#Freedom Quotes

“This liberty is all that I request.”

“My free drift Halts not particularly, but moves itself In a wide sea of wax; no levelled malice Infects one comma in the course I hold, But flies an eagle flight, bold and forth on, Leaving no tract behind.”

“Every subject's duty is the Kings, but every subject's soul is his own.”

“With love's light wings did I o'er-perch these walls, for stony limits cannot hold love out”

“In maiden meditation, fancy free.”

“We must every one be a man of his own fancy.”

“If I had my mouth, I would bite; if I had my liberty, I would do my liking. In the meantime, let me be that I am, and seek not toalter me.”

“There is nothing so confining as the prisons of our own perceptions.”

“He that dies pays all debts.”

“Britain is A world by itself, and we will nothing pay For wearing our own noses.”

“No, no, no, no! Come, let's away to prison: We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage: When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down, And ask of thee forgiveness: so we'll live, And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues Talk of court news; and we'll talk with them too, Who loses and who wins; who's in, who's out; And take upon's the mystery of things, As if we were God's spies: and we'll wear out, In a wall'd prison, packs and sects of great ones, That ebb and flow by the moon.”

“Men's eyes were made to look, and let them gaze. I will not budge for no man's pleasure.”

“I will be free, even to the uttermost, as I please, in words.”

“Make the doors upon a woman's wit, and it will out at the casement; shut that, and 'twill out at the key-hole; stop that, 'twill fly with the smoke out at the chimney.”

“I was born free as Caesar; so were you”

“Be checked for silence,But never taxed for speech.”

“This thing of darkness I acknowlege mine. There is nothing more confining than the prison we don't know we are in.”

“There is a world elsewhere.”

“I must have libertyWithal, as large a charter as the wind,To blow on whom I please, for so fools have.”

“Why, headstrong liberty is lashed with woe.There's nothing situate under heaven's eyeBut hath his bound, in earth, in sea, in sky.”

“Now, my co-mates and brothers in exile,Hath not old custom made this life more sweetThan that of painted pomp? Are not these woodsMore free from peril than the envious court?”

“Leave us to our free election.”

“Base is the slave that pays.”

“If you cannot be free be as free as you can.”

“It now appears that the negro race is, more than any other, susceptible of rapid civilization. The emancipation is observed, in the islands, to have wrought for the negro a benefit as sudden as when a thermometer is brought out of the shade into the sun. It has given him eyes and ears.”

“The desire of gold is not for gold. It is not the love of much wheat, and wool and household stuff. It is the means of freedom and benefit.”

“Let us leave hurry to slaves.”

“Let every man be master of his time.”

“Tis ever common That men are merriest when they are from home.”

“We are the prisoners of ideas.”

“The tendencies of the times favor the idea of self-government, and leave the individual, for all code, to the rewards and penalties of his own constitution, which work with more energy than we believe, whilst we depend on artificial restraints.”

“Emancipation is the demand of civilization. That is a principle; everything else is an intrigue.”

“Do not shut up the young people against their will in a pew, and force the children to ask them questions for an hour against their will.”

“All life is an experiment. Place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which animates all whom it floats, and you are without effort impelled to truth, to right and a perfect contentment. I wish to write such rhymes as shall not suggest a restraint, but contrariwise the wildest freedom. Immortality. I notice that as soon as writers broach this question they begin to quote. I hate quotation. Tell me what you know.”

“I may neither choose who I would, nor refuse who I dislike; so is the will of a living daughter curbed by the will of a dead father.”

“O God, I could be bound in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space – were it not that I have bad dreams.”

“Explore, and explore, and explore. Be neither chided nor flattered out of your position of perpetual inquiry. Neither dogmatise yourself, nor accept another's dogmatism. Why should you renounce your right to traverse the star-lit deserts of truth, for the premature comforts of an acre, house, and barn? Truth also has its roof, and bed, and board. Make yourself necessary to the world, and mankind will give you bread, and if not store of it, yet such as shall not take away your property in all men's possessions, in all men's affections, in art, in nature, and in hope.”

“I do not wish to remove from my present prison to a prison a little larger. I wish to break all prisons.”

“Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members.”

“Where the bee sucks, there suck I In the cow-slip's bell i lie There I couch when owls do cry”

“Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore it if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world.”

“Freedom is not the right to live as we please, but the right to find how we ought to live in order to fulfill our potential.”

“It is one of the biggest blessing that you can be stupid with your true friends and behave like you shame to do elsewhere”

“Now no way can I stray;Save back to England, all the world's my way.”

“Thou shalt be free As mountain winds: but then exactly do All points of my command.”

“The reward of commercial civilization is the ability to consume a never-ending array of products.There are limits beyond which commodities cannot be multiplied without preventing their consumers from affirming themselves through the exercise of their personal freedom.When market dependence reaches a certain threshold it deprives people of their power to live creatively and to act autonomously. And precisely because this new impotence is so deeply experienced, it is expressed with difficulty.”

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

“Having my freedom, boast of nothing else.”

“So every bondman in his own hand bearsThe power to cancel his captivity.”

“O for a horse with wings!”