quotations about freedom
Freedom varies in direct relation to group stability. The greater the group stability, the greater the freedom. The reverse proposition also holds. Hence, freedom is an opportunity enjoyed in times and places where public policy as interpreted by public authority leans away from restraint toward a greater number and variety of choices. A gradual or sudden change in the community boundaries, will be reflected in lessened or augmented limitations.
SCOTT NEARING
Freedom: Promise and Menace
Freedom is like air, in the sense that any depletion can be suffocating. At such times, the importance of air is self evident and the same is true of freedom.
TSAI ING-WEN
"Tsai blasts China for covering up Tiananmen Square Incident", Focus Taiwan, June 4, 2019
Man is condemned to be free.
JEAN-PAUL SARTRE
Existentialism Is a Humanism
Freedom begins between the ears.
EDWARD ABBEY
A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto)
Step out of your cage
And onto the stage
It's time to start
Playing your part
Freedom awaits
Open the gates
Open your mind
Freedom's a state
DEPECHE MODE
"Freestate"
The free man never thinks of escape.
JEANETTE WINTERSON
Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles
Freedom doesn't mean aimlessness. We can't just sleepwalk through life.... Freedom demands structure.
GARRISON KEILLOR
Liberty: A Novel of Lake Wobegon
Until we are all free, we are none of us free.
EMMA LAZARUS
An Epistle to the Hebrews
We feel free because we lack the very language to articulate our unfreedom.
SLAVOJ ZIZEK
"Introduction: The Missing Ink", Welcome to the Desert of the Real!: Five Essays on September 11 and Related Dates
Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose.
KRIS KRISTOFFERSON
"Me and Bobby McGee"
The greatest enemy of individual freedom is the individual himself.
SAUL ALINSKY
Rules for Radicals
Man, the more he gains freedom in the sense of emerging from the original oneness with man and nature and the more he becomes an "individual," has no choice but to unite himself with the world in the spontaneity of love and productive work or else to seek a kind of security by such ties with the world as destroy his freedom and the integrity of his individual self.
ERICH FROMM
Escape from Freedom
The assumption that there must be a core concept of freedom common to all contested conceptions misrepresents the nature of the disputes. Typically, protagonists accuse each other of espousing conceptions which are not conceptions of freedom at all, but which are rather conceptions of power, opportunity, will, self-realization, and so forth. To assume that there is a core concept of freedom common to all conceptions is to assume agreement on at least some essential characteristics of freedom. But, for example, those who regard freedom as essentially "negative" will reject MacCallum's schema as too broad; those who believe that freedom is essentially self-realization will reject it as too narrow.
CHRISTINE SWANTON
Freedom: A Coherence Theory
The universal law of justice is: act externally in such a way that the free use of your will is compatible with the freedom of everyone according to a universal law.
IMMANUEL KANT
The Metaphysical Elements of Justice
None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but licence.
JOHN MILTON
Tenure of Kings and Magistrates
The best road to progress is freedom's road.
JOHN F. KENNEDY
message to Congress, March 14, 1961
To be true to one’s own freedom is, in essence, to honor and respect the freedom of all others.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
State of the Union Address, Feb. 2, 1953
One thing I can tell you is you got to be free.
THE BEATLES
"Come Together", Abbey Road
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.
RONALD REAGAN
address to the annual meeting of the Phoenix Chamber of Commerce, Mar. 30, 1967
It is because freedom means the renunciation of direct control of individual efforts that a free society can make use of so much more knowledge than the mind of the wisest ruler could comprehend.
FRIEDRICH HAYEK
The Constitution of Liberty