Motivational Quotes

Freedom

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.

Best Quotes about Freedom

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

Yet, Freedom! yet thy banner, torn, but flying, streams like the thunderstorm against the wind.

Byron, Lord

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

Drummond, William

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

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

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

Tagore, Rabindranath

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

Washington, George

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.

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

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.

10.

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

11.

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

12.

Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.

Albert Einstein

13.

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.

14.

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

Greer, Germaine

15.

True obedience is true freedom.

Beecher, Henry Ward

16.

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

Henry, Patrick

17.

What most clearly characterizes true freedom and its true employment is its misemployment.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

18.

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

Patricia Sampson

19.

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.

20.

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

21.

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.

22.

Freedom is the most contagious virus known to man.

Humphrey, Hubert H.

23.

When a person places the proper value on freedom, there is nothing under the sun that he will not do to acquire that freedom. Whenever you hear a man saying he wants freedom, but in the next breath he is going to tell you what he won't do to get it, or what he doesn't believe in doing in order to get it, he doesn't believe in freedom. A man who believes in freedom will do anything under the sun to acquire... or preserve his freedom.

Malcolm X

24.

Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting.

Alan Dean Foster

25.

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

26.

The free man is he who does not fear to go to the end of his thought.

Blum, Leon

27.

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

28.

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

Luther, Martin

29.

If we wish to free ourselves from enslavement, we must choose freedom and the responsibility this entails.

Buscaglia, Leo

30.

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

Lumsden, Marshall

31.

The foolish and the uneducated have little use for freedom.

32.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

33.

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.

34.

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

35.

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

Kipling, Rudyard

36.

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

37.

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.

38.

The grass is always greener where the fence isn't.

39.

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

Pascal, Blaise

40.

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

Sartre, Jean-Paul

41.

People who exercise their embryonic freedom day after day, little by little, expand that freedom. People who do not will find that it withers until they are literally being lived. They are acting out scripts written by parents, associates and society.

Covey, Stephen R.

42.

A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him.

Pound, Ezra

43.

Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently.

Luxemburg, Rosa

44.

We have confused the free with the free and easy.

Stevenson, Adlai E.

45.

No man is free who is not a master of himself.

Epictetus

46.

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

Eisenhower, Dwight D.

47.

Freedom is a condition of mind, and the best way to secure it is to breed it.

Hubbard, Elbert

48.

We, and all others who believe in freedom as deeply as we do, would rather die on our feet than live on our knees.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

49.

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

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

50.

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