FREEDOM QUOTES IV
quotations about freedom
True freedom is to share
All the chains our brothers wear
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
"Stanzas on Freedom"
Posterity: you will never know how much it has cost my generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it.
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS
attributed, The Rebirth of a Nation
Freedom to reject is the only freedom.
SALMAN RUSHDIE
The Ground Beneath Her Feet
Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
Out of My Later Years
Mistaking insolence for freedom has always been the hallmark of the slave.
WILHELM REICH
Listen
Love of country follows from the exercise of its freedoms, not from pride in its fleets or its armies.
LEWIS H. LAPHAM
"Them", Lapham's Quarterly: Foreigners, winter 2014
Freedom can be manifested only in the void of beliefs, in the absence of axioms, and only where the laws have no more authority than a hypothesis.
EMIL CIORAN
History & Utopia
Unless your freedom turns into a creative realization, you will feel sad. Because you will see that you are free--your chains are broken, and you are no longer in prison; you are standing under the starry night, completely free. But where do you go?
OSHO
Freedom: The Courage to Be Yourself
The supreme end is the freedom of the spirit.
SRI AUROBINDO
Bhagavad Gita and Its Message
The unity of all who dwell in freedom is their only sure defense.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
Second Inaugural Address, Jan. 21, 1957
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
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"
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
Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU
The Social Contract
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
Freedom is the fundamental condition for any growth.
ERICH FROMM
Escape from Freedom
We know what works: Freedom works. We know what's right: Freedom is right. We know how to secure a more just and prosperous life for man on Earth: through free markets, free speech, free elections, and the exercise of free will unhampered by the state.
GEORGE H. W. BUSH
Inaugural Address, Jan. 20, 1989
For every man who lives without freedom, the rest of us must face the guilt.
LILLIAN HELLMAN
The Watch on the Rhine
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
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