Motivational Quotes

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.

Best Quotes about Freedom

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

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

Adlai E. Stevenson Jr.

What is freedom? Freedom is the right to choose: the right to create for oneself the alternatives of choice.

Macleish, Archibald

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

Stone, I. F.

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

Greer, Germaine

Freedom is the emancipation from the arbitrary rule of other men.

Adler, Mortimer J.

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

Only law can give us freedom.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

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

10.

Patterning your life around other's opinions is nothing more than slavery.

Lawana Blackwell

11.

The traveler has reached the end of the journey! In the freedom of the infinite he is free from all sorrows, the fetters that bound him are thrown away, and the burning fever of life is no more.

Dhammapada

12.

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

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.

Freedom suppressed and again regained bites with keener fangs than freedom never endangered.

Cicero, Marcus T.

15.

When ever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither is safe.

Burke, Edmund

16.

Freedom is not being a slave to any circumstance, to any constraint, to any chance; it means compelling Fortune to enter the lists on equal terms.

Seneca

17.

Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting.

Alan Dean Foster

18.

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

19.

Liberty is slow fruit. It is never cheap; it is made difficult because freedom is the accomplishment and perfectness of man.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

20.

Bondage is... subjection to external influences and internal negative thoughts and attitudes.

Stone, W. Clement

21.

Who then is free? The wise man who can govern himself.

Horace

22.

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

23.

A hungry man is not a free man.

Stevenson, Adlai E.

24.

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

Johnson, Samuel

25.

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

Mckern, Leo

26.

There's something contagious about demanding freedom.

Morgan, Robin

27.

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

Arnold, Sir Edwin

28.

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

Orwell, George

29.

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

Voltaire

30.

The basis of a democratic state is liberty.

Aristotle

31.

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

Persius

32.

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

33.

This is America. You can do anything here.

Turner, Robert E.

34.

There are two freedoms -- the false, where a man is free to do what he likes; the true, where he is free to do what he ought.

Kingsley, Charles

35.

Only our individual faith in freedom can keep us free.

Eisenhower, Dwight D.

36.

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.

37.

American freedom consists largely in talking nonsense.

Howe, Edgar Watson

38.

When the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again.

Hamilton, Edith

39.

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.

40.

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

41.

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.

42.

Liberty is to the collective body, what health is to every individual body. Without health no pleasure can be tasted by man; without liberty, no happiness can be enjoyed by society.

Bolingbroke, Henry

43.

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

44.

Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.

Sartre, Jean-Paul

45.

Freedom is the most contagious virus known to man.

Humphrey, Hubert H.

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.

How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.

Kierkegaard, S°ren

48.

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

49.

He that is kind is free, though he is a slave; he that is evil is a slave, though he be a king.

Augustine, St.

50.

The moment the slave resolves that he will no longer be a slave. His fetters fall... freedom and slavery are mental states.

Gandhi, Mahatma