FREEDOM QUOTES III
quotations about freedom
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
It is the mind of man alone that is the cause of his bondage or freedom.
CHANAKYA
Vridda-Chanakya
Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU
The Social Contract
It is like living among snow-capped peaks with clouds wrapped around them and the sun and moon starkly shining over them... Aloneness becomes their companion, their spiritual consort, part of their being. Wherever they go they are alone, whatever they do they are alone. Whether they relate socially with friends or meditate alone ... aloneness is there all the time. That aloneness is freedom, fundamental freedom.
CHOGYAM TRUNGPA
The Myth of Freedom
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
For those who have it, freedom is like oxygen, it's something we just have. Many will not understand just how precious either is until they are at risk of losing it.
JOHN DUTCHER
"Crowd turns out for parade under beautiful sunny skies Monday", Gloversville Leader-Herald, May 28, 2019
What some people term Freedom is nothing else than a liberty of saying and doing disagreeable things. It is but carrying the notion a little higher, and it would require us to break and have a head broken reciprocally without offense.
WILLIAM SHENSTONE
Essays on Men and Manners
Any existence deprived of freedom is a kind of death.
MICHEL AOUN
attributed, Dictionary of Quotations
The anchor in our world today is freedom, holding us steady in times of change, a symbol of hope to all the world.
GEORGE H.W. BUSH
State of the Union Address, Jan. 31, 1990
May the light of freedom, coming to all darkened lands, flame brightly--until at last the darkness is no more.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
Second Inaugural Address, Jan. 21, 1957
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
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
Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
Out of My Later Years
Saying that you reject socialism because you love freedom is like saying you reject chocolate because you hate bananas.
CHANA O'LEARY
North Country Now, March 8, 2019
God's work is freedom. Freedom is dear to his heart. He wishes to make man's will free, and at the same time wishes it to be pure, majestic, and holy.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
Real freedom lies in wildness, not in civilization.
CHARLES LINDBERGH
attributed, Lindbergh
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
What most clearly characterizes true freedom and its true employment is its misemployment.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG
"Notebook L", Aphorisms
History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
inaugural address, Jan. 20, 1953
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