Motivational Quotes

Freedom

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

Best Quotes about Freedom

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

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

Sartre, Jean-Paul

No matter what a man does, he is not fully sane or human unless there is a spirit of freedom in him, a soul unconfined by purpose and larger than the practicable world.

Cooley, Charles Horton

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

Luxemburg, Rosa

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

Our ultimate freedom is the right and power to decide how anybody or anything outside ourselves will affect us.

Covey, Stephen R.

Freedom is knowing who you really are.

Thomson, Linda

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

Cooley, Charles Horton

There's something contagious about demanding freedom.

Morgan, Robin

10.

We hear about constitutional rights, free speech and the free press. Every time I hear those words I say to myself, That man is a Red, that man is a Communist. You never heard a real American talk in that manner.

Hague, Frank

11.

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

12.

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

Baruch, Bernard M.

13.

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

14.

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

Clinton, Bill

15.

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

16.

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.

17.

When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of that old Negro spiritual, Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

King Jr. Martin Luther

18.

A country cannot subsist well without liberty, nor liberty without virtue.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

19.

Perfect freedom is reserved for the man who lives by his own work and in that work does what he wants to do.

Collingwood, Robin G.

20.

He is free... who knows how to keep in his own hands the power to decide.

Madriaga, Salvador De

21.

It will free man from his remaining chains, the chains of gravity which still tie him to this planet. It will open to him the gates of heaven.

Braun, Wernher Von

22.

People who exercise their embryonic freedom day after day, little by little, expand that freedom. People who do not will find that it withers until they are literally being lived. They are acting out scripts written by parents, associates and society.

Covey, Stephen R.

23.

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

Drummond, William

24.

Yet, Freedom! yet thy banner, torn, but flying, streams like the thunderstorm against the wind.

Byron, Lord

25.

We have confused the free with the free and easy.

Stevenson, Adlai E.

26.

The moment the slave resolves that he will no longer be a slave. His fetters fall... freedom and slavery are mental states.

Gandhi, Mahatma

27.

Freedom is not an ideal, it is not even a protection, if it means nothing more than freedom to stagnate, to live without dreams, to have no greater aim than a second car and another television set.

Stevenson, Adlai E.

28.

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

29.

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.

30.

True obedience is true freedom.

Beecher, Henry Ward

31.

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

Terence

32.

So free we seem, so fettered we are!

Browning, Robert

33.

All we have of freedom -- all we use or know -- this our fathers bought for us, long and long ago.

Kipling, Rudyard

34.

Liberty is a different kind of pain from prison.

Eliot, T. S.

35.

Any nation that thinks more of its ease and comfort than its freedom will soon lose its freedom; and the ironical thing about it is that it will lose its ease and comfort too.

Maugham, W. Somerset

36.

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

37.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

38.

The East knew and to the present day knows only that One is Free; the Greek and the Roman world, that some are free; the German World knows that All are free. The first political form therefore which we observe in History, is Despotism, the second Democracy and Aristocracy, the third, Monarchy.

Hegel, Georg

39.

Liberty is slow fruit. It is never cheap; it is made difficult because freedom is the accomplishment and perfectness of man.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

40.

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

Stone, I. F.

41.

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

42.

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

43.

Freedom exists only with power.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

44.

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

45.

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

46.

I believe in a religion that believes in freedom. Any time I have to accept a religion that won't let me fight a battle for my people, I say to hell with that religion.

Malcolm X

47.

Freedom begins as we become conscious of it.

Howard, Vernon

48.

Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.

Johnson, Samuel

49.

Freedom is the last, best hope of earth.

Lincoln, Abraham

50.

What we want is not freedom but its appearances. It is for these simulacra that man has always striven. And since freedom, as has been said, is no more than a sensation, what difference is there between being free and believing ourselves free?

Cioran, E. M.