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Quotes about freedom

567 quotes from 261 people

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We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
John F. Kennedy1917–1963John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address (1961)
- Liberty
Liberty without learning is always in peril; learning without liberty is always in vain.
John F. Kennedy1917–1963Address at Vanderbilt University
- Education
- Liberty
Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.
Abraham Lincoln1809–1865
The very idea of freedom presupposes some objective moral law which overarches rulers and ruled alike. Subjectivism about values is eternally incompatible with democracy. We and our rulers are of one kind only so long as we are subject to one law. But if there is no Law of Nature, the ethos of any society is the creation of its rulers, educators and conditioners; and every creator stands above and outside his own creation.
C. S. Lewis1898–1963Christian Reflections
If you want total security, go to prison. There you’re fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking… is freedom.
Dwight D. Eisenhower1890–1969
I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!
Patrick Henry1736–1799Speech to the Second Virginia Convention, St. John’s Church, Richmond (23 March 1775), as given in William Wirt, Sketches of the Life and Character of Patrick Henry (1817). Nothing was written down at the time: Wirt rebuilt the speech from listeners’ recollections four decades later, so how much of the wording is Henry’s is disputed
- Liberty
Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.
Thomas Paine1737–1809As quoted in The Crisis No. IV (12 September 1777)
History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.
Dwight D. Eisenhower1890–1969Dwight Eisenhower’s First Inaugural Address (1953)
Before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson etched across the pages of history the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence, we were here. If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail.
Martin Luther King Jr.1929–1968
- Race
- Slavery
He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from opposition; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach himself.
Thomas Paine1737–1809First Principles of Government (1795)
- Liberty
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.
G. K. Chesterton1874–1936A Short History of England (1917)
- Morality
The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.
Edmund Burke1729–1797Speech at a County Meeting of Buckinghamshire (1784)
- Liberty
Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
George Bernard Shaw1856–1950Maxims for Revolutionists (1903), #25
- Liberty
- Responsibility
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.
Thomas Jefferson1743–1826Letter to Colonel Charles Yancey (6 January 1816) ME 14:384
- Education
Most modern freedom is at root fear. It is not so much that we are too bold to endure rules; it is rather that we are too timid to endure responsibilities.
G. K. Chesterton1874–1936What’s Wrong with the World (1910), Part Four: Education: Or the Mistake About the Child, Ch. 6: Authority the Unavoidable