FREEDOM QUOTES V
quotations about freedom
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
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
For every man who lives without freedom, the rest of us must face the guilt.
LILLIAN HELLMAN
The Watch on the Rhine
Once a man has tasted freedom, he will never be content to be a slave.
WALT DISNEY
radio address, Mar. 1, 1941
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
The whole world yearns after freedom, yet each creature is in love with his chains.
SRI AUROBINDO
Thoughts and Glimpses
We ... would rather die on our feet than live on our knees.
FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT
speech, June 1941
Freedom as a blessing today might, under new conditions, become a danger and a curse tomorrow. Crimes endanger the general welfare of a community. Freedom for criminals would be a menace to community interests. The community therefore forbids crime, adopts a criminal code listing a great variety of acts which are considered prejudicial to community well-being, and prescribes penalties for lawbreakers. Individuals and social groups who violate the criminal law are restrained or coerced. The nature of crime depends upon local custom or accepted practice. In this very considerable area, by common consent, freedom is officially abrogated, and restraint and coercions are relied upon to protect the community.
SCOTT NEARING
Freedom: Promise and Menace
Modern European and American history is centered around the effort to gain freedom from the political, economic, and spiritual shackles that have bound men. The battles for freedom where fought by the oppressed, those who wanted new liberties, against those who had privileges to defend. While a class was fighting for its own liberation from domination, it believed itself to be fighting for human freedom as such and thus was able to appeal to an ideal, to the longing for freedom rooted in all who are oppressed. In the long and virtually continuous battle for freedom, however, classes that were fighting against oppression at one stage sided with the enemies of freedom when victory was won and new privileges were to be defended.
ERICH FROMM
Escape from Freedom
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
Can this be happiness, this terrifying freedom?
ALBERT CAMUS
Caligula
Freedom is indivisible; the chains on any one of my people were the chains on all of them, the chains on all of my people were the chains on me.
NELSON MANDELA
Long Walk to Freedom
Freedom can be preserved only if it is treated as a supreme principle which must not be sacrificed for particular advantages.
FRIEDRICH HAYEK
Law
If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Strictly Personal
I'm navigating my way down freedom's road
Trying to make my way back home
I got my foot to the floor
But she must need bleeding
This car just don't want to roll
Freedom's road must be under construction
JOHN MELLENCAMP
"Freedom's Road"
No one is more of a slave than he who thinks himself free without being so.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
Freedom is sometimes defined as a lack of resistance or restraint. A wheel turns freely if there is very little friction in the bearing, a horse breaks free from the post to which it has been tethered, a man frees himself from the branch on which he has been caught while climbing a tree. Physical restraint is an obvious condition, which seems particularly useful in defining freedom, but with respect to important issues, it is a metaphor and not a very good one. People are indeed controlled by fetters, handcuffs, strait jackets, and the walls of jails and concentration camps, but what may be called behavioral control--the restraint imposed by contingencies of reinforcement--is a very different thing.
BURRHUS FREDERIC SKINNER
Beyond Freedom & Dignity
It's only after you've lost everything that you're free to do anything.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK
Fight Club
The freedom from something is not true freedom. The freedom to do anything you want to do is also not the freedom I am talking about. My vision of freedom is to be yourself.
OSHO
Freedom: The Courage to Be Yourself
There are two kinds of freedom: one is the freedom from something, which is a reaction; and the other is not a reaction, it is "being free."
JIDDU KRISHNAMURTI
On Freedom