Motivational Quotes

Freedom

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.

Best Quotes about Freedom

Democracy arose from men's thinking that if they are equal in any respect, they are equal absolutely.

Aristotle

He who is brave is free.

Seneca

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

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

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

There's something contagious about demanding freedom.

Morgan, Robin

You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.

Malcolm X

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

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

10.

There is no liberation without labor... and there is no freedom which is free.

Sahib, The Siri Singh

11.

The basis of a democratic state is liberty.

Aristotle

12.

Perfect freedom is as necessary to the health and vigor of commerce as it is to the health and vigor of citizenship.

Henry, Patrick

13.

I believe in a religion that believes in freedom. Any time I have to accept a religion that won't let me fight a battle for my people, I say to hell with that religion.

Malcolm X

14.

Freedom is the by-product of economic surplus.

Bevan, Aneurin

15.

The sound of tireless voices is the price we pay for the right to hear the music of our own opinions.

Stevenson, Adlai E.

16.

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

Adler, Mortimer J.

17.

People who exercise their embryonic freedom day after day, little by little, expand that freedom. People who do not will find that it withers until they are literally being lived. They are acting out scripts written by parents, associates and society.

Covey, Stephen R.

18.

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

19.

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

Kennedy, Robert F.

20.

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

21.

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

Voltaire

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

Hill, Christopher

26.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

27.

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

28.

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

Buscaglia, Leo

29.

It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.

Mark Twain

30.

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

James, William

31.

No man has received from nature the right to give orders to others. Freedom is a gift from heaven, and every individual of the same species has the right to enjoy it as soon as he is in enjoyment of his reason.

Diderot, Denis

32.

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

Lumsden, Marshall

33.

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

Thomas Jefferson

34.

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.

35.

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

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

36.

Freedom is an internal achievement rather than an external adjustment.

Powell, Adam Clayton

37.

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

Orwell, George

38.

History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.

Eisenhower, Dwight D.

39.

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

40.

Yet, Freedom! yet thy banner, torn, but flying, streams like the thunderstorm against the wind.

Byron, Lord

41.

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

42.

The more internal freedom you achieve, the more you want: it is more fun to be happy than sad, more enjoyable to choose your own emotions than to have them inflicted on you by mechanical glandular processes, more pleasurable to solve your problems than to be stuck with them forever.

Wilson, Robert

43.

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

Epictetus

44.

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

45.

Liberty is a different kind of pain from prison.

Eliot, T. S.

46.

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

Herbert, Frank

47.

Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.

Lord Acton

48.

He is free... who knows how to keep in his own hands the power to decide.

Madriaga, Salvador De

49.

Freedom is the most contagious virus known to man.

Humphrey, Hubert H.

50.

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.