Motivational Quotes

Freedom

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

- Voltaire

Best Quotes about Freedom

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

Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.

Johnson, Samuel

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

Sackville-West, Vita

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

I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy -- but that could change.

Quayle, Dan

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

Freedom is man's capacity to take a hand in his own development. It is our capacity to mold ourselves.

May, Rollo

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

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De

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.

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

Thomas Jefferson

13.

It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.

Mark Twain

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

Stevenson, Adlai E.

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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.

20.

For in the end, freedom is a personal and lonely battle; and one faces down fears of today so that those of tomorrow might be engaged.

Walker, Alice

21.

Is freedom anything else than the right to live as we wish? Nothing else.

Epictetus

22.

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

Malcolm X

23.

They want to be free and they do not know how to be just.

Sieyes, Abbe

24.

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

Macleish, Archibald

25.

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

Voltaire

26.

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

27.

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

Washington, George

28.

Freedom is but the possibility of a various and indefinite activity; while government, or the exercise of dominion, is a single, yet real activity. The longing for freedom, therefore, is at first only too frequently suggested by the deep-felt consciousness of its absence.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

29.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

30.

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

31.

To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive.

Robert Louis Stevenson

32.

If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.

Washington, George

33.

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

34.

Freedom is just chaos with better lighting.

Foster, Alan Dean

35.

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

Silesius, Angelus

36.

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

37.

A country cannot subsist well without liberty, nor liberty without virtue.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

38.

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

Johnson, Samuel

39.

So far as a person thinks; they are free.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

40.

No one who lives in error is free.

Euripides

41.

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

42.

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

Hoover, Herbert Clark

43.

We must be willing to pay a price for freedom.

Mencken, H. L.

44.

Tyrants have not yet discovered any chains that can fetter the mind.

Colton, Charles Caleb

45.

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.

46.

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

Adler, Mortimer J.

47.

Liberty is a different kind of pain from prison.

Eliot, T. S.

48.

Freedom means you are unobstructed in living your life as you choose. Anything less is a form of slavery.

Dyer, Wayne

49.

You can only be free if I am free.