Motivational Quotes

Freedom

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

- Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

Best Quotes about Freedom

So far as a person thinks; they are free.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

A forest bird never wants a cage.

Ibsen, Henrik

The only way to make sure people you agree with can speak is to support the rights of people you don't agree with.

Norton, Eleanor Holmes

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.

Camus, Albert

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

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.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

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

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.

Hegel, Georg

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.

10.

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

Kipling, Rudyard

11.

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

12.

Freedom -- to walk free and own no superior.

Whitman, Walt

13.

True obedience is true freedom.

Beecher, Henry Ward

14.

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

Hill, Christopher

15.

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

16.

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

17.

Only that thing is free which exists by the necessities of its own nature, and is determined in its actions by itself alone.

Spinoza, Baruch (Benedict de)

18.

Patterning your life around other's opinions is nothing more than slavery.

Lawana Blackwell

19.

Freedom is the right to live as we wish.

Epictetus

20.

At no time is freedom of speech more precious than when a man hits his thumb with a hammer.

Lumsden, Marshall

21.

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.

Diderot, Denis

22.

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

Clinton, Bill

23.

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.

Barton, Bruce

24.

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

Orwell, George

25.

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

Eisenhower, Dwight D.

26.

The true character of liberty is independence, maintained by force.

Voltaire

27.

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

Pound, Ezra

28.

Freedom is the last, best hope of earth.

Lincoln, Abraham

29.

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

Adams, John

30.

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

31.

Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.

Lord Acton

32.

Liberty is a different kind of pain from prison.

Eliot, T. S.

33.

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

Orr, Lord Boyd

34.

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

35.

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.

Lincoln, Abraham

36.

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

37.

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

Adlai E. Stevenson Jr.

38.

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

Henry, Patrick

39.

He who is conceived in a cage, yearns for the cage.

Yevtushenko, Yevgeny

40.

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.

Cary, Joyce

41.

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?

Levenson, Samuel

42.

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

Albert Einstein

43.

Freedom is the by-product of economic surplus.

Bevan, Aneurin

44.

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

45.

By the will art thou lost, by the will art thou found, by the will art thou free, captive, and bound.

Silesius, Angelus

46.

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

Baruch, Bernard M.

47.

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

Horace

48.

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

Dyer, Wayne

49.

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

50.

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