Motivational Quotes

Freedom

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

Best Quotes about Freedom

What is freedom? Freedom is the right to choose: the right to create for oneself the alternatives of choice.

Macleish, Archibald

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

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

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)

They want to be free and they do not know how to be just.

Sieyes, Abbe

Patterning your life around other's opinions is nothing more than slavery.

Lawana Blackwell

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

Voltaire

The secret of freedom, courage.

Thucydides

The traveler has reached the end of the journey! In the freedom of the infinite he is free from all sorrows, the fetters that bound him are thrown away, and the burning fever of life is no more.

Dhammapada

10.

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

11.

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

Terence

12.

Freedom is a condition of mind, and the best way to secure it is to breed it.

Hubbard, Elbert

13.

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.

14.

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.

Thomas Jefferson

15.

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

16.

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

Tagore, Rabindranath

17.

Our ultimate freedom is the right and power to decide how anybody or anything outside ourselves will affect us.

Covey, Stephen R.

18.

Freedom is the most contagious virus known to man.

Humphrey, Hubert H.

19.

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

20.

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

Quayle, Dan

21.

I sometimes think that the price of liberty is not so much eternal vigilance as eternal dirt.

Orwell, George

22.

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

23.

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

Luther, Martin

24.

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

Rushdie, Salman

25.

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

Stevenson, Adlai E.

26.

Is freedom anything else than the right to live as we wish? Nothing else.

Epictetus

27.

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

28.

Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently.

Luxemburg, Rosa

29.

The oppression of any people for opinion's sake has rarely had any other effect than to fix those opinions deeper, and render them more important.

Ballou, Hosea

30.

No one who lives in error is free.

Euripides

31.

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

32.

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

James, William

33.

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

Ewer, W. N.

34.

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

35.

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

Dass, Ram

36.

Freedom is the sure possession of those alone who have the courage to defend it.

Pericles

37.

The moment the slave resolves that he will no longer be a slave. His fetters fall... freedom and slavery are mental states.

Gandhi, Mahatma

38.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

39.

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

Buscaglia, Leo

40.

Liberty, according to my metaphysics is a self-determining power in an intellectual agent. It implies thought and choice and power.

Adams, John

41.

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

Milton, John

42.

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

Stone, I. F.

43.

Freedom is knowing who you really are.

Thomson, Linda

44.

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

45.

The East knew and to the present day knows only that One is Free; the Greek and the Roman world, that some are free; the German World knows that All are free. The first political form therefore which we observe in History, is Despotism, the second Democracy and Aristocracy, the third, Monarchy.

Hegel, Georg

46.

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

47.

To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive.

Robert Louis Stevenson

48.

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

49.

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

Sartre, Jean-Paul

50.

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.