Freedom Quotes IV

FREEDOM QUOTES IV

quotations about freedom

Can this be happiness, this terrifying freedom?

ALBERT CAMUS

Caligula

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Heaven's blessing must attend all, and freedom must soon be given to the pining millions under a ruthless bondage.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS

My Bondage and My Freedom

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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

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I anticipate with pleasing expectations that retreat in which I promise myself to realize, without alloy, the sweet enjoyment of partaking, in the midst of my fellow citizens, the benign influence of good laws under a free government, the ever favorite object of my heart, and the happy reward, as I trust, of our mutual cares, labors, and dangers.

GEORGE WASHINGTON

farewell address, Sep. 17, 1796

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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

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Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.

JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU

The Social Contract

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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

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The cause of Freedom is the cause of God!

WILLIAM LISLE BOWLES

Edmund Burke

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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

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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

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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

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Without total freedom, every perception, every objective regard, is twisted. It is only the man who is totally free who can look and understand immediately. Freedom implies really, doesn't it, the total emptying of the mind. Completely to empty the whole content of the mind--that is real freedom. Freedom is not mere revolt from circumstances, which again breeds other circumstances, other environmental influences, which enslave the mind. We are talking about a freedom that comes naturally, easily, unasked for, when the mind is capable of functioning at its highest level.

JIDDU KRISHNAMURTI

On Freedom

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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

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I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom.

SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR

The Blood of Others

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The cry for freedom is a sign of suppression. It will not cease to ring as long as man feels himself captive. As diverse as the cries for freedom may be, basically they all express one and the same thing: The intolerability of the rigidity of the organism and of the machine-like institutions which create a sharp conflict with the natural feelings for life. Not until there is a social order in which all cries for freedom subside will man have overcome his biological and social crippling, will he have attained genuine freedom.

WILHELM REICH

The Mass Psychology of Fascism

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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

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The more freedom you give people to do good, the more freedom they have to do bad as well.

TAD WILLIAMS

Otherland: City of Golden Shadow

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We ... would rather die on our feet than live on our knees.