quotations about freedom
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"
Un-American activity cannot be prevented or routed out by employing un-American methods; to preserve freedom we must use the tools that freedom provides.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
The White House Years
Freedom doesn't mean aimlessness. We can't just sleepwalk through life.... Freedom demands structure.
GARRISON KEILLOR
Liberty: A Novel of Lake Wobegon
Freedom is an elusive concept. Some men hold themselves prisoner even when they have the power to do as they please and go where they choose, while others are free in their hearts, even as shackles restrain them.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON
Dune: House Harkonnen
Freedom begins between the ears.
EDWARD ABBEY
A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto)
Every man
On Freedom's ramparts must a warder be,
To warn of danger when the foe appears;
To meet the onset when the foe assaults.
Else--vain our hopes, and else the temple grand,
Of all our rights, and birth-right liberties,
Ere long will fall, and crumble in the dust,
A ruin, more abject and dire than Rome
Or Carthage was.
ANDREW DOWNING
"A Picture"
The free man never thinks of escape.
JEANETTE WINTERSON
Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles
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
Until we are all free, we are none of us free.
EMMA LAZARUS
An Epistle to the Hebrews
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
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
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 best road to progress is freedom's road.
JOHN F. KENNEDY
message to Congress, March 14, 1961
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
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
True freedom is always spiritual. It has something to do with your innermost being, which cannot be chained, handcuffed, or put into a jail.
OSHO
Freedom: The Courage to Be Yourself
One thing I can tell you is you got to be free.
THE BEATLES
"Come Together", Abbey Road
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