Motivational Quotes

Freedom

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

Best Quotes about Freedom

Freedom is the by-product of economic surplus.

Bevan, Aneurin

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

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

Adlai E. Stevenson Jr.

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

The bigger the information media, the less courage and freedom they allow. Bigness means weakness.

Sevareid, Eric

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

Pound, Ezra

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

In the truest sense, freedom cannot be bestowed; it must be achieved.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

So far as a person thinks; they are free.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

10.

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

11.

History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.

Eisenhower, Dwight D.

12.

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

Voltaire

13.

A forest bird never wants a cage.

Ibsen, Henrik

14.

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

15.

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

Clinton, Bill

16.

Liberty is not merely a privilege to be conferred; it is a habit to be acquired.

George, David Lloyd

17.

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

Dass, Ram

18.

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

Milton, John

19.

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

20.

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.

21.

Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you're a man, you take it.

Malcolm X

22.

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

Cooley, Charles Horton

23.

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

24.

None who have always been free can understand the terrible fascinating power of the hope of freedom to those who are not free.

Buck, Pearl S.

25.

We gain freedom when we have paid the full price...

Tagore, Rabindranath

26.

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.

27.

Perfect freedom is as necessary to the health and vigor of commerce as it is to the health and vigor of citizenship.

Henry, Patrick

28.

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.

29.

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

30.

If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.

Chomsky, Noam

31.

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

Terence

32.

Governing sense, mind and intellect, intent on liberation, free from desire, fear and anger, the sage is forever free.

Bhagavad Gita

33.

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

Sartre, Jean-Paul

34.

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

35.

For me, the principal fact of life is the free mind. For good and evil, man is a free creative spirit. This produces the very queer world we live in, a world in continuous creation and therefore continuous change and insecurity. A perpetually new and lively world, but a dangerous one, full of tragedy and injustice. A world in everlasting conflict between the new idea and the old allegiances, new arts and new inventions against the old establishment.

Cary, Joyce

36.

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

37.

Liberty is a different kind of pain from prison.

Eliot, T. S.

38.

Only law can give us freedom.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

39.

If you want to be free, there is but one way; it is to guarantee an equally full measure of liberty to all your neighbors. There is no other.

Carl Schurz

40.

At no time is freedom of speech more precious than when a man hits his thumb with a hammer.

Lumsden, Marshall

41.

The free way of life proposes ends, but it does not prescribe means.

Kennedy, Robert F.

42.

Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.

Albert Einstein

43.

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

44.

Freedom and love go together. Love is not a reaction. If I love you because you love me, that is mere trade, a thing to be bought in the market; it is not love. To love is not to ask anything in return, not even to feel that you are giving something- and it is only such love that can know freedom.

Krishnamurti, Jiddu

45.

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

Johnson, Samuel

46.

Freedom is the emancipation from the arbitrary rule of other men.

Adler, Mortimer J.

47.

Only necessity understood, and bondage to the highest is identical with true freedom.

James, William

48.

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

49.

The sovereignty of one's self over one's self is called Liberty.

Pike, Albert

50.

We look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. The first is freedom of speech and expression. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way. The third is freedom from want. The fourth is freedom from fear.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.