Motivational Quotes

Freedom

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.

Best Quotes about Freedom

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

The time is near at hand which must determine whether Americans are to be free men or slaves.

Washington, George

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

Freedom is the open window through which pours the sunlight of the human spirit and human dignity.

Hoover, Herbert Clark

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

Kipling, Rudyard

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

The fly that touches honey cannot use it's wings; so too the soul that clings to spiritual sweetness ruins it's freedom and hinders contemplation.

Aurobindo, Ghose

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

I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy -- but that could change.

Quayle, Dan

10.

Let freedom reign. The sun never set on so glorious a human achievement.

Mandela, Nelson

11.

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.

12.

Who then is free? The one who wisely is lord of themselves, who neither poverty, death or captivity terrify, who is strong to resist his appetites and shun honors, and is complete in themselves smooth and round like a globe.

Horace

13.

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

Adams, John

14.

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

15.

True obedience is true freedom.

Beecher, Henry Ward

16.

If you're not ready to die for it, put the word freedom out of your vocabulary.

Malcolm X

17.

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

18.

Liberty is a different kind of pain from prison.

Eliot, T. S.

19.

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

20.

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

James, William

21.

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

May, Rollo

22.

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

23.

A hot bath! I cry, as I sit down in it! Again as I lie flat, a hot bath! How exquisite a pleasure, how luxurious, fervid and flagrant a consolation for the rigors, the austerities, the renunciation of the day.

Macaulay, Rose

24.

While the State exists, there can be no freedom. When there is freedom there will be no State.

Lenin

25.

The saving man becomes the free man.

Proverb, Chinese

26.

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

27.

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

Stevenson, Adlai E.

28.

When ever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither is safe.

Burke, Edmund

29.

How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.

Kierkegaard, S°ren

30.

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

31.

No man is free who is not a master of himself.

Epictetus

32.

Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.

Rushdie, Salman

33.

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.

Orwell, George

34.

Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting.

Alan Dean Foster

35.

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.

36.

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

Tagore, Rabindranath

37.

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

Greer, Germaine

38.

Freedom is just chaos with better lighting.

Foster, Alan Dean

39.

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

Sartre, Jean-Paul

40.

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

41.

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

Bellin, Gita

42.

Freedom exists only with power.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

43.

A major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.

Friedman, Milton

44.

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

Clinton, Bill

45.

There's something contagious about demanding freedom.

Morgan, Robin

46.

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.

47.

A forest bird never wants a cage.

Ibsen, Henrik

48.

American freedom consists largely in talking nonsense.

Howe, Edgar Watson

49.

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

50.

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