Freedom
- Acceptance of dissent is the fundamental requirement of a free society.--Richard Royster
- All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.--Universal Declaration of Human Rights (U.N. Article 1.10 December 1948)
- Anything you strive to hold captive will hold you captive and if you desire freedom you must give freedom.--Peace Pilgrim
- A bird in the hand is a certainty, but a bird in the bush may sing.--Bret Harte
- Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.--Thomas Jefferson
- Democracy needs more free speech, for even the speech of foolish people is valuable if it serves to guarantee the right of the wise to talk.--David Cushman Coyle
- Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purpose is beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.--Louis Dembitz Brandeis
- The free man is he who does not fear to go to the end of his thought.--Leon Blum
- A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular.--Adlai Stevenson
- Free will is the power of choosing good and evil.--Origen
- Freedom, in childhood, may be the right to be totally self-centered. … But freedom in old age is the ability to be the best of the self I have developed during all those years.--Joan Chittister (The Gift of Years: Growing Older Gracefully)
- Freedom is fragile and must be protected. To sacrifice it, even as a temporary measure, is to betray it.--Gennaine Greer
- Freedom is man's capacity to take a hand in his own development. It is our capacity to mold ourselves.--Rollo May
- Freedom is not the absence of commitments, but the ability to choose - and commit myself to - what is best for me.--Paulo Coelho (The Zahir)
- Freedom comes in individual packages.--Shirley Boone (One Woman's Liberation)
- Freedom is not procured by a full enjoyment of what is desired, but by controlling the desire.--Epictetus (Discources)
- Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err. It passes my comprehension how human beings, be they ever so experienced and able, can delight in depriving other human beings of that precious right.--Ghandi, 1931
- Freedom is the opportunity to make decisions...--Kenneth Hildebrand
- Freedom lies in being bold.--Robert Frost
- Freedom means the opportunity to be what we never thought we would be.--Daniel Boorstin
- Freedom of speech and freedom of action are meaningless without freedom to think. And there is no freedom of thought without doubt.--Bergen Evans
- Freedom unexercised may become freedom forfeited.--Margaret Chase Smith
- Give me your tired, your poor;
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.--Emma Lazarus
- Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle: Some things are within our control, and some things are not. It is only after you have faced up to this fundamental rule and learned to distinguish between what you can and can't control that inner tranquility and outer effectiveness become possible.--Epictetus
- He does not seem to me to be a free man who does not sometimes do nothing.--Cicero
- He is great enough that is his own master.--Joseph Hall
- He who is brave is free.--Seneca
- He who would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.--Thomas Paine
- Humility, forgiveness, clarity of purpose and choosing love as a first response - these are the dynamics of true freedom in life.--Michael Rawls
- I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.--Robert A. Heinlein (Stranger in a Strange Land)
- I am old enough to know that victory is often a thing deferred, and rarely at the summit of courage... What is at the summit of courage, I think, is freedom. The freedom that comes with the knowledge that no earthly think can break you.--Paula Giddings
- I believe in liberty for all men: the space to stretch their arms and their souls; the right to breathe and the right to vote, the freedom to choose their friends, enjoy the sunshine, and ride on the railroads, uncursed by color; thinking, dreaming, working as they will in a kingdom of beauty and love.--W. E. B. Du Bois
- I had reasoned this out in my mind, there was two things I had a right to, liberty and death. If I could not have one, I would have the other, for no man should take me alive.--Harriet Tubman
- I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon laws and upon courts. These are false hopes; believe me, these are false hopes. Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it...--Learned Hand
- I think it only makes sense to seek out and identify structures of authority, hierarchy, and domination in every aspect of life, and to challenge them; unless a justification for them can be given, they are illegitimate, and should be dismantled, to increase the scope of human freedom.--Noam Chomsky (Language and Politics)
- I was determined to achieve the total freedom that our history lessons taught us we were entitled to, no matter what the sacrifice.--Rosa Parks
- I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.--Thomas Jefferson
- If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.--John Stuart Mill
- If being wealthy is taken to mean having the means to satisfy one's every want, all but the very poor can become rich as thou at a single stroke of a magician's wand, simply by ceasing to want more than is really necessary for sustaining life. By being content with little and not giving a rap for what the neighbours think, one can attain a very large measure of freedom, shedding care and worry in a trice.--John Blofeld
- If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.--George Orwell (intro to Animal Farm)
- If one lets fear or hate or anger take possession of the mind, they become self-forged chains.--Helen Gahagan Douglas
- If you love something, set it free.
If it returns, it's yours forever.
If it doesn't it was never your to begin with.--Anonymous
- In any free society, the conflict between social conformity and individual liberty is permanent.--Kathleen Norris
- In every country where man is free to think and to speak, differences of opinion will arise from difference of perception, and the imperfection of reason; but these differences when permitted, as in this happy country, to purify themselves by free discussion, are but as passing clouds overspreading our land transiently and leaving our horizon more bright and serene.--Thomas Jefferson
- In order to inherit your freedom, you need to go towards it. You have to claim your own freedom before it becomes yours. --John O'Donohue (Eternal Echoes: Celtic Reflections on Our Yearning to Belong)
- It's as if we think liberation a fixed quantity, that there is only so much to go around. That an individual or community is liberated at the expense of another: When we view liberation as a scarce resource, something only a precious few of us can have, we stifle our potential, our creativity, our genius for living, learning and growing.--Andrea Canaan
- Knowledge sets us free, art sets us free. A great library is freedom.--Ursula K. Le Guin (The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination)
- Liberty means responsibility. That's why most men dread it.--Antonio de Mendoza
- Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.--Mark Twain
- Man is not the creature of circumstances, circumstances are the creatures of men. We are free agents, and man is more powerful than matter.--Benjamin Disraeli
- The moment we choose to love, we begin to move against domination, against oppression. The moment we choose to love, we begin to move toward freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others.--bell hooks
- Most men, after a little freedom, have preferred authority with the consoling assurances and the economy of effort it brings.--Walter Lippmann (A Preface to Morals)
- Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.--William Pitt
- Next in importance to freedom and justice, is popular education, without which neither justice nor freedom can be permanently maintained.--James A. Garfield
- No dictator, no invader, can hold an imprisoned population by force of arms forever. There is no greater power in the universe than the need for freedom. Against that power, governments and tyrants and armies cannot stand. The Centauri learned this lesson once. We will teach it to them again. Though it take a thousand years, we will be free.--J. Michael Straczynski ("The Long Twilight Struggle" Babylon 5)
- No man is free who is not master of himself.--Epictetus
- Nobody's free until everybody's free.--Fannie Lou Hamer (in This Little Light of Mine by Mills)
- None can love freedom heartily but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license.--John Milton
- Now the real beginnings of the "freedom" which we have discussed for many years--and a heady freedom it is, coming after so many years of reaching outward for it--to finally discover all I had to do was reach inward, and it was there waiting all the time for me!--Alisa Wells
- O how sweet it is to enjoy life,
Living in honesty and strength!
And wisdom is sweet,
And freedom.--Buddha
- Once a man has tasted freedom he will never be content to be a slave. That is why I believe that this frightfulness we see everywhere today is only temporary. Tomorrow will be better for as long as America keeps alive the ideals of freedom and a better life. All men will want to be free and share our way of life. There must be so much that I should have said, but haven't. What I will say now is just what most of us are probably thinking every day. I thank God and America for the right to live and raise my family under the flag of tolerance, democracy and freedom.--Walt Disney (March 1, 1941)
- The only freedom I care about is the freedom to do right; the freedom to do wrong I am ready to part with.--Thomas Henry Huxley
- The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.--John Adams
- Only the educated are free.--Epictetus (from The Quotable Teacher, comp. by Howe)
- The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.--Albert Camus
- The path of freedom is blocked much more by those who wish to obey than by those who wish to command.--M. D. Petre
- People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.--Soren Kierkegaard
- The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.--Edmund Burke
- The secret of freedom, courage.--Thucydides
- Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty.--Frank Herbert
- A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him.--Ezra Pound
- The spiritual freedom we seek cannot be found by grasping at, retreating to, or protecting our perceived safe spaces. Our freedom lies in remaining open continuously, not only to Life's changes but also to the Divine Light within us and others.--Peter Santos
- Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage.--Richard Lovelace
- Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.--John 8:32 (NIV)
- There is no liberation without labor...and there is no freedom which is free.--The Siri Singh Sahib
- There is no such thing as a little freedom. Either you are all free, or you are not free.--Walter Cronkite ("What Does Walter Cronkite Really Think" by Fallaci Look)
- Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security, will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.--Benjamin Franklin
- To be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.--Nelson Mandela
- The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedients, and by parts.--Edmund Burke
- True freedom is impossible without a mind made free by discipline.--Mortimer Adler
- True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.--Franklin D. Roosevelt (message to Congress, January 11, 1944)
- Until economic freedom is attained for everybody, there can be no real freedom for anybody.--Suzanne LaFollette
- 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.--E. M Forster (Two Cheers for Democracy)
- We can lift ourselves out of ignorance, we can find ourselves as creatures of excellence and intelligence and skill. We can be free! We can learn to fly!--Richard Bach (Jonathan Livingston Seagull)
- We gain freedom when we have paid the full price...--Rabindranath Tagore
- 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.--Virginia Hanson
- We too often bind ourselves by authorities rather than by the truth.--Lucretia Mott
- When the people fear the government there is tyranny, when the government fears the people there is liberty.--Thomas Jefferson
- When the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again.--Edith Hamilton
- When we lose the right to be different, we lose the privilege to be free.--Charles Evans Hughes, (Opinion, June 17, 1925)
- When you lose all sense of self, the bonds of a thousand chains will vanish.
Lose yourself completely, return to the root of the root of your own soul.--Rumi
- Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.--Abraham Lincoln (Address to an Indiana Regiment, 1865)
- Where others used their gods to defend an unjust status quo, Jesus believed in the God of justice and liberation. Where others saw a worthless slave, an exploitable asset, a damnable sinner, a disgusting outsider, Jesus saw someone to set free.--Brian D. McClaren (We Make the Road by Walking)
- You cannot parcel out freedom in pieces because freedom is all or nothing.--Tertullian
- Your life is the sum result of all the choices you make, both consciously and unconsciously. If you can control the process of choosing, you can take control of all aspects of your life. You can find the freedom that comes from being in charge of yourself.--Robert F. Bennett
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This page last updated April 1, 2017.