Motivational Quotes

Freedom

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

- Adlai E. Stevenson Jr.

Best Quotes about Freedom

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

Blum, Leon

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

Yevtushenko, Yevgeny

You don't have to be a man to fight for freedom. All you have to do is to be an intelligent human being.

Malcolm X

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

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

For in the end, freedom is a personal and lonely battle; and one faces down fears of today so that those of tomorrow might be engaged.

Walker, Alice

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.

Freedom exists only with power.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

Tyrants have not yet discovered any chains that can fetter the mind.

Colton, Charles Caleb

10.

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

Terence

11.

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

12.

There's something contagious about demanding freedom.

Morgan, Robin

13.

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.

14.

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

15.

The law will never make men free, it is men that have to make the law free.

Thoreau, Henry David

16.

Freedom is fragile and must be protected. To sacrifice it, even as a temporary measure, is to betray it.

Greer, Germaine

17.

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

Dyer, Wayne

18.

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)

19.

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

20.

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

Stevenson, Adlai E.

21.

Freedom is man's capacity to take a hand in his own development. It is our capacity to mold ourselves.

May, Rollo

22.

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

Hamilton, Edith

23.

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

Pound, Ezra

24.

We, and all others who believe in freedom as deeply as we do, would rather die on our feet than live on our knees.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

25.

So free we seem, so fettered we are!

Browning, Robert

26.

There's only one free person in this society, and he is white and male.

Scott, Hazel

27.

We are living in the excesses of freedom. Just take a look at 42nd Street an Broadway.

Durant, William J.

28.

The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender, or submission.

Kennedy, John F.

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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.

33.

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

Milton, John

34.

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

Hill, Christopher

35.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

36.

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

37.

Freedom is not being a slave to any circumstance, to any constraint, to any chance; it means compelling Fortune to enter the lists on equal terms.

Seneca

38.

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

39.

You can only be free if I am free.

Darrow, Clarence

40.

If you think you're free, there's no escape possible.

Dass, Ram

41.

No one is truly free, they are a slave to wealth, fortune, the law, or other people restraining them from acting according to their will.

Euripides

42.

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

43.

We must be willing to pay a price for freedom.

Mencken, H. L.

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

47.

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

48.

A forest bird never wants a cage.

Ibsen, Henrik

49.

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