Motivational Quotes

Freedom

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

- Byron, Lord

Best Quotes about Freedom

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

My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.

Adlai E. Stevenson Jr.

Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.

Sartre, Jean-Paul

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

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

There's something contagious about demanding freedom.

Morgan, Robin

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.

Maugham, W. Somerset

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

Freedom is the by-product of economic surplus.

Bevan, Aneurin

If you want to be free, there is but one way; it is to guarantee an equally full measure of liberty to all your neighbors. There is no other.

Carl Schurz

10.

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

11.

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

Pascal, Blaise

12.

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

Adams, John

13.

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

Adler, Mortimer J.

14.

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.

15.

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

Persius

16.

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

Voltaire

17.

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

Hill, Christopher

18.

Liberty is a different kind of pain from prison.

Eliot, T. S.

19.

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

Malcolm X

20.

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.

Lawrence, D. H.

21.

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.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

22.

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.

Thomas Jefferson

23.

Freedom is not being a slave to any circumstance, to any constraint, to any chance; it means compelling Fortune to enter the lists on equal terms.

Seneca

24.

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

Richards, Mary Caroline

25.

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

Luther, Martin

26.

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

27.

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

Ewer, W. N.

28.

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

Mckern, Leo

29.

This is America. You can do anything here.

Turner, Robert E.

30.

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.

Maugham, W. Somerset

31.

It is especially important to encourage unorthodox thinking when the situation is critical: At such moments every new word and fresh thought is more precious than gold. Indeed, people must not be deprived of the right to think their own thoughts.

Yeltsin, Boris

32.

Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.

Albert Einstein

33.

A slave is a free man if he is content with his lot; a free man is a slave if he seeks more than that.

34.

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.

Kingsley, Charles

35.

The grass is always greener where the fence isn't.

36.

A forest bird never wants a cage.

Ibsen, Henrik

37.

Freedom is the opportunity to make decisions...

Hildebrand, Kenneth

38.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

39.

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

James, William

40.

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.

Friedman, Milton

41.

How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.

Kierkegaard, S°ren

42.

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

43.

Only law can give us freedom.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

44.

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

Madriaga, Salvador De

45.

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.

Kempis, Thomas

46.

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.

Colton, Charles Caleb

47.

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

48.

Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.

Washington, George

49.

So free we seem, so fettered we are!

Browning, Robert

50.

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

Maistre, Joseph De