#Liberation Quotes

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

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

“Passion and desire bind your Heart. Remove the locks. Become a key, become a key . . .”

“I lost everything i have, found myself.”

“You have escaped the cage. Your wings are stretched out. Now fly.”

“Be empty of worrying. Think of who created thought! Why do you stay in prison When the door is so wide open?”

“You, ignorant of the way of Love, set Me free.”

“When you're at peace, there's no counterfeit freedom.”

“Let us put away our blinders and answer the call to Joy.”

“You knock at the door of Reality. You shake your thought wings, loosen your shoulders, and open.”

“Only necessity understood, and bondage to the highest is identical with true freedom.”

“Hope has returned to the hearts of scores of millions of men and women, and with that hope there burns the flame of anger against the brutal, corrupt invader ... In a dozen famous ancient States now prostrate under the Nazi yoke, the masses of the people ... await the hour of liberation ... That hour will strike, and its solemn peal will proclaim that the night is past and that the dawn has come.”

“Your lifetime in form is to be honored and celebrated. Go beyond your enslavement, and live fully in the now, as this is the only time you have.”

“From this hour, freedom! Going where I like, my own master.”

“Freedom can never be true of name and form; it is the clay out of which we (the pots) are made; then it is limited and not free, so that freedom can never be true of the related. One pot can never say "I am free" as a pot; only as it loses all ideas of form does it become free.”

“If the suns come down, and the moons crumble into dust, and systems after systems are hurled into annihilation, what is that to you? Stand as a rock; you are indestructible. You are the Self, the God of the universe. Say - "I am Existence Absolute, Bliss Absolute, Knowledge Absolute, I am He," and like a lion breaking its cage, break your chain and be free forever. What frightens you, what holds you down? Only ignorance and delusion; nothing else can bind you. You are the Pure One, the Ever-blessed.”

“If you can get rid of your attachment to a single thing, you are on the way to liberation.”

“We fight not to enslave, but to set a country free, and to make room upon the earth for honest men to live in.”

“If a piece of burning charcoal be placed on a man’s head, see how he struggles to throw it off. Similar will be the struggle for freedom of those who really understand that they are slaves of nature.”

“It is the hero alone, not the coward, who has liberation within his easy reach.”

“Dance when you're perfectly free.”

“It is he who has broken the bond of marriage - not I. I only break its bondage.”

“Your way begins at the other side.Become the sky.Take an axe to the prison wall.Escape.Walk out like someone suddenly born into color.Do it now.”

“I want to sing like the birds sing, not worrying about who hears or what they think.”

“Freedom is like birth. Till we are fully free, we are slaves.”

“There is no such thing as slow freedom. Freedom is like a birth. Till we are fully free we are slaves. All birth takes place in a moment.”

“Be not the slave of your own past.”

“Let the fear go, and live your life with the power of love.”

“Let each know that for each the body, the mind and the soul have been freed to fulfill themselves.”

“I was called a terrorist yesterday, but when I came out of jail, many people embraced me, including my enemies, and that is what I normally tell other people who say those who are struggling for liberation in their country are terrorists.”

“We pledge ourselves to liberate all our people from the continuing bondage of poverty, deprivation, suffering, gender and other discrimination.”

“When I forgive other people, I let them go, I free them from my ignorance. And as soon as I do, I feel lighter, brighter and better.”

“Freedom is indivisible; the chains on any one of my people were the chains on all of them, the chains on all of my people were the chains on me.”

“For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.”

“Joy is a freedom. It helps a person to find his/her own liberation. The person who is joyous takes responsibility for the time he/she takes up and the space that he/she occupies. You share it! Some of you have it ... you share it! That is what joy is! When you continue to give it away you will still have so much more of it.”

“I know, that since life is our most precious gift, and as far as we can be absolutely certain, it's given to us to live but once, let us so live we will not regret years of useless virtue, and inertia, and timidity, and ignorance, and in our last moments we can say: 'All my life, all my conscious energies, have been dedicated to the most noble cause in the world, the liberation of the human mind and spirit - beginning with my own'.”

“Let us live so we do not regret years of inertia and ignorance, so when we die we can say all of our energy was dedicated to the noble liberation of the human mind and spirit, beginning with my own.”

“Our task is not to liberate the oppressed, but to liberate the oppressors”

“When I walked out of prison, that was my mission, to liberate the oppressed and the oppressor both.”

“My mother raised me, and then freed me.”

“I cannot and will not give any undertaking at a time when I, and you, the people, are not free. Your freedom and mine cannot be separated.”

“I cherish my own freedom dearly, but I care even more for your freedom. Too many have died since I went to prison. Too many have suffered for the love of freedom. I owe it to their widows, to their orphans, to their mothers and their fathers, who have grieved and wept for them ..... Not only have I suffered during these long lonely wasted years. I am no less life-loving than you are. But I cannot sell the birthright of the people to be free ....... Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts. Your freedom and mine cannot be separated.”

“No single person can liberate a country. You can only liberate a country if you act as a collective.”

“As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn't leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I'd still be in prison.”

“Let freedom reign. The sun never set on so glorious a human achievement.”

“I had no epiphany, no singular revelation, no moment of truth, but a steady accumulation of a thousand slights, a thousand indignities and a thousand unremembered moments produced in me an anger, a rebelliousness, a desire to fight the system that imprisoned my people. There was no particular day on which I said, Henceforth I will devote myself to the liberation of my people; instead, I simply found myself doing so, and could not do otherwise.”

“I am grateful to have been loved and to be loved now and to be able to love, because that liberates. Love liberates. It doesn't just hold - that's ego. Love liberates. It doesn't bind. Love says, 'I love you. I love you if you're in China. I love you if you're across town. I love you if you're in Harlem. I love you. I would like to be near you. I'd like to have your arms around me. I'd like to hear your voice in my ear. But that's not possible now, so I love you. Go.'”

“The truth is that we are not yet free; we have merely achieved the freedom to be free, the right not to be oppressed. We have not taken the final step of our journey, but the first step on a longer and even more difficult road. For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others. The true test of our devotion to freedom is just beginning.”

“It was during those long and lonely years that my hunger for the freedom of my own people became a hunger for the freedom of all people, white and black. I knew as well as I knew anything that the oppressor must be liberated just as surely as the oppressed.”

“We succeeded to take our last steps to freedom in conditions of relative peace. We commit ourselves to the construction of a complete, just and lasting peace. We have triumphed in the effort to implant hope in the breasts of the millions of our people.”