Motivational Quotes

Freedom

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

Best Quotes about Freedom

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.

We must be willing to pay a price for freedom.

Mencken, H. L.

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

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

Freedom is the most contagious virus known to man.

Humphrey, Hubert H.

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

Silesius, Angelus

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

Luther, Martin

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

Milton, John

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

10.

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

11.

Freedom is the right to live as we wish.

Epictetus

12.

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

Voltaire

13.

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.

14.

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

Ehrenreich, Barbara

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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.

19.

The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender, or submission.

Kennedy, John F.

20.

Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.

Washington, George

21.

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

William Hazlitt

22.

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

Aristotle

23.

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

24.

He who is brave is free.

Seneca

25.

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

Drummond, William

26.

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

27.

Liberty, according to my metaphysics is a self-determining power in an intellectual agent. It implies thought and choice and power.

Adams, John

28.

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

29.

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

Lord Acton

30.

So far as a person thinks; they are free.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

31.

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.

32.

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

Chomsky, Noam

33.

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

Tagore, Rabindranath

34.

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

Scott, Hazel

35.

He is free... who knows how to keep in his own hands the power to decide.

Madriaga, Salvador De

36.

It is quite impossible to guarantee world peace. But is should be possible to guarantee world freedom.

37.

Freedom is fragile and must be protected. To sacrifice it, even as a temporary measure, is to betray it.

Greer, Germaine

38.

Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting.

Alan Dean Foster

39.

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

Lumsden, Marshall

40.

Only law can give us freedom.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

41.

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.

42.

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

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

43.

It is not good to be too free. It is not good to have everything one wants.

Pascal, Blaise

44.

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

Washington, George

45.

The fly that touches honey cannot use it's wings; so too the soul that clings to spiritual sweetness ruins it's freedom and hinders contemplation.

Aurobindo, Ghose

46.

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

Thomas Jefferson

47.

The foolish and the uneducated have little use for freedom.

48.

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

May, Rollo

49.

Freedom is only granted us that obedience may be more perfect.

Ruskin, John

50.

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