Motivational Quotes

Freedom

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

- Voltaire

Best Quotes about Freedom

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

Voltaire

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

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

Blum, Leon

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

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

Richards, Mary Caroline

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

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

Pascal, Blaise

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

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

Washington, George

10.

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

Yevtushenko, Yevgeny

11.

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

12.

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

Sartre, Jean-Paul

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

Dyer, Wayne

16.

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

17.

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

Adams, John

18.

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.

19.

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

Drummond, William

20.

Bondage is... subjection to external influences and internal negative thoughts and attitudes.

Stone, W. Clement

21.

Freedom is the most contagious virus known to man.

Humphrey, Hubert H.

22.

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.

23.

Marks on paper are free -- free speech -- press -- pictures all go together I suppose.

O'Keeffe, Georgia

24.

The fly that touches honey cannot use it's wings; so too the soul that clings to spiritual sweetness ruins it's freedom and hinders contemplation.

Aurobindo, Ghose

25.

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

26.

In the light of his vision he has found his freedom: his thoughts are peace, his words are peace and his work is peace.

Dhammapada

27.

The very aim and end of our institutions is just this: that we may thing what we like and say what we think.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

28.

Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently.

Luxemburg, Rosa

29.

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

30.

There is no liberation without labor... and there is no freedom which is free.

Sahib, The Siri Singh

31.

This is America. You can do anything here.

Turner, Robert E.

32.

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

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De

33.

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

Hoover, Herbert Clark

34.

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

Stevenson, Adlai E.

35.

Democracy arose from men's thinking that if they are equal in any respect, they are equal absolutely.

Aristotle

36.

How does the Meadow flower its bloom unfold? Because the lovely little flower is free down to its root, and in that freedom bold.

Wordsworth, William

37.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

38.

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

Epictetus

39.

Until economic freedom is attained for everybody, there can be no real freedom for anybody.

La Follette, Suzanne

40.

Freedom begins as we become conscious of it.

Howard, Vernon

41.

He that is kind is free, though he is a slave; he that is evil is a slave, though he be a king.

Augustine, St.

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

45.

Freedom is just chaos with better lighting.

Foster, Alan Dean

46.

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.

47.

Liberty is one of the most precious gifts which heaven has bestowed on man; with it we cannot compare the treasures which the earth contains or the sea conceals; for liberty, as for honor, we can and ought to risk our lives; and, on for the other hand, captivity is the greatest evil that can befall man.

Cervantes, Miguel De

48.

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

49.

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

Orwell, George

50.

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