quotations about freedom
Love of country follows from the exercise of its freedoms, not from pride in its fleets or its armies.
LEWIS H. LAPHAM
"Them", Lapham's Quarterly: Foreigners, winter 2014
Mistaking insolence for freedom has always been the hallmark of the slave.
WILHELM REICH
Listen
Posterity: you will never know how much it has cost my generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it.
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS
attributed, The Rebirth of a Nation
The supreme end is the freedom of the spirit.
SRI AUROBINDO
Bhagavad Gita and Its Message
Unless your freedom turns into a creative realization, you will feel sad. Because you will see that you are free--your chains are broken, and you are no longer in prison; you are standing under the starry night, completely free. But where do you go?
OSHO
Freedom: The Courage to Be Yourself
Without total freedom, every perception, every objective regard, is twisted. It is only the man who is totally free who can look and understand immediately. Freedom implies really, doesn't it, the total emptying of the mind. Completely to empty the whole content of the mind--that is real freedom. Freedom is not mere revolt from circumstances, which again breeds other circumstances, other environmental influences, which enslave the mind. We are talking about a freedom that comes naturally, easily, unasked for, when the mind is capable of functioning at its highest level.
JIDDU KRISHNAMURTI
On Freedom
Freedom can be manifested only in the void of beliefs, in the absence of axioms, and only where the laws have no more authority than a hypothesis.
EMIL CIORAN
History & Utopia
Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to undertake. It is not easy. It is not a gift given, but a choice made, and the choice may be a hard one. The road goes upward towards the light; but the laden traveler may never reach the end of it.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Tombs of Atuan
I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpations.
JAMES MADISON
speech at the Virginia Convention to ratify the Federal Constitution, Jun. 6, 1788
I was a dweller amid shadows grim:
Till FREEDOM touched my yearning eyes, and lo!
Life in a shining circle, rounding rose,
As heaven on heaven goes up the jewell'd night.
New floods of passionate life swirl'd at my heart,
Like Ocean-surges rolling round the world:
And FREEDOM was my glittering Bride.
GERALD MASSEY
"To My Wife"
Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU
The Social Contract
Real freedom lies in wildness, not in civilization.
CHARLES LINDBERGH
attributed, Lindbergh
The unity of all who dwell in freedom is their only sure defense.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
Second Inaugural Address, Jan. 21, 1957
This is my right
A right given by God
To live a free life
To live in freedom
PAUL MCCARTNEY
"Freedom"
For every man who lives without freedom, the rest of us must face the guilt.
LILLIAN HELLMAN
The Watch on the Rhine
Freedom is the fundamental condition for any growth.
ERICH FROMM
Escape from Freedom
Once a man has tasted freedom, he will never be content to be a slave.
WALT DISNEY
radio address, Mar. 1, 1941
Since freedom is not a fixed thing that can be grasped and held once for all, but a growth, any particular society, such as our own, always appears partly free and partly unfree. In so far as it favors, in every child, the development of his highest possibilities, it is free, but where it falls short of this it is not.
CHARLES HORTON COOLEY
Human Nature and the Social Order
The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities.
LORD ACTON
The History of Freedom in Antiquity
We know what works: Freedom works. We know what's right: Freedom is right. We know how to secure a more just and prosperous life for man on Earth: through free markets, free speech, free elections, and the exercise of free will unhampered by the state.
GEORGE H. W. BUSH
Inaugural Address, Jan. 20, 1989