreement is freedom's privilege.

— Bill Clinton

The progress of freedom depends more upon the maintenance of peace, the spread of commerce, and the diffusion of education, than upon the labors of cabinets and foreign offices.

— Richard Cobden

Perfect freedom is reserved for the man who lives by his own work and in that work does what he wants to do.

— Robin G. Collingwood

Tyrants have not yet discovered any chains that can fetter the mind.

— Charles Caleb Colton

Liberty will not descend to a people; a people must raise themselves to liberty; it is a blessing that must be earned before it can be enjoyed.

— Charles Caleb Colton

Every general increase of freedom is accompanied by some degeneracy, attributable to the same causes as the freedom.

— Charles Horton Cooley

No matter what a man does, he is not fully sane or human unless there is a spirit of freedom in him, a soul unconfined by purpose and larger than the practicable world.

— Charles Horton Cooley

People who exercise their embryonic freedom day after day, little by little, expand that freedom. People who do not will find that it withers until they are literally being lived. They are acting out scripts written by parents, associates and society.

— Stephen R. Covey

Our ultimate freedom is the right and power to decide how anybody or anything outside ourselves will affect us.

— Stephen R. Covey

You can protect your liberties in this world only by protecting the other man's freedom. You can be free only if I am free.

— Clarence Darrow

You can only be free if I am free.

— Clarence Darrow

If you think you're free, there's no escape possible.

— Ram Dass

The traveler has reached the end of the journey! In the freedom of the infinite he is free from all sorrows, the fetters that bound him are thrown away, and the burning fever of life is no more.

— Dhammapada

In the light of his vision he has found his freedom: his thoughts are peace, his words are peace and his work is peace.

— Dhammapada

No man has received from nature the right to give orders to others. Freedom is a gift from heaven, and every individual of the same species has the right to enjoy it as soon as he is in enjoyment of his reason.

— Denis Diderot

To be what no one ever was, to be what everyone has been: Freedom is the mean of those extremes that fence all effort in.

— Mark Van Doren

He who dares not (reason), is a slave.

— William Drummond

We are living in the excesses of freedom. Just take a look at 42nd Street an Broadway.

— William J. Durant

Freedom means you are unobstructed in living your life as you choose. Anything less is a form of slavery.

— Wayne Dyer

There is nothing more wonderful than freedom of speech.

— Ilya G. Ehrenburg

History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.

— Dwight D. Eisenhower

Only our individual faith in freedom can keep us free.

— Dwight D. Eisenhower

Liberty is a different kind of pain from prison.

— T. S. Eliot

Liberty is slow fruit. It is never cheap; it is made difficult because freedom is the accomplishment and perfectness of man.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

For what avail the plough or sail, Or land or life, if freedom fail?

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

So far as a person thinks; they are free.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nothing is more disgusting than the crowing about liberty by slaves, as most men are, and the flippant mistaking for freedom of some paper preamble like a Declaration of Independence, or the statute right to vote, by those who have never dared to think or to act.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

No man is free who is not a master of himself.

— Epictetus

Is freedom anything else than the right to live as we wish? Nothing else.

— Epictetus

Freedom is the right to live as we wish.

— Epictetus

No one is truly free, they are a slave to wealth, fortune, the law, or other people restraining them from acting according to their will.

— Euripides

No one who lives in error is free.

— Euripides

I gave my life for freedom --this I know: For those who bade me fight had told me so.

— W. N. Ewer

Ultimately we know deeply that the other side of fear is a freedom.

— Marilyn Ferguson

Freedom is just chaos with better lighting.

— Alan Dean Foster

To be thrown upon one's own resources, is to be cast into the very lap of fortune; for our faculties then undergo a development and display an energy of which they were previously unsusceptible.

— Benjamin Franklin

A major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.

— Milton Friedman

Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err. It passes my comprehension how human beings, be they ever so experienced and able, can delight in depriving other human beings of that precious right.

— Mahatma Gandhi

The moment the slave resolves that he will no longer be a slave. His fetters fall... freedom and slavery are mental states.

— Mahatma Gandhi

Liberty is not merely a privilege to be conferred; it is a habit to be acquired.

— David Lloyd George

Liberty has restraints but no frontiers.

— David Lloyd George

You can muffle the drum, and you can loosen the strings of the lyre, but who shall command the skylark not to sing?

— Kahlil Gibran

There should be a sympathy with freedom, a desire to give it scope, founded not upon visionary ideas, but upon the long experience of many generations within the shores of this happy isle, that in freedom you lay the firmest foundations both of loyalty and order.

— William E. Gladstone

Freedom consists not in refusing to recognize anything above us, but in respecting something which is above us; for by respecting it, we raise ourselves to it, and, by our very acknowledgment, prove that we bear within ourselves what is higher, and are worthy to be on a level with it

— Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Only law can give us freedom.

— Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Yes! To this thought I hold with firm persistence; The last result of wisdom stamps it true; He only earns his freedom and existence Who daily conquers them anew.

— Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Freedom is fragile and must be protected. To sacrifice it, even as a temporary measure, is to betray it.

— Germaine Greer

When the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again.

— Edith Hamilton

We must determine whether we really want freedom -- whether we are willing to dare the perils of... rebirth... For we never take a step forward without surrendering something that we may have held dear, without dying to that which has been.

— Virginia Hanson

The greatest Glory of a free-born People, Is to transmit that Freedom to their Children.

— William Havard

The East knew and to the present day knows only that One is Free; the Greek and the Roman world, that some are free; the German World knows that All are free. The first political form therefore which we observe in History, is Despotism, the second Democracy and Aristocracy, the third, Monarchy.

— Georg Hegel

The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom.

— Georg Hegel

I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.

— William Ernest Henley

Perfect freedom is as necessary to the health and vigor of commerce as it is to the health and vigor of citizenship.

— Patrick Henry

Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty.

— Frank Herbert

Freedom is the opportunity to make decisions...

— Kenneth Hildebrand

Only very slowly and late have men come to realize that unless freedom is universal it is only extended privilege.

— Christopher Hill