quotations about freedom
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 believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpations.
JAMES MADISON
speech at the Virginia Convention to ratify the Federal Constitution, Jun. 6, 1788
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
May the light of freedom, coming to all darkened lands, flame brightly--until at last the darkness is no more.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
Second Inaugural Address, Jan. 21, 1957
I was a dweller amid shadows grim:
Till FREEDOM touched my yearning eyes, and lo!
Life in a shining circle, rounding rose,
As heaven on heaven goes up the jewell'd night.
New floods of passionate life swirl'd at my heart,
Like Ocean-surges rolling round the world:
And FREEDOM was my glittering Bride.
GERALD MASSEY
"To My Wife"
To know how to free oneself is nothing; the arduous thing is to know what to do with one's freedom.
ANDRE GIDE
Autumn Leaves
Freedom has a scent
Like the top of a new born baby's head
U2
"Miracle Drug"
Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.
JOHN DALBERG-ACTON
The History of Freedom in Antiquity
When we were told that by freedom we understood free enterprise, we did very little to dispel this monstrous falsehood, and all too often we have acted as though we too believed that it was wealth and abundance which were at stake in the postwar conflict between the "revolutionary" countries in the East and the West. Wealth and economic well-being, we have asserted, are the fruits of freedom, while we should have been the first to know that this kind of "happiness" was the blessing of America prior to the Revolution, and that its cause was natural abundance under "mild government," and neither political freedom nor the unchained, unbridled "private initiative" of capitalism, which in the absence of natural wealth has led everywhere to unhappiness and mass poverty. Free enterprise, in other words, has been an unmixed blessing only in America, and it is a minor blessing compared with the truly political freedoms, such as freedom of speech and thought, of assembly and association, even under the best conditions.
HANNAH ARENDT
On Revolution
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
Freedom can be preserved only if it is treated as a supreme principle which must not be sacrificed for particular advantages.
FRIEDRICH HAYEK
Law
It's only after you've lost everything that you're free to do anything.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK
Fight Club
Mistaking insolence for freedom has always been the hallmark of the slave.
WILHELM REICH
Listen
The supreme end is the freedom of the spirit.
SRI AUROBINDO
Bhagavad Gita and Its Message
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
The freedom from something is not true freedom. The freedom to do anything you want to do is also not the freedom I am talking about. My vision of freedom is to be yourself.
OSHO
Freedom: The Courage to Be Yourself
The free man is he who does not fear to go to the end of his thought.
LEON BLUM
quoted in Webster's Quotations
I'm navigating my way down freedom's road
Trying to make my way back home
I got my foot to the floor
But she must need bleeding
This car just don't want to roll
Freedom's road must be under construction
JOHN MELLENCAMP
"Freedom's Road"
Freedom is sometimes defined as a lack of resistance or restraint. A wheel turns freely if there is very little friction in the bearing, a horse breaks free from the post to which it has been tethered, a man frees himself from the branch on which he has been caught while climbing a tree. Physical restraint is an obvious condition, which seems particularly useful in defining freedom, but with respect to important issues, it is a metaphor and not a very good one. People are indeed controlled by fetters, handcuffs, strait jackets, and the walls of jails and concentration camps, but what may be called behavioral control--the restraint imposed by contingencies of reinforcement--is a very different thing.
BURRHUS FREDERIC SKINNER
Beyond Freedom & Dignity
No one is more of a slave than he who thinks himself free without being so.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe