Famously Said Random quote

Quotes about freedom

567 quotes from 261 people

Most readBy personPage 10 of 38

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
William Pitt the Younger1759–1806Speech in the House of Commons (18 November 1783)
To be free of time is to be free of the psychological need of past for your identity and future for your fulfillment.
Eckhart Tolleborn 1948The Power of Now (1997)
- Time
I think that the sweetest freedom for a man on earth consists in being able to live, if he likes, without having the need to work.
Salvador Dalí1904–1989Diary of a Genius (1964), p. 79
- Work
Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called, and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men.
John Stuart Mill1806–1873On Liberty (1859), Ch. III: Of Individuality, As One of the Elements of Well-BeingIn context
- Liberty
- Power
It is certainly no part of religion to compel religion.
Tertullian150–220Ad Scapulam, 2.2
- Religion
While the State exists, there can be no freedom. When there is freedom there will be no State.
Vladimir Lenin1870–1924The State and Revolution (1917), Ch. 5
- Government
Freedom granted only when it is known beforehand that its effects will be beneficial is not freedom.
Friedrich Hayek1899–1992The Constitution of Liberty (1960), p. 83.
No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.
Frederick Douglass1817–1895Speech at Civil Rights Mass Meeting, Washington, D.C. (22 October 1883).
- Slavery
We must plan for freedom, and not only for security, if for no other reason than that only freedom can make security secure.
Karl Popper1902–1994The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945), Vol. 2, Ch. 21 “An Evaluation of the Prophecy”
Where there is seeming contentment with slavery, there is certain treachery to freedom.
Frederick Douglass1817–1895The Heroic Slave (1853), Madison Washington
- Slavery
If we don’t believe in free expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.
Noam Chomskyborn 1928Interview with John Pilger, The Late Show, BBC Television (25 November 1992)
I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.
Audre Lorde1934–1992The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism (1981)
- Women
To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.
Frederick Douglass1817–1895A Plea For Free Speech in Boston (10 December 1860), as contained in Words That Changed America, Alex Barnett, Rowman & Littlefield (reprint, 2006), p. 156
- Talking
No one can be perfectly free till all are free; no one can be perfectly moral till all are moral; no one can be perfectly happy till all are happy.
Herbert Spencer1820–1903Social Statics (1851), Pt. IV, Ch. 30: General Considerations
- Happiness
- Morality
You exist if and only if you are free to do things without a visible objective, with no justification and, above all, outside the dictatorship of someone else’s narrative.
Nassim Nicholas Talebborn 1960The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010), p. 17