Motivational Quotes

Freedom

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

- Voltaire

Best Quotes about Freedom

The basis of a democratic state is liberty.

Aristotle

Every general increase of freedom is accompanied by some degeneracy, attributable to the same causes as the freedom.

Cooley, Charles Horton

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

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

The progress of freedom depends more upon the maintenance of peace, the spread of commerce, and the diffusion of education, than upon the labors of cabinets and foreign offices.

Cobden, Richard

The sovereignty of one's self over one's self is called Liberty.

Pike, Albert

Freedom begins as we become conscious of it.

Howard, Vernon

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

Lord Acton

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

10.

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

Patricia Sampson

11.

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

12.

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

13.

Because you are in control of your life. Don't ever forget that. You are what you are because of the conscious and subconscious choices you have made.

Barbara Hall

14.

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

15.

Only law can give us freedom.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

16.

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)

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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.

21.

No one who lives in error is free.

Euripides

22.

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

Kelly, Grace (Patricia)

23.

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

24.

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

Orwell, George

25.

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

Drummond, William

26.

Mankind has a free will; but it is free to milk cows and to build houses, nothing more.

Luther, Martin

27.

While the State exists, there can be no freedom. When there is freedom there will be no State.

Lenin

28.

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

29.

The secret of freedom, courage.

Thucydides

30.

We are free to yield to truth.

Horace

31.

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.

32.

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

33.

All we have of freedom -- all we use or know -- this our fathers bought for us, long and long ago.

Kipling, Rudyard

34.

A forest bird never wants a cage.

Ibsen, Henrik

35.

The bigger the information media, the less courage and freedom they allow. Bigness means weakness.

Sevareid, Eric

36.

You can only be free if I am free.

Darrow, Clarence

37.

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

38.

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

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

39.

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

40.

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.

41.

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

42.

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

Silesius, Angelus

43.

If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.

Chomsky, Noam

44.

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

45.

We are living in the excesses of freedom. Just take a look at 42nd Street an Broadway.

Durant, William J.

46.

None can love freedom heartily, but good men... the rest love not freedom, but license.

Milton, John

47.

Freedom -- to walk free and own no superior.

Whitman, Walt

48.

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