Motivational Quotes

Freedom

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

Best Quotes about Freedom

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

Freedom exists only with power.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

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

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

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

Milton, John

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

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

Brown, Norman O.

Freedom -- to walk free and own no superior.

Whitman, Walt

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

10.

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

Malcolm X

11.

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

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

12.

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

Sartre, Jean-Paul

13.

The freedom of the press works in such a way that there is not much freedom from it.

Kelly, Grace (Patricia)

14.

Emancipation from the bondage of the soil is no freedom for the tree.

Tagore, Rabindranath

15.

Freedom begins as we become conscious of it.

Howard, Vernon

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

Kennedy, Robert F.

19.

A hungry man is not a free man.

Stevenson, Adlai E.

20.

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

21.

Freedom is the opportunity to make decisions...

Hildebrand, Kenneth

22.

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)

23.

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

Stone, I. F.

24.

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

Washington, George

25.

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

26.

Only very slowly and late have men come to realize that unless freedom is universal it is only extended privilege.

Hill, Christopher

27.

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

Sackville-West, Vita

28.

The greatest blessing of our democracy is freedom. But in the last analysis, our only freedom is the freedom to discipline ourselves.

Baruch, Bernard M.

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.

Freedom consists not in refusing to recognize anything above us, but in respecting something which is above us; for by respecting it, we raise ourselves to it, and, by our very acknowledgment, prove that we bear within ourselves what is higher, and are worthy to be on a level with it

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

31.

Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty.

Herbert, Frank

32.

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

33.

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

Franklin D. Roosevelt

34.

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

35.

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

Quayle, Dan

36.

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.

37.

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

38.

Freedom is an internal achievement rather than an external adjustment.

Powell, Adam Clayton

39.

When the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again.

Hamilton, Edith

40.

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

Washington, George

41.

Freedom is the last, best hope of earth.

Lincoln, Abraham

42.

We must be willing to pay a price for freedom.

Mencken, H. L.

43.

There are two freedoms -- the false, where a man is free to do what he likes; the true, where he is free to do what he ought.

Kingsley, Charles

44.

Because you are in control of your life. Don't ever forget that. You are what you are because of the conscious and subconscious choices you have made.

Barbara Hall

45.

Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: Freedom for slave owners.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

46.

The basis of a democratic state is liberty.

Aristotle

47.

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

Adams, John

48.

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