Motivational Quotes

Freedom

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

Best Quotes about Freedom

The free way of life proposes ends, but it does not prescribe means.

Kennedy, Robert F.

History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.

Eisenhower, Dwight D.

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

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

Drummond, William

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

Sartre, Jean-Paul

It is for each of us freely to choose whom we shall serve, and find in that obedience our freedom.

Richards, Mary Caroline

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

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

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

Orwell, George

10.

We have confused the free with the free and easy.

Stevenson, Adlai E.

11.

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

Brown, Norman O.

12.

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

Voltaire

13.

I gave my life for freedom --this I know: For those who bade me fight had told me so.

Ewer, W. N.

14.

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

15.

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.

16.

Freedom is an internal achievement rather than an external adjustment.

Powell, Adam Clayton

17.

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

18.

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

Lawana Blackwell

19.

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

Pericles

20.

Only necessity understood, and bondage to the highest is identical with true freedom.

James, William

21.

Whatever the price, identify it now. What will you have to go through to get where you want to be? There is a price you can pay to be free of the situation once and for all. It may be a fantastic price or a tiny one -- but there is a price.

Browne, Harry

22.

Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.

Rushdie, Salman

23.

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

Adlai E. Stevenson Jr.

24.

Only very slowly and late have men come to realize that unless freedom is universal it is only extended privilege.

Hill, Christopher

25.

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.

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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.

29.

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

Aristotle

30.

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

31.

The time is near at hand which must determine whether Americans are to be free men or slaves.

Washington, George

32.

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.

33.

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.

34.

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

35.

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

O'Keeffe, Georgia

36.

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

37.

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

Washington, George

38.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

39.

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

40.

Freedom is the most contagious virus known to man.

Humphrey, Hubert H.

41.

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.

42.

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

Scott, Hazel

43.

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

Silesius, Angelus

44.

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

45.

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

Milton, John

46.

Freedom is hunting, feeding, danger; that, that is freedom --that it is which makes the veins to swell, the breast to heave and glowaye,that is freedom, --that is pleasure --life!

Lovell, Marie

47.

The foolish and the uneducated have little use for freedom.

48.

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

49.

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

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

50.

Yesterday the greatest question was decided which ever was debated in America; and a greater perhaps never was, nor will be, decided among men. A resolution was passed without one dissenting colony, that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States.

Adams, John