Motivational Quotes

Freedom

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

- Voltaire

Best Quotes about Freedom

Freedom -- to walk free and own no superior.

Whitman, Walt

The only conception of freedom I can have is that of the prisoner or the individual in the midst of the State. The only one I know is freedom of thought and action.

Camus, Albert

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

Kelly, Grace (Patricia)

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

Yevtushenko, Yevgeny

We must be willing to pay a price for freedom.

Mencken, H. L.

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

Adams, John

No one who lives in error is free.

Euripides

Freedom is hunting, feeding, danger; that, that is freedom --that it is which makes the veins to swell, the breast to heave and glowaye,that is freedom, --that is pleasure --life!

Lovell, Marie

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

10.

You can only be free if I am free.

Darrow, Clarence

11.

None who have always been free can understand the terrible fascinating power of the hope of freedom to those who are not free.

Buck, Pearl S.

12.

Freedom prospers when religion is vibrant and the rule of law under God is acknowledged.

Reagan, Ronald

13.

It is hard to free fools from the chains they revere.

Voltaire

14.

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

Ewer, W. N.

15.

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

Stone, I. F.

16.

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

17.

Man is born free, yet he is everywhere in chains.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

Franklin D. Roosevelt

26.

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

Quayle, Dan

27.

We hold in our hands, the most precious gift of all: Freedom. The freedom to express our art. Our love. The freedom to be who we want to be. We are not going to give that freedom away and no one shall take it from us!

Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider

28.

If we catch a glimpse of freedom, we wish to possess it; if we catch a glimpse of death, we want nothing to do with it. One we cannot have, the other we cannot avoid.

Johnson, Jeremy P.

29.

We are willing enough to praise freedom when she is safely tucked away in the past and cannot be a nuisance. In the present, amidst dangers whose outcome we cannot foresee, we get nervous about her, and admit censorship.

Forster, Edward M.

30.

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

Lord Acton

31.

A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him.

Pound, Ezra

32.

Liberty is one of the most precious gifts which heaven has bestowed on man; with it we cannot compare the treasures which the earth contains or the sea conceals; for liberty, as for honor, we can and ought to risk our lives; and, on for the other hand, captivity is the greatest evil that can befall man.

Cervantes, Miguel De

33.

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

Rushdie, Salman

34.

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.

35.

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

36.

Set me free from evil passions, and heal my heart of all inordinate affections; that being inwardly cured and thoroughly cleansed, I may be made fit to love, courageous to suffer, steady to persevere.

Kempis, Thomas

37.

Let freedom reign. The sun never set on so glorious a human achievement.

Mandela, Nelson

38.

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

39.

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

Dyer, Wayne

40.

Freedom Know this, that every man is free To choose his life and what he'll be. For this eternal truth is given, God will force no man to heaven. He'll call, persuade, direct aright, Bless with wisdom, love, and light; In nameless ways be good and kind, But never force the human mind.

Clegg, William C.

41.

There's only one free person in this society, and he is white and male.

Scott, Hazel

42.

So far as a person thinks; they are free.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

43.

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.

44.

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

45.

Only law can give us freedom.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

46.

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.

47.

Only our individual faith in freedom can keep us free.

Eisenhower, Dwight D.

48.

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

Tagore, Rabindranath

49.

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

Tagore, Rabindranath

50.

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

Sieyes, Abbe