Freedom Quotes

If you have a right to respect, that means other people don't have a right to their own opinions.

I long for wildness, a nature which I cannot put my foot through, woods where the wood thrush forever sings, where the hours are early morning ones, and there is dew on the grass, and the day is forever unproved, where I might have a fertile unknown for a soil about me.

The freedom of America is the freedom to live your own life and take your own chances.

There is nothing grand or noble in having the use of a slave, in so far as he is a slave; or in issuing commands about necessary things. But it is an error to suppose that every sort of rule is despotic like that of a master over slaves, for there is as great a difference between the rule over freemen and the rule over slaves as there is between slavery by nature and freedom by nature . .

Democracy is not a state in which people act like sheep.

We speak here of the challenge of the dichotomies of war and peace, violence and non-violence, racism and human dignity, oppression and repression and liberty and human rights, poverty and freedom from want.

A piece of freedom is no longer enough for human beings...unlike bread, a slice of liberty does not finish hunger. Freedom is like life. It cannot be had in installments. Freedom is indivisible--we have it all, or we are not free.

People can tell you to keep your mouth shut, but that doesn't stop you from having your own opinion.

It's more fun to be a pirate than to join the navy. On the importance of loving what you do.

Freedom is not the right to do as you please, but the liberty to do as you should.

Excess of liberty, whether it lies in state or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery.

Life is wide, limitless. There is no border, no frontier.

But remember that the Captain belongs to the most dangerous enemy to truth and freedom, the solid unmoving cattle of the majority

If I bind the future I bind my will. If I bind my will I strangle creation.

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

If it's necessary to form a Black Nationalist army, we'll form a Black Nationalist army. It'll be ballot or the bullet. It'll be liberty or it'll be death.

By hook or by crook, I hope that you will possess yourselves of money enough to travel and to idle, to contemplate the future or the past of the world, to dream over books and loiter at street corners and let the line of thought dip deep into the stream

People who are willing to give up freedom for the sake of short term security, deserve neither freedom nor security.

Those who have known freedom and then lost it, have never known it again

When you educate a woman, you set her free. Had I not had books and education in Mississippi, I would have believed that's all there was.

... our interests and our conscience compel us to act on behalf of those who long for freedom. And we must be a source of hope to the poor, the sick, the marginalized, the victims of prejudice.

By academic freedom I understand the right to search for truth and to publish and teach what one holds to be true. This right also implies a duty: one must not conceal any part of what one has recognized to be true.

Each one has a special nature peculiar to himself which he must follow and through which he will find his way to freedom

I'm not trying to get power over white. I'm involved in a freedom struggle. Not a power struggle.

... inherited collective mind-patterns ... have kept humans in bondage to suffering for eons.

I don't need money, or, better, it's not money that I need; it's not even power; I need only what is obtained by power and simply cannot be obtained without power: the solitary and calm awareness of strength! That is the fullest definition of freedom, which the world so struggles over!

This is a world of compensations; and he who would be no slave, must consent to have no slave.

Education is the way to move mountains, to build bridges, to change the world. Education is the path to the future. I believe that education is indeed freedom.

The fallacy is to believe that under a dictatorial government you can be free inside

Marxists get up early to further their cause. We must get up even earlier to defend our freedom.

Those who cannot bravely face danger are the slaves of their attackers.

An achievement is a bondage. It obliges one to a higher achievement.

Away, away, from men and towns, To the wild wood and the downs — To the silent wilderness Where the soul need not repress Its music lest it should not find An echo in another's mind.

Our march to freedom is irreversible. We must not allow fear to stand in our way.

Friends, Comrades and fellow South Africans. I greet you all in the name of peace, democracy and freedom for all. I stand here before you not as a prophet but as a humble servant of you, the people. Your tireless and heroic sacrifices have made it possible for me to be here today. I therefore place the remaining years of my life in your hands.

Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.

The whole drift of our law is toward the absolute prohibition of all ideas that diverge in the slightest form from the accepted platitudes, and behind that drift of law there is a far more potent force of growing custom, and under that custom there is a natural philosophy which erects conformity into the noblest of virtues and the free functioning of personality into a capital crime against society.

In truth , mankind cannot be saved from without, by schoolmasters or any other sort of masters: it can only be lamed and enslaved by them. It is said that if you wash a cat it will never again wash itself. This may or may not be true : what is certain is that if you teach a man anything he will never learn it; and if you cure him of a disease he will be unable to cure himself the next time it attacks him.

You can choose to be free , but it's last decision you'll ever make

I have invented an invaluable permanent invalid called Bunbury, in order that I may be able to go down into the country whenever I choose.

The stations of uncensored expression are closing down; the lights are going out; but there is still time for those to whom freedom and parliamentary government mean something, to consult together. Let me, then, speak in truth and earnestness while time remains.

So far as a person thinks; they are free.

Conformity will be the only virtue and any man who refuses to conform will have to pay the penalty.

I, for one, resent it when a representative of the people refers to you and me, the free men and women of this country, as 'the masses.'

We live in a very low state of the world, and pay unwilling tribute to government founded on force. There is not, among the most religious and instructed men of the most religious and civil nations, a reliance on the moral sentiment, and a sufficient belief in the unity of things to persuade them that society can be maintained without artificial restraints, as well as the solar system; or that the private citizen might be reasonable, and a good neighbor, without the hint of a jail or a confiscation.

Enduring habits I hate.... Yes, at the very bottom of my soul I feel grateful to all my misery and bouts of sickness and everything about me that is imperfect, because this sort of thing leaves me with a hundred backdoors through which I can escape from enduring habits.

Every man should be responsible to others, nor should any one be allowed to do just as he pleases; for where absolute freedom is allowed, there is nothing to restrain the evil which is inherent in every man.

Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.

Resistance keeps you stuck. Surrender immediately opens you to the greater intelligence that is vaster than the human mind, and it can then express itself through you. So through surrender often you find circumstances changing.

If you love a person, you say to that person, "Look, I love you, whatever that may be. I've seen quite a bit of it and I know there's lots that I haven't seen, but still it's you and I want you to be what you want to be. And I won't be happy if I've got you in a cage. You'd be a bird without song."

As a woman I have no country. As a woman my country is the whole world.

Swaraj means even under dominion status a capacity to declare independence at will.

Independence means voluntary restraints and discipline, voluntary acceptance of the rule of law.

Chess holds its master in its own bonds, shackling the mind and brain so that the inner freedom of the very strongest must suffer.

No matter how much I wanted all those things that I needed money to buy, there was some devilish current pushing me off in another direction -- toward anarchy and poverty and craziness. That maddening delusion that a man can lead a decent life without hiring himself out as a Judas Goat.

Its authors meant it to be... a stumbling block to those who in after times might seek to turn a free people back into the hateful paths of despotism. They knew the proneness of prosperity to breed tyrants, and they meant when such should re-appear in this fair land and commence their vocation they should find left for them at least one hard nut to crack.

People are just up tight because the kids are having fun and they didn't have the same freedom.

I understand by 'freedom of spirit' something quite definite - the unconditional will to say No, where it is dangerous to say No.

Swaraj means ability to regard every inhabitant of India as our own brother or sister.

If all responsibility is imposed on you, then you may want to exploit the moment and want to be overwhelmed by the responsibility;yet if you try, you will notice that nothing was imposed on you, but that you are yourself this responsibility.