Motivational Quotes

Freedom

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

- Johnson, Samuel

Best Quotes about Freedom

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

Sartre, Jean-Paul

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

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

It is quite possible for someone to choose incorrectly or to judge badly; but freedom must allow such mistakes.

Sang Kyu Shin

The first principle of a free society is an untrammeled flow of words in an open forum.

Stevenson, Adlai E.

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

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.

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

Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you're a man, you take it.

Malcolm X

10.

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

Byron, Lord

11.

I know but one freedom and that is the freedom of the mind.

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De

12.

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.

13.

The secret of freedom, courage.

Thucydides

14.

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

15.

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

Luxemburg, Rosa

16.

Freedom is just chaos with better lighting.

Foster, Alan Dean

17.

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

Rushdie, Salman

18.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

19.

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

Ruskin, John

20.

The only way to make sure people you agree with can speak is to support the rights of people you don't agree with.

Norton, Eleanor Holmes

21.

Freedom and love go together. Love is not a reaction. If I love you because you love me, that is mere trade, a thing to be bought in the market; it is not love. To love is not to ask anything in return, not even to feel that you are giving something- and it is only such love that can know freedom.

Krishnamurti, Jiddu

22.

It is hard to free fools from the chains they revere.

Voltaire

23.

He who is conceived in a cage, yearns for the cage.

Yevtushenko, Yevgeny

24.

The basis of a democratic state is liberty.

Aristotle

25.

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

Covey, Stephen R.

26.

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

Tagore, Rabindranath

27.

Liberty will not descend to a people; a people must raise themselves to liberty; it is a blessing that must be earned before it can be enjoyed.

Colton, Charles Caleb

28.

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

Greer, Germaine

29.

Freedom is the most contagious virus known to man.

Humphrey, Hubert H.

30.

We are living in the excesses of freedom. Just take a look at 42nd Street an Broadway.

Durant, William J.

31.

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

Silesius, Angelus

32.

The only conception of freedom I can have is that of the prisoner or the individual in the midst of the State. The only one I know is freedom of thought and action.

Camus, Albert

33.

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

Adler, Mortimer J.

34.

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

35.

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

36.

Until economic freedom is attained for everybody, there can be no real freedom for anybody.

La Follette, Suzanne

37.

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

Washington, George

38.

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

Scott, Hazel

39.

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.

40.

If you're not ready to die for it, put the word freedom out of your vocabulary.

Malcolm X

41.

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

42.

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

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

43.

You can only be free if I am free.

Darrow, Clarence

44.

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

Chomsky, Noam

45.

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

Sackville-West, Vita

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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.

49.

The East knew and to the present day knows only that One is Free; the Greek and the Roman world, that some are free; the German World knows that All are free. The first political form therefore which we observe in History, is Despotism, the second Democracy and Aristocracy, the third, Monarchy.

Hegel, Georg

50.

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques