Thursday, October 13, 2011

Quotations about Freedom

The fact, in short, is that freedom, to be meaningful in an organized society must consist of an amalgam of hierarchy of freedoms and restraints. ~Samuel Hendel


He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from opposition; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach himself. ~Thomas Paine


History does not teach fatalism. There are moments when the will of a handful of free men breaks through determinism and opens up new roads. ~Charles de Gaulle


Freedom has its life in the hearts, the actions, the spirit of men and so it must be daily earned and refreshed - else like a flower cut from its life-giving roots, it will wither and die. ~Dwight D. Eisenhower


Liberty is the possibility of doubting, of making a mistake,... of searching and experimenting,... of saying No to any authority - literary, artistic, philosophical, religious, social, and even political. ~Ignazio Silone, The God That Failed, 1950


Liberty: One of Imagination's most precious possessions. ~Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary


The patriot's blood is the seed of Freedom's tree. ~Thomas Campbell


Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide. ~Napoleon Bonaparte


Here is my advice as we begin the century that will lead to 2081. First, guard the freedom of ideas at all costs. Be alert that dictators have always played on the natural human tendency to blame others and to oversimplify. And don't regard yourself as a guardian of freedom unless you respect and preserve the rights of people you disagree with to free, public, unhampered expression. ~Gerard K. O'Neill, 2081


Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves. ~Abraham Lincoln


I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom. ~Simone de Beauvoir


My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular. ~Adlai Stevenson, speech, Detroit, 1952


It is easy to take liberty for granted, when you have never had it taken from you. ~Author unknown, sometimes attributed to M. Grundler


We on this continent should never forget that men first crossed the Atlantic not to find soil for their ploughs but to secure liberty for their souls. ~Robert J. McCracken


You have freedom when you're easy in your harness. ~Robert Frost


For what avail the plough or sail, or land or life, if freedom fail? ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it. ~Thomas Paine


In the truest sense, freedom cannot be bestowed; it must be achieved. ~Franklin D. Roosevelt


We have to call it "freedom": who'd want to die for "a lesser tyranny"? ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960


Freedom is the oxygen of the soul. ~Moshe Dayan


There are two freedoms - the false, where a man is free to do what he likes; the true, where he is free to do what he ought. ~Charles Kingsley


No one is free when others are oppressed. ~Author Unknown


Nations grown corrupt
Love bondage more than liberty;
Bondage with ease than strenuous liberty.
~John Milton


Just, harmonious, temperate as is the spirit of liberty, there is in the name and mere notion of it a vagueness so opposite to the definite clearness of the moral law.... ~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827


Freedom means choosing your burden. ~Hephzibah Menuhin


Most people want security in this world, not liberty. ~H.L. Mencken, Minority Report, 1956


We feel free when we escape - even if it be but from the frying pan into the fire. ~Eric Hoffer


Men fight for freedom, then they begin to accumulate laws to take it away from themselves. ~Author Unknown


Freedom is that instant between when someone tells you to do something and when you decide how to respond. ~Jeffrey Borenstein


Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have. ~Harry Emerson Fosdick


Freedom is not enough. ~Lyndon B. Johnson


Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it. The history of liberty is a history of resistance. ~Woodrow Wilson


The sound of tireless voices is the price we pay for the right to hear the music of our own opinions. ~Adlai Stevenson, speech, New York City, 28 August 1952


We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it. ~William Faulkner


They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. ~Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759


Everywhere the human soul stands between a hemisphere of light and another of darkness on the confines of two everlasting hostile empires, - Necessity and Free Will. ~Thomas Carlyle, Essays, "The Opera"


We have enjoyed so much freedom for so long that we are perhaps in danger of forgetting how much blood it cost to establish the Bill of Rights. ~Felix Frankfurter


O Liberty...! is it well
To leave the gates unguarded?
~Thomas Bailey Aldrich


No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck. ~Frederick Douglass, speech, Civil Rights Mass Meeting, Washington, D.C., 1883


Let freedom never perish in your hands. ~Joseph Addison


Who speaks of liberty while the human mind is in chains? ~Francis Wright, 1828


Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth. ~George Washington


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, Virginia Convention, 1788


Liberty doesn't work as well in practice as it does in speeches. ~Will Rogers


Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err. ~Mahatma Gandhi


Order without liberty and liberty without order are equally destructive. ~Theodore Roosevelt


We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home. ~Edward R. Murrow


Freedom has a thousand charms to show,
That slaves, howe'er contented, never know.
~William Cowper


Most men, after a little freedom, have preferred authority with the consoling assurances and the economy of effort which it brings. ~Walter Lippmann, A Preface to Morals, 1929


The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power. ~Daniel Webster


Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better. ~Albert Camus


Men fight for liberty and win it with hard knocks. Their children, brought up easy, let it slip away again, poor fools. And their grandchildren are once more slaves. ~D.H. Lawrence, Classical American Literature, 1922


I prefer liberty with danger to peace with slavery. ~Author Unknown


The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding. ~Louis D. Brandeis


When the People contend for their liberty, they seldom get anything for their Victory but new Masters. ~George Savile


Without freedom, no one really has a name. ~Milton Acorda


A nation may lose its liberties in a day and not miss them in a century. ~Baron de Montesquieu


Freedom is the will to be responsible to ourselves. ~Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, 1888


Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it. ~George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman, "Maxims: Liberty and Equality," 1905


Liberty is maintained by responsible freedom. ~Roger W Hancock, www.PoetPatriot.com


The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion. ~Edmund Burke


We anarchists do not want to emancipate the people; we want the people to emancipate themselves. ~Errico Malatesta, l'Agitazione, 18 June 1897


Freedom is never free. ~Author Unknown


We are free, truly free, when we don't need to rent our arms to anybody in order to be able to lift a piece of bread to our mouths. ~Ricardo Flores Magon, speech, 31 May 1914


Many politicians are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim. ~Thomas Macaulay

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