In my youth, I stressed freedom, and in my old age
I stress order. I have made the great discovery
that liberty is a product of order.
- Will Durant
All the great things are simple, and many can be
expressed in a single word: freedom; justice;
honor; duty; mercy; hope.
- Sir Winston Churchill
Relationships of all kinds are like sand held in
your hand. Held loosely, with an open hand, the
sand remains where it is. The minute you close
your hand and squeeze tightly to hold on, the sand
trickles through your fingers. You may hold onto
some of it, but most will be spilled. A
relationship is like that. Held loosely, with
respect and freedom for the other person, it is
likely to remain intact. But hold too tightly, too
possessively, and the relationship slips away and
is lost.
- Kaleel Jamison
Freedom of speech and freedom of action are
meaningless without freedom to think. And there is
no freedom of thought without doubt
- Bergen Evans
The Natural History of Nonsense
The whole history of the progress of human liberty
shows that all concessions yet made to her august
claims have been born of earnest struggle. If
there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those
who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate
agitation, are men who want crops without plowing
up the ground, they want rain without thunder and
lightning. They want the ocean without the awful
roar of its many waters
- Frederick Douglass (1818-1895)
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of
human freedom It is the argument of tyrants; it is
the creed of slaves.
- William Pitt (1759-1806)
[F]reedom is not an unlimited license, an
unlimited choice, or an unlimited opportunity.
Freedom is first of all a responsibility before
the God from whom we come.
- Alan Keyes
Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the
one who thinks differently.
- Rosa Luxemburg
Chance has never yet satisfied the hope of a
suffering people. Action, self-reliance, the
vision of self and the future have been the only
means by which the oppressed have seen and
realized the light of their own freedom.
- Marcus Garvey (1887-1940)
Fight and you may die. Run and you'll live, at
least a while. And, dying in your beds, many
years from now, would you be willing to trade all
the days from this day to that for one chance --
just one chance -- to come back here and tell our
enemies, that they may take our lives, but they'll
never take our freedom!
- William Wallace (Mel Gibson)
Braveheart
The sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate
discontent will not pass until there is an
invigorating autumn of freedom and equality.
- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Address at Lincoln Memorial during March on Washington, 28 Aug 1963
From the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire, let
freedom ring. From the mighty mountains of New
York, let freedom ring. From the heightening
Alleghenies of Pennsylvania, let freedom ring ...
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill
- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Address at Lincoln Memorial during March on Washington, 28 Aug 1963
The USA was founded in the name of democracy,
equality and individual freedom, but is failing to
deliver the fundamental promise of protecting
rights for all
- Amnesty International, 19 Jan 2001
I have often asked myself why human beings have
any rights at all. I always come to the conclusion
that human rights, human freedoms, and human
dignity have their deepest roots somewhere outside
the perceptible world. These values are as
powerful as they are because, under certain
circumstances, people accept them without
compulsion and are willing to die for them.
- Vaclav Havel
Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote
freedom to err. It passes my comprehension how
human beings, be they ever so experienced and
able, can delight in depriving other human beings
of that precious right.
- Mahatma Gandhi
Freedom is too enormous to be slipped under a
closet door.
- Harvey Milk
Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet
depreciate agitation, are men who want rain
without thunder and lightning.
- Frederick Douglass (1817?-1895)
Four freedoms: The first is freedom of speech and
expression - everywhere in the world. The second
is freedom of everyone to worship God in his own
way, everywhere in the world. The third is freedom
from want . . . everywhere in the world. The
fourth is freedom from fear . . . anywhere in the
world.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
U.S. President
Books were my pass to personal freedom. I learned
to read at age three, and soon discovered there
was a whole world to conquer that went beyond our
farm in Mississippi.
- Oprah Winfrey (1954-)
US TV personality, actress
Without general elections, without unrestricted
freedom of press and assembly, without a free
struggle of opinion, life dies out in every public
institution, becomes a mere semblance of life, in
which only the bureaucracy remains as the active
element.
- Rosa Luxemburg
(1871-1919)
Polish-German socialist, writer
Freedom is not something that anybody can be
given. Freedom is something people take, and
people are as free as they want to be.
- James Baldwin
Self-reliance is the only road to true freedom,
and being one's own person is its ultimate reward
- Patricia Sampson
A man can be free even within prison walls.
Freedom is something spiritual. Whoever has once
had it, can never lose it. There are some people
who are never free outside a prison.
- Unknown
None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who
falsely believe they are free.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy
of growth.
- John Fitzgerald Kennedy
U.S. Democratic politician and president
Many a boomerang does notreturn but chooses
freedom instead.
- Anonymous
It is by the goodness of God that in our country
we have those three unspeakably precious things:
freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the
prudence never to practice either.
- Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)
There can be no friendship when there is no
freedom; Friendship loves the free air, and will
not be fenced up in straight and narrow
enclosures.
- William Penn