Motivational Quotes

Freedom

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

- Voltaire

Best Quotes about Freedom

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

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

The secret of freedom, courage.

Thucydides

A country cannot subsist well without liberty, nor liberty without virtue.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

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

I know but one freedom and that is the freedom of the mind.

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De

Freedom and love go together. Love is not a reaction. If I love you because you love me, that is mere trade, a thing to be bought in the market; it is not love. To love is not to ask anything in return, not even to feel that you are giving something- and it is only such love that can know freedom.

Krishnamurti, Jiddu

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

Brown, Norman O.

The clash of ideas is the sound of freedom.

Johnson, Lady Bird

10.

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

Luxemburg, Rosa

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

15.

Within yourself deliverance must be searched for, because each man makes his own prison.

Arnold, Sir Edwin

16.

The very aim and end of our institutions is just this: that we may thing what we like and say what we think.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

17.

We hear about constitutional rights, free speech and the free press. Every time I hear those words I say to myself, That man is a Red, that man is a Communist. You never heard a real American talk in that manner.

Hague, Frank

18.

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

May, Rollo

19.

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

Stevenson, Adlai E.

20.

It will free man from his remaining chains, the chains of gravity which still tie him to this planet. It will open to him the gates of heaven.

Braun, Wernher Von

21.

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

Thomas Jefferson

22.

Freedom is the opportunity to make decisions...

Hildebrand, Kenneth

23.

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

24.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

25.

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

Lumsden, Marshall

26.

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.

27.

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

28.

Freedom begins as we become conscious of it.

Howard, Vernon

29.

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

30.

All theory is against freedom of the will; all experience for it.

Johnson, Samuel

31.

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.

32.

Self-reliance is the only road to true freedom, and being one's own person is its ultimate reward.

Patricia Sampson

33.

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

Tagore, Rabindranath

34.

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

Pericles

35.

When I was a boy I used to do what my father wanted. Now I have to do what my boy wants. My problem is: When am I going to do what I want?

Levenson, Samuel

36.

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

37.

If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.

Washington, George

38.

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

Henry, Patrick

39.

The grass is always greener where the fence isn't.

40.

The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves.

William Hazlitt

41.

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

Voltaire

42.

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

George, David Lloyd

43.

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

Mckern, Leo

44.

By the will art thou lost, by the will art thou found, by the will art thou free, captive, and bound.

Silesius, Angelus

45.

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

46.

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

Blum, Leon

47.

True obedience is true freedom.

Beecher, Henry Ward

48.

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.

49.

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

50.

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

Stevenson, Adlai E.