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Quotes about freedom

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Our contest is not only whether we ourselves shall be free, but whether there shall be left to mankind an asylum on earth for civil and religious liberty.
Samuel Adams1722–1803Speech in Philadelphia (1776)
- Liberty
The liberties of our Country, the freedom of our civil constitution are worth defending at all hazards: And it is our duty to defend them against all attacks.
Samuel Adams1722–1803Essay, written under the pseudonym “Candidus,” in The Boston Gazette (14 October 1771), later published in The Life and Public Services of Samuel Adams (1865) by William Vincent Wells, p. 425
- Liberty
- Patriotism
Every natural right not expressly given up, or, from the nature of a social compact, necessarily ceded, remains.
Samuel Adams1722–1803The Rights of the Colonists (1772)
- Liberty
If Taxes are laid upon us in any shape without our having a legal Representation where they are laid, are we not reduced from the Character of free Subjects to the miserable State of tributary Slaves?
Samuel Adams1722–1803Instructions to Boston’s Representatives (May 1764), also quoted in Samuel Adams: Radical Puritan (1997), by William M. Fowler Jr., p. 51
- Government
- Liberty
The truth is, all might be free if they valued freedom, and defended it as they ought.
Samuel Adams1722–1803Essay, written under the pseudonym “Candidus,” in The Boston Gazette (14 October 1771), later published in The Life and Public Services of Samuel Adams (1865) by William Vincent Wells, p. 425
A day, an hour, of virtuous liberty
Is worth a whole eternity in bondage.
Joseph Addison1672–1719Cato, A Tragedy (1713)
- Liberty
The freedom of thought is a sacred right of every individual man, and diversity will continue to increase with the progress, refinement, and differentiation of the human intellect.
Felix Adler1851–1933Founding Address (1876)
- Thinking
Death is better, a milder fate than tyranny.
Aeschylus525–456 BCAgamemnon, line 1364–1365
- Liberty
- Life & Death
So long as you do not achieve social liberty, whatever freedom is provided by the law is of no avail to you.
B. R. Ambedkar1891–1956Speech delivered to the Bombay Presidency Mahar Conference (31 May 1936)
- Liberty
I’ve never minded being disciplined. I’d always rather have a quiet evening in than go to a wild party. Discipline for me has always been the foundation which leaves me free to fly.
Julie Andrewsborn 1935Woman & Home (July 2000)
- Character
I never saw that great woman, Mary Wollstonecraft, but I have read her eloquent and unanswerable arguments in behalf of the liberty of womankind.
Susan B. Anthony1820–1906Speech at the 38th annual convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, Baltimore (15 February 1906)
- Liberty
- Women
The highest manifestation of life consists in this: that a being governs its own actions. A being that is always subject to the direction of another is somewhat of a dead thing.
Thomas Aquinas1225–1274On The Perfection of the Spiritual Life (1269-1270), Chapter 14
- Life & Death
Man cannot be free if he does not know that he is subject to necessity, because his freedom is always won in his never wholly successful attempts to liberate himself from necessity.
Hannah Arendt1906–1975The Human Condition (1958), part 3, chapter 16
If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in government to the utmost.
Aristotle384–322 BCPolitics, book IV, 1291.b34
To live in prison is to live without mirrors. To live
without mirrors is to live without the self.
Margaret Atwoodborn 1939Selected Poems 1976-1986 (1987), “Marrying the Hangman”