Motivational Quotes

Freedom

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.

- Adams, John

Best Quotes about Freedom

If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.

Washington, George

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.

Ballou, Hosea

Where there is much freedom there is much error.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

Liberty is a different kind of pain from prison.

Eliot, T. S.

I know but one freedom and that is the freedom of the mind.

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De

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

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

Macleish, Archibald

Freedom exists only with power.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

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.

Covey, Stephen R.

10.

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

Adams, John

11.

In the truest sense, freedom cannot be bestowed; it must be achieved.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

12.

Free will is not the liberty to do whatever one likes, but the power of doing whatever one sees ought to be done, even in the very face of otherwise overwhelming impulse. There lies freedom, indeed.

13.

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

Mckern, Leo

14.

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

May, Rollo

15.

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

Pericles

16.

Freedom is just chaos with better lighting.

Foster, Alan Dean

17.

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.

Arendt, Hannah

18.

Freedom is the right to live as we wish.

Epictetus

19.

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

Luther, Martin

20.

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

Arnold, Sir Edwin

21.

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.

Camus, Albert

22.

We must be willing to pay a price for freedom.

Mencken, H. L.

23.

Liberty is the right to choose, freedom is the result of that choice.

24.

Liberty, then, about which so many volumes have been written is, when accurately defined, only the power of acting.

Voltaire

25.

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

Baruch, Bernard M.

26.

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.

Kennedy, John F.

27.

We are willing enough to praise freedom when she is safely tucked away in the past and cannot be a nuisance. In the present, amidst dangers whose outcome we cannot foresee, we get nervous about her, and admit censorship.

Forster, Edward M.

28.

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.

Doren, Mark Van

29.

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

Durant, William J.

30.

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

Richards, Mary Caroline

31.

He who is brave is free.

Seneca

32.

The clash of ideas is the sound of freedom.

Johnson, Lady Bird

33.

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

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

34.

We have confused the free with the free and easy.

Stevenson, Adlai E.

35.

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.

Baldwin, James

36.

Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.

Rushdie, Salman

37.

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

Persius

38.

While the State exists, there can be no freedom. When there is freedom there will be no State.

Lenin

39.

We who officially value freedom of speech above life itself seem to have nothing to talk about but the weather.

Ehrenreich, Barbara

40.

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.

Cobden, Richard

41.

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?

Cioran, E. M.

42.

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.

Madhava, Sri

43.

It is quite impossible to guarantee world peace. But is should be possible to guarantee world freedom.

44.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

45.

The higher one climbs on the spiritual ladder, the more they will grant others their own freedom, and give less interference to another's state of consciousness.

Twitchell, Paul

46.

It is hard to free fools from the chains they revere.

Voltaire

47.

It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.

Mark Twain

48.

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

49.

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

Byron, Lord

50.

We hold in our hands, the most precious gift of all: Freedom. The freedom to express our art. Our love. The freedom to be who we want to be. We are not going to give that freedom away and no one shall take it from us!

Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider