2,447 Freedom Quotes

Mine to the core of the heart, my beauty! Mine, all mine, and for love, not duty: Love given willingly, full and free, Love for love's sake - as mine to thee. Duty's a slave that keeps the keys, But Love, the master, goes in and out Of his goodly chambers with song and shout, Just as he please - just as he please.

Irresponsibility is part of the pleasure of all art; it is the part the schools cannot recognize.

According to Buddhism, individuals are masters of their own destiny. And all living beings are believed to possess the nature of the Primordial Buddha Samantabhadra, the potential or seed of enlightenment, within them. So our future is in our own hands. What greater free will do we need?

Peace can only last where human rights are respected, where the people are fed, and where individuals and nations are free. True peace with oneself and with the world around us can only be achieved through the development of mental peace.

Do you know what makes the prison disappear? Every deep, genuine affection. Being friends, being brothers, loving, that is what opens the prison, with supreme power, by some magic force. Without these one stays dead. But whenever affection is revived, there life revives.

The Autocrat of all the Russias will resign his crown, and proclaim his subjects free republicans sooner than will our American masters voluntarily give up their slaves.

America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.

In this world him who does not abandon himself the Almighty will not desert. Him who helps himself will the Almighty always also help; He will show him the way by which he can gain his rights, his freedom, and therefore his future.

It's in the private places of the heart that freedom is made or unmade by the discipline we create there.

There can be no self-government without self-discipline. There can be no self-government without self-control. There can be no liberty unless it is grounded in moral discipline and the ability to do what is right.

The question isn't whether you have a good master or a bad master. It's to be your own master. That is the dignity of humanity.

How does it secure the blessings of liberty to our posterity, to those generations yet unborn, to kill them, aborting them in the womb?

At the root of the assault on our liberties is, in fact, an assault on our character--an assault that assumes that we are not good enough to be free, and that aims to make sure that we are no longer strong enough, courageous enough, disciplined enough to be a free people.

We must reject dictatorship in whatever form it takes--and especially when it rears its head in our own midst on the bench.

A living man can be enslaved and reduced to the historic condition of an object. But if he dies in refusing to be enslaved, he reaffirms the existence of another kind of human nature which refuses to be classified as an object.

No human being, even the most passionately loved and passionately loving, is ever in our possession.

The current motto for all of us can only be this: without giving up anything on the plane of justice, yield nothing on the plane of freedom.

Nevertheless, it is necessary to remember that a planned economy is not yet socialism. A planned economy as such may be accompanied by the complete enslavement of the individual. The achievement of socialism requires the solution of some extremely difficult socio-political problems: how is it possible, in view of the far-reaching centralisation of political and economic power, to prevent bureaucracy from becoming all-powerful and overweening? How can the rights of the individual be protected and therewith a democratic counterweight to the power of bureaucracy be assured?

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

I came to America because of the great, great freedom which I heard existed in this country. I made a mistake in selecting America as a land of freedom, a mistake I cannot repair in the balance of my lifetime.

Laws alone can not secure freedom of expression; in order that every man present his views without penalty there must be spirit of tolerance in the entire population.

I admit that my visions can never mean to other men as much as they do to me. I do not regret this. All I ask is that my results should convince seekers after truth that there is beyond doubt something worth while seeking, attainable by methods more or less like mine. I do not want to father a flock, to be the fetish of fools and fanatics, or the founder of a faith whose followers are content to echo my opinions. I want each man to cut his own way through the jungle.

Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas. The source of better ideas is wisdom. The surest path to wisdom is a liberal education.

Liberal learning is both a safeguard against false ideas of freedom and a source of true ones.

Now that I'm out and I'm shouting in doorways Freed from a love more like murder I should be singing but in liberation Feel like a ship with no rudder.

Freedom is the by-product of economic surplus.

If freedom is to be saved and enlarged, poverty must be ended. There is no other solution.

Would that it were so! ... That the American military were targeting journalists.

He who has overcome his fears will truly be free.

Democracy arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects; because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal.

What it lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do.

The essence of a democracy is a free electorate.

Here am I who have written on all sorts of subjects calculated to excite hostility, moral, political, and religious, and yet I have no enemies - except, indeed, all the Whigs, all the Tories, and all the Christians.

In all ages of the world, priests have been enemies to liberty; and it is certain, that this steady conduct of theirs must have been founded on fixed reasons of interest and ambition. Liberty of thinking, and of expressing our thoughts, is always fatal to priestly power, and to those pious frauds, on which it is commonly founded; and, by an infallible connexion, which prevails among all kinds of liberty, this privilege can never be enjoyed, at least has never yet been enjoyed, but in a free government.

'Under the Enrichment Laws, consumers have to spend a fixed quota of dollars each month, depending on their strata. Hoarding is an anti-corpocratic crime.' (An Orison of Somni ~451, p.237)

I am at liberty to vote as my conscience and judgement dictates to be right, without the yoke of any party on me... Look at my arms, you will find no party hand-cuff on them!

Pop, pop, pop! Bom, bom, bom! throughout the day. No time for memorandums now. Go ahead! Liberty and Independence forever.

The best way to keep children at home is to make the home atmosphere pleasant - and let the air out of their tires.

I stand on this rostrum with a sense of deep humility and great pride - humility in the weight of those great American architects of our history who have stood here before me; pride in the reflection that this home of legislative debate represents human liberty in the purest form yet devised.

Here are centered the hopes and aspirations and faith of the entire human race. I do not stand here as advocate for any partisan cause, for the issues are fundamental and reach quite beyond the realm of partisan consideration. They must be resolved on the highest plane of national interest if our course is to prove sound and our future protected. I trust, therefore, that you will do me the justice of receiving that which I have to say as solely expressing the considered viewpoint of a fellow American.

In this situation, it becomes vital that our own country orient its policies in consonance with this basic evolutionary condition rather than pursue a course blind to the reality that the colonial era is now past and the Asian peoples covet the right to shape their own free destiny. What they seek now is friendly guidance, understanding, and support - not imperious direction - the dignity of equality and not the shame of subjugation.

And today the great Yertle, that Marvelous he, Is King of the Mud. That is all he can see. And the turtles, of course... all the turtles are free As turtles and, maybe, all creatures should be.

You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You're on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the one who'll decide where to go.

Yes, no smoking in bars now, and soon there'll be, no drinking and no talking! Be careful, California, you're supposed to be the crazy state - out there, the wild ones. Soon everybody will be saying, 'Come down to the library, we'll have a wild time!' 'Don't know where that book could be, mate...there's a lot of 'em about!'

Of troubles know I none, Of pleasures know I many - I rove beneath the sun Without a single penny.

He could not be captured, He could not be bought, His running was rhythm, His standing was thought; With one eye on sorrow And one eye on mirth, He galloped in heaven And gambolled on earth And only the poet With wings to his brain Can mount him and ride him Without any rein, The stallion of heaven, The steed of the skies, The horse of the singer Who sings as he flies.

When we have undermined the patriotic lie, we shall have cleared the path for the great structure where all shall be united into a universal brotherhood - a truly free society.

The reward in heaven is the perpetual bait, a bait that has caught man in an iron net, a strait-jacket which does not let him expand or grow. All pioneers of truth have been, and still are, reviled; they have been, and still are, persecuted. But did they ask humanity to pay the price? Did they seek to bribe mankind to accept their ideas? They knew too well that he who accepts a truth because of the bribe, will soon barter it away to a higher bidder... Proud and self-reliant characters prefer hatred to such sickening artificial love. Not because of any reward does a free spirit take his stand for a great truth, nor has such a one ever been deterred because of fear of punishment.

Atheism ... in its philosophic aspect refuses allegiance not merely to a definite concept of God, but it refuses all servitude to the God idea, and opposes the theistic principle as such. Gods in their individual function are not half as pernicious as the principle of theism which represents the belief in a supernatural, or even omnipotent, power to rule the earth and man upon it. It is the absolutism of theism, its pernicious influence upon humanity, its paralyzing effect upon thought and action, which Atheism is fighting with all its power.

In its mad passion for power, the Communist State even sought to strengthen and deepen the very ideas and conceptions which the Revolution had come to destroy. It supported and encouraged all the worst antisocial qualities and systematically destroyed the already awakened conception of the new revolutionary values. The sense of justice and equality, the love of liberty and of human brotherhood - these fundamentals of the real regeneration of society - the Communist State suppressed to the point of extermination. Man's instinctive sense of equity was branded as weak sentimentality; human dignity and liberty became a bourgeois superstition; the sanctity of life, which is the very essence of social reconstruction, was condemned as unrevolutionary, almost counter-revolutionary. This fearful perversion of fundamental values bore within itself the seed of destruction.

Witness the tragic condition of Russia. The methods of State centralization have paralysed individual initiative and effort; the tyranny of the dictatorship has cowed the people into slavish submission and all but extinguished the fires of liberty; organized terrorism has depraved and brutalized the masses and stifled every idealistic aspiration; institutionalized murder has cheapened human life, and all sense of the dignity of man and the value of life has been eliminated; coercion at every step has made effort bitter, labour a punishment, has turned the whole of existence into a scheme of mutual deceit, and has revived the lowest and most brutal instincts of man. A sorry heritage to begin a new life of freedom and brotherhood.

The free expression of the hopes and aspirations of a people is the greatest and only safety in a sane society.

After all, that is what laws are for, to be made and unmade.

Anarchism is the only philosophy which brings to man the consciousness of himself; which maintains that God, the State, and society are non-existent, that their promises are null and void, since they can be fulfilled only through man's subordination. Anarchism is therefore the teacher of the unity of life; not merely in nature, but in man.

I may be arrested, I may be tried and thrown in jail, but I will never be silent. I will never acquiesce or submit to authority, nor will I make peace with a system that degrades women to a mere incubator. I now and here declare war upon this system and will not rest until a path has been cleared for a free motherhood and a healthy, joyous and happy childhood.

Merely external emancipation has made of the modern woman an artificial being. Now, woman is confronted with the necessity of emancipating herself from emancipation, if she really desires to be free.

Rather would I have the love songs of romantic ages, rather Don Juan and Madame Venus, rather an elopement by ladder and rope on a moonlight night, followed by the father's curse, mother's moans, and the moral comments of neighbors, than correctness and propriety measured by yardsticks.

Resistance to tyranny is man's highest ideal.

The most unpardonable sin in society is independence of thought.

The State is the altar of political freedom and, like the religious altar, it is maintained for the purpose of human sacrifice.

The ultimate end of all revolutionary social change is to establish the sanctity of human life, the dignity of man, the right of every human being to liberty and well-being.

Thus Dante's motto over Inferno applies with equal force to marriage: 'Ye who enter here leave all hope behind.'

There has never been a free people, a civilized nation, a real republic on this earth. Human society has always consisted of masters and slaves, and the slaves have always been and are today, the foundation stones of the social fabric. Wage-labor is but a name; wage-slavery is the fact.

The political solidarity of the working class means the death of despotism, the birth of freedom, the sunrise of civilization.

The people are as capable of achieving their industrial freedom as they were to secure their political liberty, and both are necessary to a free nation.

With faith and hope and courage we hold our heads erect and with dauntless spirit marshal the working class for the march from Capitalism to Socialism, from Slavery to Freedom, from Barbarism to Civilization.

The rights of one are as sacred as the rights of a million.

In due time the hour will strike and this great cause triumphant - the greatest in history - will proclaim the emancipation of the working class and the brotherhood of all mankind.

Freedom of the press is not an end in itself but a means to the end of [achieving] a free society.

Whether or not they exist, we're slaves to the gods.

Not pleasure, not glory, not power: freedom, only freedom.

Changing from the ghosts of faith to the spectres of reason is just changing cells.

The supreme empire is that of the Emperor who renounces all normal life, that of other men, and in who the care of supremacy doesn't weigh like a load of jewels.

Inside the henhouse from where he will be taken to be killed, the cock sings hymns to liberty because he was given two perches.

Liberty is the possibility of isolation.

If you cannot live alone, you were born a slave.

Every gesture is a revolutionary act.

We decline the claim to power by parties which want to own their followers body and soul, and which want to put themselves over and above the whole nation.

Free from what? As if that mattered to Zarathustra! But your eyes should tell me brightly: free for what?

My conception of freedom. - The value of a thing sometimes does not lie in that which one attains by it, but in what one pays for it - what it costs us. I give an example. Liberal institutions cease to be liberal as soon as they are attained: later on, there are no worse and no more thorough injurers of freedom than liberal institutions. One knows, indeed, what their ways bring: they undermine the will to power; they level mountain and valley, and call that morality; they make men small, cowardly, and hedonistic [genusslich] - every time it is the herd animal that triumphs with them. Liberalism: in other words, herd-animalization ...

These same institutions produce quite different effects while they are still being fought for; then they really promote freedom in a powerful way. On closer inspection it is war that produces these effects, the war for liberal institutions, which, as a war, permits illiberal instincts to continue. And war educates for freedom. For what is freedom? That one has the will to self-responsibility. That one maintains the distance which separates us. That one becomes more indifferent to difficulties, hardships, privation, even to life itself. That one is prepared to sacrifice human beings for one's cause, not excluding oneself.

How is freedom measured, in individuals as in nations? By the resistance which must be overcome, by the effort [Muhe] it costs to remain on top. The highest type of free men should be sought where the highest resistance is constantly overcome: five steps from tyranny, close to the threshold of the danger of servitude. This is true psychologically if by 'tyrants' are meant inexorable and dreadful instincts that provoke the maximum of authority and discipline against themselves - most beautiful type: Julius Caesar - ; this is true politically too; one need only go through history. The nations which were worth something, became worth something, never became so under liberal institutions: it was great danger that made something of them that merits respect. Danger alone acquaints us with our own resources, our virtues, our armor and weapons, our spirit - and forces us to be strong ...

First principle: one must need to be strong - otherwise one will never become strong. - Those large hothouses [Treibhauser] for the strong, for the strongest kind of human being that has ever been, the aristocratic commonwealths of the type of Rome or Venice, understood freedom exactly in the sense in which I understand the word freedom: as something one has and does not have, something one wants, something one conquers ...

I am certainly interested in a tribunal in which, for having used my reason, I was deemed little less than a heretic. Who knows but men will reduce me from the profession of a philosopher to that of historian of the Inquisition! But they behave to me in order that I may become the ignoramous and the fool of Italy... ( Selection, p.244)

Do what you want to do, And go where you're going to. Think for yourself 'Cause I won't be there with you.

I don't know why nobody told you how to unfold your love I don't know how someone controlled you They bought and sold you.

If I grow up I'll be a singer, wearing rings on every finger Not worrying what they or you say, I'll live and love and maybe someday Who knows baby you may comfort me.

To have what we want is riches; but to be able to do without is power.

A man may dwell so long upon a thought that it may take him prisoner.

When the people contend for their liberty, they seldom get anything by their victory but new masters.

The old question still remains: Can a free people restrain crime without sacrificing fundamental liberties and a heritage of compassion? I am confident of the American answer. Let it become a vital element on America's new agenda. Let us show that we can temper together those opposite elements of liberty and restraint into one consistent whole. Let us set an example for the world of a law-abiding America glorying in its freedom as well as its respect for law.

The founding of our Nation was more than a political event; it was an act of faith, a promise to Americans and to the entire world. The Declaration of Independence declared that people can govern themselves, that they can live in freedom with equal rights, that they can respect the rights of others. In the two centuries that have passed since 1776, millions upon millions of Americans have worked and taken up arms when necessary to make that dream a reality. We can be extremely proud of what they have accomplished. Today, we are the world's oldest republic. We are at peace. Our Nation and our way of life endure. We are free.