Motivational Quotes

Freedom

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

- Rousseau, Jean Jacques

Best Quotes about Freedom

Freedom consists not in refusing to recognize anything above us, but in respecting something which is above us; for by respecting it, we raise ourselves to it, and, by our very acknowledgment, prove that we bear within ourselves what is higher, and are worthy to be on a level with it

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

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

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

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

Henry, Patrick

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

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

Hoover, Herbert Clark

We are all of us the worse for too much liberty.

Terence

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

Malcolm X

To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive.

Robert Louis Stevenson

10.

We must determine whether we really want freedom -- whether we are willing to dare the perils of... rebirth... For we never take a step forward without surrendering something that we may have held dear, without dying to that which has been.

Hanson, Virginia

11.

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

Orwell, George

12.

Women, like men, ought to have their youth so glutted with freedom they hate the very idea of freedom.

Sackville-West, Vita

13.

Every emancipation has in it the seeds of a new slavery, and every truth easily becomes a lie.

Stone, I. F.

14.

The free man is he who does not fear to go to the end of his thought.

Blum, Leon

15.

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

Albert Einstein

16.

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

Milton, John

17.

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

James, William

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

Baruch, Bernard M.

21.

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

Rushdie, Salman

22.

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

23.

In America the majority raises formidable barriers around the liberty of opinion; within these barriers an author may write what he pleases, but woe to him if he goes beyond them.

Tocqueville, Alexis De

24.

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

Thomas Jefferson

25.

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

26.

You can only be free if I am free.

Darrow, Clarence

27.

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

Voltaire

28.

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.

29.

Emancipation from the bondage of the soil is no freedom for the tree.

Tagore, Rabindranath

30.

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

31.

The bigger the information media, the less courage and freedom they allow. Bigness means weakness.

Sevareid, Eric

32.

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

33.

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

Eisenhower, Dwight D.

34.

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

Chomsky, Noam

35.

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

36.

So free we seem, so fettered we are!

Browning, Robert

37.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

38.

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

Lawana Blackwell

39.

Freedom is an internal achievement rather than an external adjustment.

Powell, Adam Clayton

40.

It is my right to be uncommon. For I do not choose to be a common man, If I can, I seek opportunity. I do not wish to be a kept citizen, humbled and dulled by having the government look after me. I choose to take the calculated risk, to dream, to build, to fail or succeed. I choose not to barter incentive for a dole, I prefer the challenges of life to a guaranteed existence, the thrill of fulfillment to the state calm of Utopia. I will not trade my freedom for beneficence nor my dignity for a handout.

41.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

42.

The basis of a democratic state is liberty.

Aristotle

43.

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

Silesius, Angelus

44.

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.

45.

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

Clinton, Bill

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.

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

Ewer, W. N.

48.

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