Motivational Quotes

Freedom

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)

Best Quotes about Freedom

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.

A forest bird never wants a cage.

Ibsen, Henrik

The only way to make sure people you agree with can speak is to support the rights of people you don't agree with.

Norton, Eleanor Holmes

Without freedom, no art; art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others. But without freedom, no socialism either, except the socialism of the gallows.

Camus, Albert

Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting.

Alan Dean Foster

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

Buscaglia, Leo

Governing sense, mind and intellect, intent on liberation, free from desire, fear and anger, the sage is forever free.

Bhagavad Gita

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

Orwell, George

The saving man becomes the free man.

Proverb, Chinese

10.

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

Adams, John

11.

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

12.

Liberty is the right to choose, freedom is the result of that choice.

13.

A people which is able to say everything becomes able to do everything.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

14.

In the last analysis, our only freedom is the freedom to discipline ourselves.

Baruch, Bernard M.

15.

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

May, Rollo

16.

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

Lumsden, Marshall

17.

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

Blum, Leon

18.

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

Greer, Germaine

19.

Free will is not the liberty to do whatever one likes, but the power of doing whatever one sees ought to be done, even in the very face of otherwise overwhelming impulse. There lies freedom, indeed.

20.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

21.

Freedom exists only with power.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

22.

It is especially important to encourage unorthodox thinking when the situation is critical: At such moments every new word and fresh thought is more precious than gold. Indeed, people must not be deprived of the right to think their own thoughts.

Yeltsin, Boris

23.

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)

24.

The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender, or submission.

Kennedy, John F.

25.

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

26.

When a person places the proper value on freedom, there is nothing under the sun that he will not do to acquire that freedom. Whenever you hear a man saying he wants freedom, but in the next breath he is going to tell you what he won't do to get it, or what he doesn't believe in doing in order to get it, he doesn't believe in freedom. A man who believes in freedom will do anything under the sun to acquire... or preserve his freedom.

Malcolm X

27.

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

Thomas Jefferson

28.

When ever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither is safe.

Burke, Edmund

29.

When people talk of the freedom of writing, speaking or thinking I cannot choose but laugh. No such thing ever existed. No such thing now exists; but I hope it will exist. But it must be hundreds of years after you and I shall write and speak no more.

Adams, John

30.

It is quite possible for someone to choose incorrectly or to judge badly; but freedom must allow such mistakes.

Sang Kyu Shin

31.

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

Macleish, Archibald

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

Yevtushenko, Yevgeny

35.

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.

36.

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

37.

We are free to yield to truth.

Horace

38.

If you're not ready to die for it, put the word freedom out of your vocabulary.

Malcolm X

39.

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

Lawana Blackwell

40.

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

Ewer, W. N.

41.

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

Drummond, William

42.

There can be no real freedom without the freedom to fail.

Hoffer, Eric

43.

The Negro needs the white man to free him from his fears. The white man needs the Negro to free him from his guilt.

King Jr. Martin Luther

44.

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.

45.

Whatever the price, identify it now. What will you have to go through to get where you want to be? There is a price you can pay to be free of the situation once and for all. It may be a fantastic price or a tiny one -- but there is a price.

Browne, Harry

46.

The higher one climbs on the spiritual ladder, the more they will grant others their own freedom, and give less interference to another's state of consciousness.

Twitchell, Paul

47.

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

Stevenson, Adlai E.

48.

To be what no one ever was, to be what everyone has been: Freedom is the mean of those extremes that fence all effort in.

Doren, Mark Van

49.

The secret of freedom, courage.

Thucydides

50.

Freedom is the only law which genius knows.