FREEDOM QUOTES II
quotations about freedom
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
What most clearly characterizes true freedom and its true employment is its misemployment.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG
"Notebook L", Aphorisms
Freedom is entirely different from revolt. There is no such thing as doing right or wrong when there is freedom. You are free and from that centre you act.
JIDDU KRISHNAMURTI
Freedom from the Known
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 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
It is only after slavery and prison that the sweetest appreciation of freedom can come.
MALCOLM X
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.
MARTIN LUTHER KING
JR., "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," 1963
I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom.
SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR
The Blood of Others
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
History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
inaugural address, Jan. 20, 1953
Witness and stand back from Nature, that is the first step to the soul's freedom.
SRI AUROBINDO
The Life Divine
Man's freedom is relative and it cannot be held solely responsible for the imperfection of his nature.
SRI AUROBINDO
The Life Divine
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
It is the mind of man alone that is the cause of his bondage or freedom.
CHANAKYA
Vridda-Chanakya
Because we are free we can never be indifferent to the fate of freedom elsewhere. Our moral sense dictates a clearcut preference for these societies which share with us an abiding respect for individual human rights. We do not seek to intimidate, but it is clear that a world which others can dominate with impunity would be inhospitable to decency and a threat to the well-being of all people.
JIMMY CARTER
Inaugural Address, Jan. 20, 1977
Any bonds today?
Bonds of freedom
That's what I'm selling
Any bonds today?
Scrape up the most you can
Here comes the freedom man
DUKE ELLINGTON
"Any Bonds Today?"
Freedom (n.): To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing.
AYN RAND
The Fountainhead
They never fail who die
In a great cause: the block may soak their gore:
Their heads may sodden in the sun; their limbs
Be strung to city gates and castle walls--
But still their Spirit walks abroad. Though years
Elapse, and others share as dark a doom,
They but augment the deep and sweeping thoughts
Which overpower all others, and conduct
The world at last to Freedom.
LORD BYRON
Marino Faliero
For nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom.
JAMES BALDWIN
Giovanni's Room
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