FREEDOM QUOTES IV

quotations about freedom

Freedom quote

The free man is he who does not fear to go to the end of his thought.

LEON BLUM

quoted in Webster's Quotations


The importance of our being free to do a particular thing has nothing to do with the question of whether we or the majority are ever likely to make use of that particular possibility. To grant no more freedom than all can exercise would be to misconceive its function completely. The freedom that will be used by only one man in a million may be more important to society and more beneficial to the majority than any freedom that we all use.

FRIEDRICH HAYEK

The Constitution of Liberty


Heaven's blessing must attend all, and freedom must soon be given to the pining millions under a ruthless bondage.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS

My Bondage and My Freedom


Can this be happiness, this terrifying freedom?

ALBERT CAMUS

Caligula


Saying that you reject socialism because you love freedom is like saying you reject chocolate because you hate bananas.

CHANA O'LEARY

North Country Now, March 8, 2019


I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom.

SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR

The Blood of Others


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


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.

NELSON MANDELA

Long Walk to Freedom


I am as free as Nature first made man,
Ere the base laws of servitude began,
When wild in woods the noble savage ran.

JOHN DRYDEN

The Conquest of Granada


The cry for freedom is a sign of suppression. It will not cease to ring as long as man feels himself captive. As diverse as the cries for freedom may be, basically they all express one and the same thing: The intolerability of the rigidity of the organism and of the machine-like institutions which create a sharp conflict with the natural feelings for life. Not until there is a social order in which all cries for freedom subside will man have overcome his biological and social crippling, will he have attained genuine freedom.

WILHELM REICH

The Mass Psychology of Fascism


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


What most clearly characterizes true freedom and its true employment is its misemployment.

GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG

"Notebook L", Aphorisms


The cause of Freedom is the cause of God!

WILLIAM LISLE BOWLES

Edmund Burke


I anticipate with pleasing expectations that retreat in which I promise myself to realize, without alloy, the sweet enjoyment of partaking, in the midst of my fellow citizens, the benign influence of good laws under a free government, the ever favorite object of my heart, and the happy reward, as I trust, of our mutual cares, labors, and dangers.

GEORGE WASHINGTON

farewell address, Sep. 17, 1796


Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.

JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU

The Social Contract


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


The more freedom you give people to do good, the more freedom they have to do bad as well.

TAD WILLIAMS

Otherland: City of Golden Shadow


We ... would rather die on our feet than live on our knees.

FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT

speech, June 1941


If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too.

W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Strictly Personal


Man is born free and is everywhere in chains.

PETER CAREY

Parrot and Olivier in America