Motivational Quotes

Freedom

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

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

Bondage is... subjection to external influences and internal negative thoughts and attitudes.

Stone, W. Clement

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

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

Yevtushenko, Yevgeny

The secret of freedom, courage.

Thucydides

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

Freedom is an internal achievement rather than an external adjustment.

Powell, Adam Clayton

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

Voltaire

Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.

Washington, George

10.

Freedom -- to walk free and own no superior.

Whitman, Walt

11.

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

12.

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

Adler, Mortimer J.

13.

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

Terence

14.

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

15.

Marks on paper are free -- free speech -- press -- pictures all go together I suppose.

O'Keeffe, Georgia

16.

Mankind has a free will; but it is free to milk cows and to build houses, nothing more.

Luther, Martin

17.

I gave my life for freedom --this I know: For those who bade me fight had told me so.

Ewer, W. N.

18.

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

19.

What a curious phenomenon it is that you can get men to die for the liberty of the world who will not make the little sacrifice that is needed to free themselves from their own individual bondage.

Barton, Bruce

20.

We must determine whether we really want freedom -- whether we are willing to dare the perils of... rebirth... For we never take a step forward without surrendering something that we may have held dear, without dying to that which has been.

Hanson, Virginia

21.

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

Cooley, Charles Horton

22.

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

James, William

23.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

24.

Freedom is poetry, taking liberties with words, breaking the rules of normal speech, violating common sense. Freedom is violence.

Brown, Norman O.

25.

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

26.

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

Lenin

27.

Freedom is the only law which genius knows.

Lowell, James Russell

28.

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.

29.

We are free to yield to truth.

Horace

30.

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

31.

No one who lives in error is free.

Euripides

32.

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

33.

We have confused the free with the free and easy.

Stevenson, Adlai E.

34.

The foolish and the uneducated have little use for freedom.

35.

Freedom is the right to live as we wish.

Epictetus

36.

The saving man becomes the free man.

Proverb, Chinese

37.

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

Milton, John

38.

So far as a person thinks; they are free.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

39.

True obedience is true freedom.

Beecher, Henry Ward

40.

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

Clinton, Bill

41.

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

42.

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.

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

46.

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

47.

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

48.

Nothing is more disgusting than the crowing about liberty by slaves, as most men are, and the flippant mistaking for freedom of some paper preamble like a Declaration of Independence, or the statute right to vote, by those who have never dared to think or to act.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

49.

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

May, Rollo

50.

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