Motivational Quotes

Freedom

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

- Thomas Jefferson

Best Quotes about Freedom

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

Epictetus

The sovereignty of one's self over one's self is called Liberty.

Pike, Albert

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

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

Aristotle

Man in general, if reduced to himself, is too wicked to be free.

Maistre, Joseph De

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

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

The primacy of the word, basis of the human psyche, that has in our age been used for mind-bending persuasion and brain-washing pulp, disgraced by Gobbles and debased by advertising copy, remains a force for freedom that flies out between all bars.

Gordimer, Nadine

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

Persius

10.

The Negro needs the white man to free him from his fears. The white man needs the Negro to free him from his guilt.

King Jr. Martin Luther

11.

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

Kennedy, Robert F.

12.

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

13.

You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.

Malcolm X

14.

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

Pericles

15.

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

16.

The sound of tireless voices is the price we pay for the right to hear the music of our own opinions.

Stevenson, Adlai E.

17.

If people have to choose between freedom and sandwiches, they will take sandwiches.

Orr, Lord Boyd

18.

The foolish and the uneducated have little use for freedom.

19.

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

O'Keeffe, Georgia

20.

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

Patricia Sampson

21.

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

Ehrenreich, Barbara

22.

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

23.

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

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

24.

You don't have to be a man to fight for freedom. All you have to do is to be an intelligent human being.

Malcolm X

25.

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

26.

When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of that old Negro spiritual, Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

King Jr. Martin Luther

27.

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

28.

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.

29.

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

Pascal, Blaise

30.

True obedience is true freedom.

Beecher, Henry Ward

31.

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

32.

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

Stevenson, Adlai E.

33.

Freedom is not the right to do what we want, but what we ought. Let us have faith that right makes might and in that faith let us; to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.

Lincoln, Abraham

34.

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.

35.

To be what no one ever was, to be what everyone has been: Freedom is the mean of those extremes that fence all effort in.

Doren, Mark Van

36.

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

Orwell, George

37.

Freedom is the open window through which pours the sunlight of the human spirit and human dignity.

Hoover, Herbert Clark

38.

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

39.

Freedom is the right to live as we wish.

Epictetus

40.

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

Mckern, Leo

41.

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.

42.

This is America. You can do anything here.

Turner, Robert E.

43.

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

44.

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

Voltaire

45.

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.

46.

Freedom is the by-product of economic surplus.

Bevan, Aneurin

47.

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

Scott, Hazel

48.

Free will is not the liberty to do whatever one likes, but the power of doing whatever one sees ought to be done, even in the very face of otherwise overwhelming impulse. There lies freedom, indeed.

49.

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

Chomsky, Noam

50.

In the last analysis, our only freedom is the freedom to discipline ourselves.

Baruch, Bernard M.