Freedom Quotes

“He who is brave is free.”

— Lucius Annaeus Seneca

“Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains.”

— Karl Marx

“History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.”

— Dwight D. Eisenhower

“There is no such thing as liberty; you only change one sort of domination for another. All we can do is to choose our master.”

— David Herbert Lawrence

“In health there is freedom. Health is the first of all liberties.”

— Henri-Frederic Amiel

“It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.”

— James Madison

“There is no such thing as liberty; you only change one sort of domination for another; all we can do is to choose our master.”

— D.H. Lawrence

“The time is near at hand which must determine whether Americans are to be free men or slaves.”

— George Washington

“Do not quench your inspiration and your imagination. Do not become the slave of your model.”

— Vincent Van Gogh

“I'm for whatever gets you through the night.”

— Frank Sinatra

“It is often safer to be in chains than to be free.”

— Franz Kafka

“The history of liberty is a history of resistance.”

— Woodrow Wilson

“Control your own destiny, or someone else will.”

— Jack Welch

“I must study politics and war, that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.”

— John Adams

“When the prison doors are opened, the real dragon will fly out.”

— Ho Chi Minh

“Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.”

— Mark Twain

“I'm tired of being treated like a second-class citizen.”

— Rosa Parks

“When the people fear the government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.”

— Thomas Jefferson

“We forge the chains we wear in life.”

— Charles Dickens

“Liberty for wolves is death to the lambs.”

— Isaiah Berlin

“Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty; the obedient must be slaves.”

— Henry David Thoreau

“Hell is other people.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

“It took me quite a long time to develop a voice, and now that I have it, I am not going to be silent.”

— Madeleine Albright

“To be convinced that to be happy means to be free, and that to be free means to be brave; therefore, do not take lightly the perils of war.”

— Thucydides

“Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you're a man, you take it.”

— Malcolm X

“Under conditions of tyranny, it is far easier to act than to think.”

— Hannah Arendt

“If we must die, we die defending our rights.”

— Sitting Bull

“Fear is the passion of slaves.”

— Patrick Henry

“You cannot build character and courage by taking away a man's initiative and independence.”

— William Boetcker

“Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.”

— Aristotle

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

— Thomas Jefferson

“If we cannot now end our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity.”

— John F. Kennedy

“I am a citizen of the world.”

— Demosthenes

“Liberty is not the power of doing what we like, but the right to do what we ought.”

— Lord Acton

“The free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves.”

— Herbert Marcuse

“Live with your century, but do not be its creature.”

— Friedrich Schiller

“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

“Among the many values in life, I appreciate freedom most.”

— Haruki Murakami

“We must be willing to pay a price for freedom.”

— H.L. Mencken

“You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.”

— Malcolm X

“Is freedom anything else than the right to live as we wish? Nothing else.”

— Epictetus

“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.”

— Søren Kierkegaard

“Dobby is free.”

— J.K. Rowling

“I do not wish women to have power over men, but over themselves.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

“If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive.”

— Audre Lorde

“Nothing is more precious than independence and liberty.”

— Ho Chi Minh

“I want to be alone.”

— Greta Garbo

“There can be no liberty unless there is economic liberty.”

— Margaret Thatcher

“The last of human freedoms is the ability to choose one's attitude in a given set of circumstances.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

“Freedom is not enough.”

— Lyndon B. Johnson

“I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities.”

— Nelson Mandela

“While a people preserves its language, it preserves the marks of liberty.”

— José Rizal

“The day will dawn when all the people of Ireland will have the desire for freedom; to show it is then we'll see the rising of the moon.”

— Bobby Sands

“As soon as laws are necessary for men, they are no longer fit for freedom.”

— Pythagoras

“Freedom is the recognition of necessity.”

— Friedrich Engels

“The torment of precautions often exceeds the dangers to be avoided; it is sometimes better to abandon one's self to destiny.”

— Napoleon Bonaparte

“If God wanted us to fly, He would have given us tickets.”

— Mel Brooks

“When dictatorship is a fact, revolution becomes a right.”

— Victor Hugo

“Few men desire liberty; most men wish only for a just master.”

— Sallust

“Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”

— George Orwell

“I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas.”

— Hillary Clinton

“Give me liberty, or give me death!”

— Patrick Henry

“Decision is a risk rooted in the courage of being free.”

— Paul Tillich

“I'm not in this world to live up to your expectations, and you're not in this world to live up to mine.”

— Bruce Lee

“I have not yet begun to fight!”

— John Paul Jones

“He who becomes a Muslim does so in his own interest.”

— Abu Bakr

“Stand a little less between me and the sun.”

— Diogenes

“I'll walk where my own nature would be leading; it vexes me to choose another guide.”

— Emily Brontë

“The desire of gold is not for gold; it is for the means of freedom and benefit.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Oh bird of my soul, fly away now, for I possess a hundred fortified towers.”

— Rumi

“It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once.”

— David Hume

“The worst enemy of life, freedom and the common decencies is total anarchy; their second worst enemy is total efficiency.”

— Aldous Huxley

“Equality is the soul of liberty; there is, in fact, no liberty without it.”

— Frances Wright

“Be not a slave of words.”

— Thomas Carlyle

“He that is taken and put into prison or chains is not conquered; though overcome, for he is still an enemy.”

— Thomas Hobbes

“I want to be a machine.”

— Andy Warhol

“What is a rebel? A man who says no, but whose refusal does not imply a renunciation.”

— Albert Camus

“Being a star has made it possible for me to get insulted in places where the average Negro could never hope to go and get insulted.”

— Sammy Davis Jr.

“A man who won't die for something is not fit to live.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

“Liberty and union, now and forever, one and inseparable.”

— Daniel Webster

“If people don't want to come out to the ballpark, nobody's gonna stop 'em.”

— Yogi Berra

“I've managed to avoid tattoos so far.”

— Mick Jagger

“We have always found the Irish a bit odd. They refuse to be English.”

— Winston Churchill

“In a way, the most political thing you can do is be yourself.”

— Boy George

“As a woman, I have no country. As a woman, my country is the whole world.”

— Virginia Woolf

“I was born on the prairies where the wind blew free and there was nothing to break the light of the sun. I was born where there were no enclosures.”

— Geronimo

“The opposite of courage is not cowardice; it is conformity. Even a dead fish can go with the flow.”

— Jim Hightower

“Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.”

— Denis Diderot

“All oppression creates a state of war.”

— Simone de Beauvoir

“Our true nationality is mankind.”

— H.G. Wells

“The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages.”

— Virginia Woolf

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

— Nelson Mandela

“The tree of liberty needs to be watered from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

— Lyn Nofziger

“A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”

— Virginia Woolf

“Take care to get what you like, or you will be forced to like what you get.”

— George Bernard Shaw

“If you look into your own heart and you find nothing wrong there, what is there to worry about? What is there to fear?”

— Confucius

“The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.”

— Ayn Rand

“Virtuous people often revenge themselves for the constraints to which they submit by the boredom which they inspire.”

— Confucius

“We are right to take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties.”

— James Madison

“Every man gotta right to decide his own destiny.”

— Bob Marley

“Analysis gave me great freedom of emotions and fantastic confidence; I felt I had served my time as a puppet.”

— Hedy Lamarr

“A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

“Liberty is the right to do what the law permits.”

— Montesquieu

“He only earns his freedom and his life who takes them every day by storm.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“Hope will never be silent.”

— Harvey Milk

“The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time.”

— Thomas Jefferson

“Go west, young man.”

— Aaron Burr

“It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.”

— Voltaire

“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”

— George Orwell

“I don't mind living in a man's world as long as I can be a woman in it.”

— Marilyn Monroe

“Free imagination is the inestimable prerogative of youth, and it must be cherished and guarded as a treasure.”

— Felix Bloch

“Birds sing after a storm; why shouldn't people feel as free to delight in whatever remains to them?”

— Rose Kennedy

“It's not worth doing something unless you were doing something that someone somewhere would much rather you weren't doing.”

— Terry Pratchett

“Order without liberty and liberty without order are equally destructive.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

“Life has a certain flavor for those who have fought and risked all that the sheltered and protected can never experience.”

— John Stuart Mill

“Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.”

— John Milton

“Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so too.”

— Voltaire

“True independence and freedom can only exist in doing what's right.”

— Brigham Young

“The cause of freedom is not the cause of a race or a sect, a party or a class; it is the cause of humankind, the very birthright of humanity.”

— Anna Julia Cooper

“Peace is liberty in tranquillity.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

“No human being, however great or powerful, was ever so free as a fish.”

— John Ruskin

“If the freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”

— George Washington

“One does not arrest Voltaire.”

— Charles de Gaulle

“Man is fully responsible for his nature and his choices.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

“The armored cars of dreams contrived to let us do so many a dangerous thing.”

— Elizabeth Bishop

“Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself.”

— Harvey Fierstein

“The secret of life is to have no fear; it's the only way to function.”

— Stokely Carmichael

“All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.”

— Winston Churchill

“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.”

— Søren Kierkegaard

“Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.”

— John F. Kennedy

“For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go; I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move.”

— Robert Louis Stevenson

“By nature all men are equal in liberty, but not in other endowments.”

— Thomas Aquinas

“Concern should drive us into action and not into a depression; no man is free who cannot control himself.”

— Pythagoras

“We will not waver, we will not tire, we will not falter, and we will not fail. Peace and freedom will prevail.”

— George W. Bush

“The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism.”

— Wole Soyinka

“All I was doing was trying to get home from work.”

— Rosa Parks

“It does not take a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.”

— Samuel Adams

“A great fortune is a great slavery.”

— Lucius Annaeus Seneca

“A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained in arms, is the best and most natural defense of a free country.”

— James Madison

“The English think they are free; they are free only during the election of members of parliament.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“I think a child should be allowed to take his father's or mother's name at will; on coming of age, paternity is a legal fiction.”

— James Joyce

“It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things that men of intemperate minds cannot be free; their passions forge their fetters.”

— Edmund Burke

“Man is not free unless government is limited.”

— Ronald Reagan

“Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual; you have an obligation to be one.”

— Eleanor Roosevelt

“There is no such thing as part freedom.”

— Nelson Mandela

“Liberty may be endangered by the abuse of liberty, but also by the abuse of power.”

— James Madison

“If you don't design your own life plan, chances are you'll fall into someone else's plan. And guess what? They have planned for you, not much.”

— Jim Rohn

“My father always said, 'Malala will be free as a bird.'”

— Malala Yousafzai

“The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one’s self, and the arbitrariness of the constraint serves only to obtain precision of execution.”

— Igor Stravinsky

“Work out your own salvation. Do not depend on others.”

— Buddha

“To criticize a person for their race is manifestly irrational and ridiculous, but to criticize their religion, that is a right; that is a freedom.”

— Rowan Atkinson

“I would rather be a beggar and single than a queen and married.”

— Elizabeth I

“Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done, it's always your choice.”

— Wayne Dyer

“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty; power is ever stealing from the many to the few.”

— Wendell Phillips

“A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”

— Virginia Woolf

“If a man has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

“The danger of the past was that men became slaves; the danger of the future is that man may become robots.”

— Erich Fromm

“We are right to take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties.”

— James Madison

“To live alone is the fate of all great souls.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

“I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.”

— Henry David Thoreau

“I am very comfortable with the idea that we can override biology with free will.”

— Richard Dawkins

“If the liberties of the American people are ever destroyed, they will fall by the hands of the clergy.”

— Marquis de Lafayette

“Flow with whatever may happen and let your mind be free; stay centered by accepting whatever you are doing. This is the ultimate.”

— Zhuangzi

“Every savage can dance.”

— Jane Austen

“The biggest adventure you can take is to live the life of your dreams.”

— Oprah Winfrey

“I don't want to be alone, I want to be left alone.”

— Audrey Hepburn

“I am Fidel Castro, and we have come to liberate Cuba.”

— Fidel Castro

“The British are coming! One if by land, two if by sea.”

— Paul Revere

“I do not wish women to have power over men, but over themselves.”

— Mary Shelley

“No one is free who has not obtained the empire of himself.”

— Pythagoras

“Free people remember this maxim: We may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is once lost.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“The freedom of all is essential to my freedom.”

— Mikhail Bakunin

“No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.”

— Buddha

“I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.”

— Diogenes

“Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.”

— Winston Churchill

“Freedom without limits is just a word.”

— Terry Pratchett

“It is clear that not in one thing alone, but in many ways, equality and freedom of speech are a good thing.”

— Herodotus

“Better to fight for something than live for nothing.”

— George S. Patton

“The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise.”

— Tacitus

“Posterity! You will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make a good use of it.”

— John Adams

“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

— Evelyn Beatrice Hall

“Can a nation be free if it oppresses other nations? It cannot.”

— Vladimir Lenin

“We live not as we wish to, but as we can.”

— Menander

“The patriot volunteer, fighting for country and his rights, makes the most reliable soldier on earth.”

— Stonewall Jackson

“Freedom is never dear at any price. It is the breath of life. What would a man not pay for living?”

— Mahatma Gandhi

“I am free of all prejudices. I hate every one equally.”

— W.C. Fields

“Forgiveness is the key to action and freedom.”

— Hannah Arendt

“Free the child's potential, and you will transform him into the world.”

— Maria Montessori

“Free speech carries with it some freedom to listen.”

— Warren E. Burger

“All mankind... being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.”

— John Locke

“It's wonderful to climb the liquid mountains of the sky; behind me and before me is God and I have no fears.”

— Helen Keller

“It is true that liberty is precious; so precious that it must be carefully rationed.”

— Vladimir Lenin

“I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”

— Ayn Rand

“Would any one believe that I am master of slaves by my own purchase? I am drawn along by the general inconvenience of living without them.”

— Patrick Henry

“Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness.”

— George Washington

“It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.”

— Emiliano Zapata

“He travels the fastest who travels alone.”

— Rudyard Kipling

“He travels the fastest who travels alone.”

— Rudyard Kipling

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

— Nelson Mandela

“I'll be in my bedroom, making no noise and pretending I'm not there.”

— Harry Potter

“How very little can be done under the spirit of fear.”

— Florence Nightingale

“I tend to avoid television's politics and places with velvet ropes.”

— Demetri Martin

“Publish and be damned.”

— Arthur Wellesley

“Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

“If I have to change my lifestyle, I don't want to live.”

— Robert Mapplethorpe

“I feel as if I were a piece in a game of chess when my opponent says of it that piece cannot be moved.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

“Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

“Religious bondage shackles and debilitate the mind, and unfit it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect.”

— James Madison

“Liberty without virtue would be no blessing to us.”

— Benjamin Rush

“Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.”

— Abraham Lincoln

“Rebellion against tyrants is obedience to God.”

— Benjamin Franklin

“Be thine own palace, or the world's thy jail.”

— John Donne

“Only free men can negotiate; prisoners cannot enter into contracts.”

— Nelson Mandela

“Art is what you can get away with.”

— Andy Warhol

“There is no must in art because art is free.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

“I am neither of the East nor of the West. No boundaries exist within my breast.”

— Rumi

“Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

“Real freedom lies in wildness, not in civilization.”

— Charles Lindbergh

“No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings.”

— William Blake

“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.”

— Nelson Mandela

“Art is the only way to run away without leaving home.”

— Twyla Tharp

“Freedom is the open window through which pours the sunlight of the human spirit and human dignity.”

— Herbert Hoover

“There is a certain enthusiasm in liberty that makes human nature rise above itself in acts of bravery and heroism.”

— Alexander Hamilton

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

“There can be no liberty unless there is economic liberty.”

— Margaret Thatcher

“Freedom in general may be defined as the absence of obstacles to the realization of desires.”

— Bertrand Russell

“It is not necessary for eagles to be crows.”

— Sitting Bull

“I must create a system or be enslaved by another man's. I will not reason and compare: my business is to create.”

— William Blake

“Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: freedom for slave owners.”

— Vladimir Lenin

“Do you mind if I smoke?”

— Oscar Wilde

“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”

— Albert Camus

“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.”

— Søren Kierkegaard

“Africa for the Africans, at home and abroad.”

— Marcus Garvey

“No one is truly free; they are a slave to wealth, fortune, the law, or other people restraining them from acting according to their will.”

— Euripides

“I would rather not be a king than to forfeit my liberty.”

— Phaedrus

“It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.”

— James Madison

“Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.”

— Aleister Crowley

“Live your life and forget your age.”

— Jean-Paul

“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.”

— Thomas Paine

“The state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation.”

— Pierre Trudeau

“If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.”

— Alexander the Great

“Freedom and responsibility aren't interconnected things; they are the same thing.”

— Harry Browne

“We are all serving a life sentence, and good behavior is our only hope for a pardon.”

— Douglas Horton

“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.”

— Charlotte Brontë

“Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better.”

— Albert Camus

“Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty.”

— Ronald Reagan

“Nothing is more precious than independence and liberty.”

— Ho Chi Minh

“One day you might look up and see me playing the game at 50. Don't laugh. Never say never, because limits, like fears, are often just an illusion.”

— Michael Jordan

“The thing you fear most has no power. Your fear of it is what has the power. Facing the truth really will set you free.”

— Oprah Winfrey

“I was born an American; I will live an American; I shall die an American.”

— Daniel Webster

“Limits, like fear, is often an illusion.”

— Michael Jordan

“Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“I was against gay marriage until I realized I didn't have to get one.”

— James Carville

“He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.”

— Aristotle

“There's no better time than now to be who you are.”

— Boy George

“Freedom is the sure possession of those alone who have the courage to defend it.”

— Pericles

“To enjoy freedom, we have to control ourselves.”

— Virginia Woolf

“Older men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die.”

— Herbert Hoover

“A man has a property in his opinions, and the free communication of them.”

— James Madison

“It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.”

— Emiliano Zapata

“If the people don't want to come out to the ballpark, nobody's going to stop them.”

— Yogi Berra

“I had reasoned this out in my mind; there was one of two things I had a right to: liberty or death. If I could not have one, I would have the other.”

— Harriet Tubman

“One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.”

— Helen Keller

“Liberty exists in proportion to wholesome restraint.”

— Daniel Webster

“Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

“The most courageous act is still to think for yourself aloud.”

— Coco Chanel

“If a man has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

“Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

“Your past is not your potential. In any hour, you can choose to liberate the future.”

— Marilyn Ferguson

“The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time.”

— Thomas Jefferson

“Freedom is the right to live as we wish.”

— Epictetus

“Sometime they'll give a war and nobody will come.”

— Carl Sandburg

“If people don't want to come to the ballpark, how are you going to stop them?”

— Yogi Berra

“Just living is not enough. One must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower.”

— Hans Christian Andersen

“Listen: there's a hell of a good universe next door; let's go.”

— e.e. cummings

“Anarchy is the only slight glimmer of hope.”

— Mick Jagger

“Only the educated are free.”

— Epictetus

“Money won't create success, the freedom to make it will.”

— Nelson Mandela

“Defiance is the act of challenging authority or norms.”

— Unknown

“Excess of liberty, whether it lies in state or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery.”

— Plato

“A man can be himself only so long as he is alone.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

“Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.”

— Thomas Jefferson

“When men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon.”

— Thomas Paine

“It is a comfortable feeling to know that you stand on your own ground; land is about the only thing that can't fly away.”

— Anthony Trollope

“All we ask is to be let alone.”

— Jefferson Davis

“The worker of the world has nothing to lose but their chains. Workers of the world, unite!”

— Karl Marx

“Every man has a property in his own person; this nobody has a right to, but himself.”

— John Locke

“It does not take a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.”

— Samuel Adams

“We forfeit three-quarters of ourselves in order to be like other people.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

“Every law is an infraction of liberty.”

— Jeremy Bentham

“The only peace is being out of earshot.”

— Mason Cooley

“Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.”

— George Bernard Shaw

“I just hate to be a thing.”

— Marilyn Monroe

“You can chain me, you can torture me, you can even destroy this body, but you will never imprison my mind.”

— Mahatma Gandhi

“None can love freedom heartily but good men; the rest love not freedom, but licence.”

— John Milton

“I sometimes think that the price of liberty is not so much eternal vigilance as eternal dirt.”

— George Orwell

“May we think of freedom not as the right to do as we please, but as the opportunity to do what is right.”

— Peter Marshall

“People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.”

— Søren Kierkegaard

“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.”

— Desmond Tutu

“Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.”

— Francis Bacon

“Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.”

— Sigmund Freud

“In order to fly, all one must do is simply miss the ground.”

— Douglas Adams

“Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.”

— William Penn

“People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

“From birth, man carries the weight of gravity on his shoulders; he is bolted to earth. But man has only to sink beneath the surface and he is free.”

— Jacques-Yves Cousteau

“Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and under the rule of a just God cannot long retain it.”

— Abraham Lincoln

“Art is the only way to run away without leaving home.”

— Twyla Tharp

“I wish to have no connection with any ship that does not sail fast, for I intend to go in harm's way.”

— John Paul Jones

“I'm going to put on my gravestone, 'He never owned a cell phone.'”

— Jesse Ventura

“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

— Evelyn Beatrice Hall

“He who created us without our help will not save us without our consent.”

— Saint Augustine

“I only go out to get me a fresh appetite for being alone.”

— Lord Byron

“While the state exists, there can be no freedom; when there is freedom, there will be no state.”

— Vladimir Lenin

“Property is surely a right of mankind as real as liberty.”

— John Adams

“A big part of financial freedom is having your heart and mind free from worry about the what-ifs of life.”

— Suze Orman

“The mountains are calling and I must go.”

— John Muir

“The distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers, and New Englanders are no more; I am not a Virginian, but an American.”

— Patrick Henry

“I am deliberate and afraid of nothing.”

— Audre Lorde

“No man is free who is not master of himself.”

— Epictetus

“I owe nothing to women's lib.”

— Margaret Thatcher

“Life is like a game of cards. The hand you are dealt is determinism; the way you play it is free will.”

— Jawaharlal Nehru

“This is slavery, not to speak one's thought.”

— Euripides

“My body could stand the crutches, but my mind couldn't stand the sideline.”

— Michael Jordan

“I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”

— Ayn Rand

“If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.”

— Noam Chomsky

“I was never less alone than when by myself.”

— Edward Gibbon

“Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.”

— Oscar Wilde

“Necessity is blind until it becomes conscious; freedom is the consciousness of necessity.”

— Karl Marx

“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“Real freedom is having nothing. I was freer when I didn't have a cent.”

— Mike Tyson

“If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.”

— Plutarch

“Be like the bird who, pausing in her flight awhile on boughs too slight, feels them give way beneath her and yet sings, knowing she hath wings.”

— Victor Hugo

“I sometimes think that the price of liberty is not so much eternal vigilance as eternal dirt.”

— George Orwell

“A forest bird never wants a cage.”

— Henrik Ibsen

“For once you have tasted flight, you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards; for there you have been and there you will long to return.”

— Leonardo da Vinci

“What lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do.”

— Aristotle

“What do I need you for when I have wings to fly?”

— Frida Kahlo

“The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism.”

— Wole Soyinka

“Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another.”

— Nelson Mandela

“Free will is an illusion. People always choose the perceived path of greatest pleasure.”

— Scott Adams

“Life without liberty is like a body without spirit.”

— Khalil Gibran

“Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.”

— George Washington

“Hug the shore; let others try the deep.”

— Virgil

“When a woman has lost her chastity, she will shrink from nothing.”

— Tacitus

“As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.”

— Abraham Lincoln

“If the freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”

— George Washington

“I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.”

— Groucho Marx

“A state of society where men may not speak their minds cannot long endure.”

— Winston Churchill

“I want to be alone.”

— Greta Garbo

“The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me.”

— Ayn Rand

“Freedom is just chaos with better lighting.”

— Alan Dean Foster

“Seek freedom and become captive of your desires; seek discipline and find your liberty.”

— Frank Herbert

“I'm here to spread a message of hope: follow your heart, don't follow what you've been told you're supposed to do.”

— J. Cole

“If you ask me what I came into this life to do, I will tell you: I came to live out loud.”

— Émile Zola

“Humanity has won its battle; liberty now has a country.”

— Marquis de Lafayette

“Being in a ship is being in a jail with the chance of being drowned.”

— Samuel Johnson

“Nobody owes anybody a living, but everybody is entitled to a chance.”

— Jack Dempsey

“Man is free at the moment he wishes to be.”

— Voltaire

“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

— Benjamin Franklin

“Education is the key to unlock the golden door of freedom.”

— George Washington Carver

“This nation will remain the land of the free only so long as it is the home of the brave.”

— Elmer Davis

Freedom Quotes

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