Motivational Quotes

Freedom

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

Best Quotes about Freedom

No one is truly free, they are a slave to wealth, fortune, the law, or other people restraining them from acting according to their will.

Euripides

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

What most clearly characterizes true freedom and its true employment is its misemployment.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

He who is brave is free.

Seneca

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

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

Greer, Germaine

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

If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.

Washington, George

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

Thoreau, Henry David

10.

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

11.

Men are free when they are in a living homeland, not when they are straying and breaking away. Men are free when they are obeying some deep, inward voice of religious belief. Obeying from within. Men are free when they belong to a living, organic, believing community, active in fulfilling some unfulfilled, perhaps unrealized purpose. Not when they are escaping to some wild west. The most unfree souls go west, and shout of freedom. Men are freest when they are most unconscious of freedom. The shout is a rattling of chains, always was.

Lawrence, D. H.

12.

It is true that liberty is precious. So precious that it must be rationed.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

13.

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

14.

The free man is he who does not fear to go to the end of his thought.

Blum, Leon

15.

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

Lumsden, Marshall

16.

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

Hoover, Herbert Clark

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

Drummond, William

20.

We, and all others who believe in freedom as deeply as we do, would rather die on our feet than live on our knees.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

21.

Freedom suppressed and again regained bites with keener fangs than freedom never endangered.

Cicero, Marcus T.

22.

If we wish to free ourselves from enslavement, we must choose freedom and the responsibility this entails.

Buscaglia, Leo

23.

The primacy of the word, basis of the human psyche, that has in our age been used for mind-bending persuasion and brain-washing pulp, disgraced by Gobbles and debased by advertising copy, remains a force for freedom that flies out between all bars.

Gordimer, Nadine

24.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

25.

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

George, David Lloyd

26.

Freedom is the opportunity to make decisions...

Hildebrand, Kenneth

27.

We who officially value freedom of speech above life itself seem to have nothing to talk about but the weather.

Ehrenreich, Barbara

28.

Only that thing is free which exists by the necessities of its own nature, and is determined in its actions by itself alone.

Spinoza, Baruch (Benedict de)

29.

Only our individual faith in freedom can keep us free.

Eisenhower, Dwight D.

30.

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

Voltaire

31.

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.

32.

Liberty is one of the most precious gifts which heaven has bestowed on man; with it we cannot compare the treasures which the earth contains or the sea conceals; for liberty, as for honor, we can and ought to risk our lives; and, on for the other hand, captivity is the greatest evil that can befall man.

Cervantes, Miguel De

33.

We must be willing to pay a price for freedom.

Mencken, H. L.

34.

Freedom is knowing who you really are.

Thomson, Linda

35.

Freedom is the only law which genius knows.

Lowell, James Russell

36.

We hold in our hands, the most precious gift of all: Freedom. The freedom to express our art. Our love. The freedom to be who we want to be. We are not going to give that freedom away and no one shall take it from us!

Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider

37.

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

Milton, John

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

Pound, Ezra

42.

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

43.

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

Sartre, Jean-Paul

44.

Freedom is not being a slave to any circumstance, to any constraint, to any chance; it means compelling Fortune to enter the lists on equal terms.

Seneca

45.

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

46.

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

Sackville-West, Vita

47.

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

Albert Einstein

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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

Ruskin, John