FREEDOM QUOTES II
quotations about freedom
Freedom is something that dies unless it's used.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON
Ancient Gonzo Wisdom
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
We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.
MARTIN LUTHER KING
JR., "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," 1963
What most clearly characterizes true freedom and its true employment is its misemployment.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG
"Notebook L", Aphorisms
When we were told that by freedom we understood free enterprise, we did very little to dispel this monstrous falsehood, and all too often we have acted as though we too believed that it was wealth and abundance which were at stake in the postwar conflict between the "revolutionary" countries in the East and the West. Wealth and economic well-being, we have asserted, are the fruits of freedom, while we should have been the first to know that this kind of "happiness" was the blessing of America prior to the Revolution, and that its cause was natural abundance under "mild government," and neither political freedom nor the unchained, unbridled "private initiative" of capitalism, which in the absence of natural wealth has led everywhere to unhappiness and mass poverty. Free enterprise, in other words, has been an unmixed blessing only in America, and it is a minor blessing compared with the truly political freedoms, such as freedom of speech and thought, of assembly and association, even under the best conditions.
HANNAH ARENDT
On Revolution
Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.
JOHN DALBERG-ACTON
The History of Freedom in Antiquity
The human cry for freedom is like the wind, when it starts blowing people can sniff it. All the powers of the world are afraid of it. The powers can build prisons, grow armies, police and kill all they want. But the buildings will fall to sand, the armies will melt away while the breeze just keeps on blowing.
BILL CREWS
"Tiananmen's yearning for freedom lives on in Ashfield", The Sydney Morning Herald, June 4, 2019
Freedom is entirely different from revolt. There is no such thing as doing right or wrong when there is freedom. You are free and from that centre you act.
JIDDU KRISHNAMURTI
Freedom from the Known
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
WILLIAM PITT
speech, Nov. 18, 1783
It is only after slavery and prison that the sweetest appreciation of freedom can come.
MALCOLM X
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
For nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom.
JAMES BALDWIN
Giovanni's Room
Witness and stand back from Nature, that is the first step to the soul's freedom.
SRI AUROBINDO
The Life Divine
Man's freedom is relative and it cannot be held solely responsible for the imperfection of his nature.
SRI AUROBINDO
The Life Divine
Freedom to reject is the only freedom.
SALMAN RUSHDIE
The Ground Beneath Her Feet
This is my right
A right given by God
To live a free life
To live in freedom
PAUL MCCARTNEY
"Freedom"
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
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
For one to be free there must be at least two. Freedom signifies a social relation, an asymmetry of social conditions: essentially it implies social difference--it presumes and implies the presence of social division. Some can be free only in so far as there is a form of dependence they can aspire to escape.
ZYGMUNT BAUMAN
Freedom
Unless your freedom turns into a creative realization, you will feel sad. Because you will see that you are free--your chains are broken, and you are no longer in prison; you are standing under the starry night, completely free. But where do you go?
OSHO
Freedom: The Courage to Be Yourself
Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
Out of My Later Years