Motivational Quotes

Freedom

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

Best Quotes about Freedom

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

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

Henry, Patrick

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

Is any man free except the one who can pass his life as he pleases?

Persius

Marks on paper are free -- free speech -- press -- pictures all go together I suppose.

O'Keeffe, Georgia

What we want is not freedom but its appearances. It is for these simulacra that man has always striven. And since freedom, as has been said, is no more than a sensation, what difference is there between being free and believing ourselves free?

Cioran, E. M.

It is true that liberty is precious. So precious that it must be rationed.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

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

Luther, Martin

Is freedom anything else than the right to live as we wish? Nothing else.

Epictetus

10.

No man has received from nature the right to give orders to others. Freedom is a gift from heaven, and every individual of the same species has the right to enjoy it as soon as he is in enjoyment of his reason.

Diderot, Denis

11.

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

Baruch, Bernard M.

12.

We who officially value freedom of speech above life itself seem to have nothing to talk about but the weather.

Ehrenreich, Barbara

13.

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

14.

Freedom is knowing who you really are.

Thomson, Linda

15.

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

16.

A hot bath! I cry, as I sit down in it! Again as I lie flat, a hot bath! How exquisite a pleasure, how luxurious, fervid and flagrant a consolation for the rigors, the austerities, the renunciation of the day.

Macaulay, Rose

17.

My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.

Adlai E. Stevenson Jr.

18.

Freedom -- to walk free and own no superior.

Whitman, Walt

19.

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

Lumsden, Marshall

20.

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

Washington, George

21.

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

Pericles

22.

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

23.

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

Milton, John

24.

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

25.

Our ultimate freedom is the right and power to decide how anybody or anything outside ourselves will affect us.

Covey, Stephen R.

26.

The more internal freedom you achieve, the more you want: it is more fun to be happy than sad, more enjoyable to choose your own emotions than to have them inflicted on you by mechanical glandular processes, more pleasurable to solve your problems than to be stuck with them forever.

Wilson, Robert

27.

To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive.

Robert Louis Stevenson

28.

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

29.

Freedom is just chaos with better lighting.

Foster, Alan Dean

30.

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

Franklin D. Roosevelt

31.

It is our belief that if people are set free to express themselves to the fullest, their accomplishments will be far beyond their dreams, and they will not only contribute to the growth of the company, but will also be more useful citizens and contribute to the society at large.

Blount, Wilton M.

32.

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

33.

Women, like men, ought to have their youth so glutted with freedom they hate the very idea of freedom.

Sackville-West, Vita

34.

Man in general, if reduced to himself, is too wicked to be free.

Maistre, Joseph De

35.

The greatest blessing of our democracy is freedom. But in the last analysis, our only freedom is the freedom to discipline ourselves.

Baruch, Bernard M.

36.

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

37.

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.

Orwell, George

38.

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

Dyer, Wayne

39.

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.

40.

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.

41.

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.

42.

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.

43.

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

May, Rollo

44.

The law will never make men free, it is men that have to make the law free.

Thoreau, Henry David

45.

You can only be free if I am free.

Darrow, Clarence

46.

Who then is free? The one who wisely is lord of themselves, who neither poverty, death or captivity terrify, who is strong to resist his appetites and shun honors, and is complete in themselves smooth and round like a globe.

Horace

47.

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

Voltaire

48.

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

Drummond, William

49.

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

Mckern, Leo

50.

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