Quotes about freedom

The basic test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in what we are free not to do.

— Eric Hoffer

There can be no real freedom without the freedom to fail.

— Eric Hoffer

Freedom is the open window through which pours the sunlight of the human spirit and human dignity.

— Herbert Clark Hoover

We are free to yield to truth.

— Horace

Who then is free? The one who wisely is lord of themselves, who neither poverty, death or captivity terrify, who is strong to resist his appetites and shun honors, and is complete in themselves smooth and round like a globe.

— Horace

Who then is free? The wise man who can govern himself.

— Horace

Freedom begins as we become conscious of it.

— Vernon Howard

We clearly realize that freedom's inner kingdom cannot be touched by exterior attacks.

— Vernon Howard

American freedom consists largely in talking nonsense.

— Edgar Watson Howe

Freedom is a condition of mind, and the best way to secure it is to breed it.

— Elbert Hubbard

When we lose the right to be different, we lose the privilege to be free.

— Charles Evans Hughes

Liberation is not deliverance.

— Victor Hugo

Freedom is but the possibility of a various and indefinite activity; while government, or the exercise of dominion, is a single, yet real activity. The longing for freedom, therefore, is at first only too frequently suggested by the deep-felt consciousness of its absence.

— Karl Wilhelm Von Humboldt

Freedom is the most contagious virus known to man.

— Hubert H. Humphrey

A forest bird never wants a cage.

— Henrik Ibsen

Only necessity understood, and bondage to the highest is identical with true freedom.

— William James

The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object.

— Thomas Jefferson

If we catch a glimpse of freedom, we wish to possess it; if we catch a glimpse of death, we want nothing to do with it. One we cannot have, the other we cannot avoid.

— Jeremy P. Johnson

The clash of ideas is the sound of freedom.

— Lady Bird Johnson

All theory is against freedom of the will; all experience for it.

— Samuel Johnson

Set me free from evil passions, and heal my heart of all inordinate affections; that being inwardly cured and thoroughly cleansed, I may be made fit to love, courageous to suffer, steady to persevere.

— Thomas Kempis

In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility -- I welcome it.

— John F. Kennedy

The unity of freedom has never relied on uniformity of opinion.

— John F. Kennedy

The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender, or submission.

— John F. Kennedy

The free way of life proposes ends, but it does not prescribe means.

— Robert F. Kennedy

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

— King Jr. Martin Luther

When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of that old Negro spiritual, Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

— King Jr. Martin Luther

The Negro needs the white man to free him from his fears. The white man needs the Negro to free him from his guilt.

— King Jr. Martin Luther

There are two freedoms -- the false, where a man is free to do what he likes; the true, where he is free to do what he ought.

— Charles Kingsley

All we have of freedom -- all we use or know -- this our fathers bought for us, long and long ago.

— Rudyard Kipling

Freedom and love go together. Love is not a reaction. If I love you because you love me, that is mere trade, a thing to be bought in the market; it is not love. To love is not to ask anything in return, not even to feel that you are giving something- and it is only such love that can know freedom.

— Jiddu Krishnamurti

Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose.

— Kris Kristofferson

Until economic freedom is attained for everybody, there can be no real freedom for anybody.

— Suzanne La Follette

Men are free when they are in a living homeland, not when they are straying and breaking away. Men are free when they are obeying some deep, inward voice of religious belief. Obeying from within. Men are free when they belong to a living, organic, believing community, active in fulfilling some unfulfilled, perhaps unrealized purpose. Not when they are escaping to some wild west. The most unfree souls go west, and shout of freedom. Men are freest when they are most unconscious of freedom. The shout is a rattling of chains, always was.

— D. H. Lawrence

It is true that liberty is precious. So precious that it must be rationed.

— Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: Freedom for slave owners.

— Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

When I was a boy I used to do what my father wanted. Now I have to do what my boy wants. My problem is: When am I going to do what I want?

— Samuel Levenson

What most clearly characterizes true freedom and its true employment is its misemployment.

— Georg C. Lichtenberg

Freedom is the last, best hope of earth.

— Abraham Lincoln

Freedom is not the right to do what we want, but what we ought. Let us have faith that right makes might and in that faith let us; to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.

— Abraham Lincoln

The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty.

— Abraham Lincoln

Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves.

— Abraham Lincoln

Do not destroy that immortal emblem of humanity, the Declaration of Independence.

— Abraham Lincoln

A useful definition of liberty is obtained only by seeking the principle of liberty in the main business of human life, that is to say, in the process by which men educate their responses and learn to control their environment.

— Walter Lippmann

If I have freedom in my love, And in my soul am free, -- Angels alone that soar above, Enjoy such liberty.

— Richard Lovelace

Freedom is hunting, feeding, danger; that, that is freedom --that it is which makes the veins to swell, the breast to heave and glowaye, that is freedom, --that is pleasure --life!

— Marie Lovell

Freedom is the only law which genius knows.

— James Russell Lowell

Mankind has a free will; but it is free to milk cows and to build houses, nothing more.

— Martin Luther

Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently.

— Rosa Luxemburg

No man is entitled to the blessings of freedom unless he be vigilant in its preservation.

— Douglas Macarthur

A hot bath! I cry, as I sit down in it! Again as I lie flat, a hot bath! How exquisite a pleasure, how luxurious, fervid and flagrant a consolation for the rigors, the austerities, the renunciation of the day.

— Rose Macaulay

What is freedom? Freedom is the right to choose: the right to create for oneself the alternatives of choice.

— Archibald Macleish

Freedom, then, lies only in our innate human capacity to choose between different sorts of bondage, bondage to desire or self esteem, or bondage to the light that lightens all our olives.

— Sri Madhava

I stand for freedom of expression, doing what you believe in, and going after your dreams.

— Madonna

He is free... who knows how to keep in his own hands the power to decide.

— Salvador De Madriaga

Man in general, if reduced to himself, is too wicked to be free.

— Joseph De Maistre

If you're not ready to die for it, put the word freedom out of your vocabulary.

— Malcolm X

Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you're a man, you take it.

— Malcolm X

The only way we'll get freedom for ourselves is to identify ourselves with every oppressed people in the world. We are blood brothers to the people of Brazil, Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba -- yes Cuba too.

— Malcolm X

You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.

— Malcolm X

When a person places the proper value on freedom, there is nothing under the sun that he will not do to acquire that freedom. Whenever you hear a man saying he wants freedom, but in the next breath he is going to tell you what he won't do to get it, or what he doesn't believe in doing in order to get it, he doesn't believe in freedom. A man who believes in freedom will do anything under the sun to acquire... or preserve his freedom.

— Malcolm X

You don't have to be a man to fight for freedom. All you have to do is to be an intelligent human being.

— Malcolm X

I believe in a religion that believes in freedom. Any time I have to accept a religion that won't let me fight a battle for my people, I say to hell with that religion.

— Malcolm X

Let freedom reign. The sun never set on so glorious a human achievement.

— Nelson Mandela

There are two good things in life -- freedom of thought and freedom of action.

— W. Somerset Maugham

If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom: and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that, too.

— W. Somerset Maugham

Any nation that thinks more of its ease and comfort than its freedom will soon lose its freedom; and the ironical thing about it is that it will lose its ease and comfort too.

— W. Somerset Maugham

Freedom is man's capacity to take a hand in his own development. It is our capacity to mold ourselves.

— Rollo May

It requires greater courage to preserve inner freedom, to move on in one's inward journey into new realms, than to stand defiantly for outer freedom. It is often easier to play the martyr, as it is to be rash in battle.

— Rollo May

It is easy to believe in freedom of speech for those with whom we agree.

— Leo Mckern

We must be willing to pay a price for freedom.

— H. L. Mencken

The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good, in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it.

— John Stuart Mill

None can love freedom heartily, but good men... the rest love not freedom, but license.

— John Milton

Countries are well cultivated, not as they are fertile, but as they are free.

— Charles De Montesquieu

There's something contagious about demanding freedom.

— Robin Morgan

Freedom! Equality! Brotherhood!

— French Revolution Motto

How is freedom measured, in individuals as in nations? By the resistance which has to be overcome, by the effort it costs to stay aloft. One would have to seek the highest type of free man where the greatest resistance is constantly being overcome: five steps from tyranny, near the threshold of the danger of servitude.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Yet we can maintain a free society only if we recognize that in a free society no one can win all the time. No one can have his own way all the time, and no one is right all the time.

— Richard M. Nixon

If people have to choose between freedom and sandwiches, they will take sandwiches.

— Lord Boyd Orr

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.

— George Orwell

I sometimes think that the price of liberty is not so much eternal vigilance as eternal dirt.

— George Orwell

We fight not to enslave, but to set a country free, and to make room upon the earth for honest men to live in.

— Thomas Paine

Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.

— Thomas Paine

It is not good to be too free. It is not good to have everything one wants.

— Blaise Pascal

Freedom is the sure possession of those alone who have the courage to defend it.

— Pericles

Is any man free except the one who can pass his life as he pleases?

— Persius

The sovereignty of one's self over one's self is called Liberty.

— Albert Pike

A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him.

— Ezra Pound

Freedom is an internal achievement rather than an external adjustment.

— Adam Clayton Powell

The saving man becomes the free man.

— Chinese Proverb

I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy -- but that could change.

— Dan Quayle

Freedom prospers when religion is vibrant and the rule of law under God is acknowledged.

— Ronald Reagan

It is for each of us freely to choose whom we shall serve, and find in that obedience our freedom.

— Mary Caroline Richards

We, and all others who believe in freedom as deeply as we do, would rather die on our feet than live on our knees.

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

We look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. The first is freedom of speech and expression. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way. The third is freedom from want. The fourth is freedom from fear.

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

The English think they are free. They are free only during the election of members of parliament.

— Jean Jacques Rousseau

Man is born free, yet he is everywhere in chains.

— Jean Jacques Rousseau

Free people, remember this maxim: We may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is once lost.

— Jean Jacques Rousseau