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Quotes about freedom

567 quotes from 261 people

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As a nation, we began by declaring that “all men are created equal.” We now practically read it “all men are created equal, except negroes.” When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read “all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and catholics.”
Abraham Lincoln1809–1865Letter to Joshua F. Speed (24 August 1855)
Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for right.
Martin Luther King Jr.1929–1968I’ve Been to the Mountaintop (1968)
- America
The thought of being under absolute compulsion, the plaything of another, is unendurable for a human being.
Simone Weil1909–1943Gravity and Grace (1947), p. 142 (1972 edition)
- Slavery
It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active.
John Philpot Curran1750–1817Speech upon the Right of Election of the Lord Mayor of Dublin (10 July 1790)
- Liberty
Once a man has tasted freedom he will never be content to be a slave.
Walt Disney1901–1966Radio address “Our American Culture” broadcast during an intermission of the Metropolitan Opera. (1 March 1941)
And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected.
John Steinbeck1902–1968East of Eden (1952), Part 2, Ch. 13
- Thinking
We felt that it was a stain to the Union that men should be bought and sold like cattle.
Ulysses S. Grant1822–1885Conversation with Otto von Bismarck, Berlin (June 1878), as recorded in John Russell Young, Around the World with General Grant (1879), vol. 1, p. 416
- Slavery
It is for man to establish the reign of liberty in the midst of the world of the given.
Simone de Beauvoir1908–1986The Second Sex (1949), Conclusion
- Liberty
Power, like a desolating pestilence,
Pollutes whate’er it touches; and obedience,
Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth,
Makes slaves of men, and of the human frame
A mechanized automaton.
Percy Bysshe Shelley1792–1822Queen Mab (1813), Canto III
- Power
Aim at creating free men and women, free intellectually, free morally, unprejudiced in all respects, and above all things, unselfish.
Helena Blavatsky1831–1891The Key to Theosophy (1889)
Not for nothing was the revolver called an “equalizer.” Egalite implies liberte.
Edward Abbey1927–1989Abbey’s Road (1979)
- Guns
- Liberty
Of course, there are dangers in religious freedom and freedom of opinion. But to deny these rights is worse than dangerous, it is absolutely fatal to liberty.
Harry S. Truman1884–1972Address at the National Archives dedicating a shrine for the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights (15 December 1952)
- Liberty
I wish to write such rhymes as shall not suggest a restraint, but contrariwise the wildest freedom.
Ralph Waldo Emerson1803–1882Journal (27 June 1839)
- Poetry
It is wrong to think that belief in freedom always leads to victory; we must always be prepared for it to lead to defeat. If we choose freedom, then we must be prepared to perish along with it.
Karl Popper1902–1994On Freedom (1958)
The so-called paradox of freedom is the argument that freedom in the sense of absence of any constraining control must lead to very great restraint, since it makes the bully free to enslave the meek.
Karl Popper1902–1994The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945), Vol. 1, Notes to the Chapters: Ch. 7, Note 4