Motivational Quotes

Freedom

The basis of a democratic state is liberty.

- Aristotle

Best Quotes about Freedom

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

I stand for freedom of expression, doing what you believe in, and going after your dreams.

Madonna

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

So free we seem, so fettered we are!

Browning, Robert

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

Ruskin, John

Freedom exists only with power.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

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

La Follette, Suzanne

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

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De

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.

10.

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

11.

Man in general, if reduced to himself, is too wicked to be free.

Maistre, Joseph De

12.

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

Thomas Jefferson

13.

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

Bellin, Gita

14.

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

15.

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

16.

Liberty is to the collective body, what health is to every individual body. Without health no pleasure can be tasted by man; without liberty, no happiness can be enjoyed by society.

Bolingbroke, Henry

17.

As for freedom, it will soon cease to exist in any shape or form. Living will depend upon absolute obedience to a strict set of arrangements, which it will no longer be possible to transgress. The air traveler is not free. In the future, life's passengers will be even less so: they will travel through their lives fastened to their (corporate) seats.

Baudrillard, Jean

18.

It is quite possible for someone to choose incorrectly or to judge badly; but freedom must allow such mistakes.

Sang Kyu Shin

19.

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

20.

Every general increase of freedom is accompanied by some degeneracy, attributable to the same causes as the freedom.

Cooley, Charles Horton

21.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

22.

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

Pascal, Blaise

23.

Without freedom, no art; art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others. But without freedom, no socialism either, except the socialism of the gallows.

Camus, Albert

24.

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.

25.

The more internal freedom you achieve, the more you want: it is more fun to be happy than sad, more enjoyable to choose your own emotions than to have them inflicted on you by mechanical glandular processes, more pleasurable to solve your problems than to be stuck with them forever.

Wilson, Robert

26.

When I was a boy I used to do what my father wanted. Now I have to do what my boy wants. My problem is: When am I going to do what I want?

Levenson, Samuel

27.

Liberty is a different kind of pain from prison.

Eliot, T. S.

28.

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

29.

It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.

Mark Twain

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.

What is freedom? Freedom is the right to choose: the right to create for oneself the alternatives of choice.

Macleish, Archibald

32.

Freedom is the sure possession of those alone who have the courage to defend it.

Pericles

33.

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

34.

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

Voltaire

35.

Who then is free? The wise man who can govern himself.

Horace

36.

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

Tagore, Rabindranath

37.

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

Luxemburg, Rosa

38.

Freedom is just chaos with better lighting.

Foster, Alan Dean

39.

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

Sackville-West, Vita

40.

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

41.

Freedom is the most contagious virus known to man.

Humphrey, Hubert H.

42.

Within yourself deliverance must be searched for, because each man makes his own prison.

Arnold, Sir Edwin

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.

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.

45.

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

Reagan, Ronald

46.

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

Johnson, Samuel

47.

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

48.

The saving man becomes the free man.

Proverb, Chinese

49.

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

50.

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