Motivational Quotes

Freedom

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

- Lord Acton

Best Quotes about Freedom

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

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

Hamilton, Edith

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

Lenin

Freedom is knowing who you really are.

Thomson, Linda

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

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.

Johnson, Jeremy P.

So far as a person thinks; they are free.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

Malcolm X

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.

Blount, Wilton M.

10.

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.

11.

Freedom is the last, best hope of earth.

Lincoln, Abraham

12.

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

13.

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

Eisenhower, Dwight D.

14.

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.

Adams, John

15.

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

Adams, John

16.

If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.

Chomsky, Noam

17.

American freedom consists largely in talking nonsense.

Howe, Edgar Watson

18.

Freedom begins as we become conscious of it.

Howard, Vernon

19.

Because you are in control of your life. Don't ever forget that. You are what you are because of the conscious and subconscious choices you have made.

Barbara Hall

20.

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

Johnson, Samuel

21.

Freedom exists only with power.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

22.

He who is brave is free.

Seneca

23.

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

Reagan, Ronald

24.

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

25.

They want to be free and they do not know how to be just.

Sieyes, Abbe

26.

The first principle of a free society is an untrammeled flow of words in an open forum.

Stevenson, Adlai E.

27.

Freedom is only granted us that obedience may be more perfect.

Ruskin, John

28.

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

Mandela, Nelson

29.

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

Covey, Stephen R.

30.

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.

31.

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.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

Drummond, William

35.

The primacy of the word, basis of the human psyche, that has in our age been used for mind-bending persuasion and brain-washing pulp, disgraced by Gobbles and debased by advertising copy, remains a force for freedom that flies out between all bars.

Gordimer, Nadine

36.

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

Kipling, Rudyard

37.

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

Malcolm X

38.

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

Epictetus

39.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

40.

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

Sartre, Jean-Paul

41.

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

James, William

42.

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

Thomas Jefferson

43.

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

44.

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

Bellin, Gita

45.

A people which is able to say everything becomes able to do everything.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

Henry, Patrick

49.

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)

50.

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