Motivational Quotes

Freedom

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.

Best Quotes about 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

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

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

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

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.

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

Kelly, Grace (Patricia)

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

Hill, Christopher

You don't have to be a man to fight for freedom. All you have to do is to be an intelligent human being.

Malcolm X

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

Macleish, Archibald

There are always risks in freedom. The only risk in bondage is breaking free.

Bellin, Gita

10.

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

11.

When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of that old Negro spiritual, Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

King Jr. Martin Luther

12.

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

Lumsden, Marshall

13.

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

14.

American freedom consists largely in talking nonsense.

Howe, Edgar Watson

15.

It is easy to believe in freedom of speech for those with whom we agree.

Mckern, Leo

16.

Liberty is a different kind of pain from prison.

Eliot, T. S.

17.

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

Henry, Patrick

18.

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

19.

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

Stone, I. F.

20.

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

Franklin D. Roosevelt

21.

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

22.

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

23.

True obedience is true freedom.

Beecher, Henry Ward

24.

Perfect freedom is reserved for the man who lives by his own work and in that work does what he wants to do.

Collingwood, Robin G.

25.

Freedom is the only law which genius knows.

Lowell, James Russell

26.

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.

27.

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

George, David Lloyd

28.

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

29.

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

Tagore, Rabindranath

30.

The saving man becomes the free man.

Proverb, Chinese

31.

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

Buscaglia, Leo

32.

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

May, Rollo

33.

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

34.

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

Aristotle

35.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

36.

Liberty, then, about which so many volumes have been written is, when accurately defined, only the power of acting.

Voltaire

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

Rushdie, Salman

40.

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

41.

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

42.

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

43.

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

Hamilton, Edith

44.

Freedom means you are unobstructed in living your life as you choose. Anything less is a form of slavery.

Dyer, Wayne

45.

Who then is free? The wise man who can govern himself.

Horace

46.

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

Brown, Norman O.

47.

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

Malcolm X

48.

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.

49.

If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom: and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that, too.

Maugham, W. Somerset

50.

Until economic freedom is attained for everybody, there can be no real freedom for anybody.

La Follette, Suzanne