quotations about freedom
Most men, after a little freedom, have preferred authority with the consoling assurances and the economy of effort it brings.
WALTER LIPPMANN
A Preface to Morals
For He that worketh high and wise.
Nor pauses in his plan,
Will take the sun out of the skies
Ere freedom out of man.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Ode Sung in the Town Hall
Man is condemned to be free.
JEAN-PAUL SARTRE
Existentialism Is a Humanism
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
The free man never thinks of escape.
JEANETTE WINTERSON
Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles
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
For many minutes, for many hours, for a bleak eternity, he lay awake, shivering, reduced to primitive terror, comprehending that he had won freedom, and wondering what he could do with anything so unknown and so embarrassing as freedom.
SINCLAIR LEWIS
Babbitt
Proving one's freedom will often mean insisting on the most arbitrary, odd, unrepeatable aspects of one's behavior.
ERMANNO BENCIVENGA
Freedom: A Dialogue
The greatest enemy of individual freedom is the individual himself.
SAUL ALINSKY
Rules for Radicals
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
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
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
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
Until we are all free, we are none of us free.
EMMA LAZARUS
An Epistle to the Hebrews
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
The best road to progress is freedom's road.
JOHN F. KENNEDY
message to Congress, March 14, 1961
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 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
One thing I can tell you is you got to be free.
THE BEATLES
"Come Together", Abbey Road