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Quotes about freedom

567 quotes from 261 people

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A constitutional republic dedicated before everything to the protection of liberty cannot legalize torture and remain a constitutional republic. It imports into itself a tumor of pure tyranny.
Andrew Sullivanborn 1963“Torture, Moral Vanity and Freedom”, The Daily Dish (17 May 2007)
- Government
- Liberty
A desire to resist oppression is implanted in the nature of man.
Tacitus55–120
It is the rare fortune of these days that one may think what one likes and say what one thinks.
Tacitus55–120Histories (100-110), Book I, 1
Because they didn’t know better, they called it “civilization,” when it was part of their slavery.
Tacitus55–120Agricola (98), Book 1, paragraph 21
- Slavery
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Rabindranath Tagore1861–1941Where the Mind Is Without Fear (1912), Gitanjali (1912)In context
- Knowledge
That side of our existence whose direction is towards the infinite seeks not wealth, but freedom and joy.
Rabindranath Tagore1861–1941Sādhanā: The Realisation of Life (1913), “The Realisation of the Infinite”
- Happiness
O Great Beyond, O the keen call of thy flute! I forget, I ever forget, that I have no wings to fly, that I am bound in this spot evermore.
Rabindranath Tagore1861–1941The Gardener (1913), 5
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action⁠—
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.
Rabindranath Tagore1861–1941Where the Mind Is Without Fear (1912)In context
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
It is certainly no part of religion to compel religion.
Tertullian150–220Ad Scapulam, 2.2
- Religion
If a Tory does not believe that private property is one of the main bulwarks of individual freedom, then he had better become a socialist and have done with it.
Margaret Thatcher1925–2013Article for Daily Telegraph (“My Kind of Tory Party”) (30 January 1975)
- Politics
I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.
Peter Thielborn 1967In an article published by Cato Unbound (April 13, 2009)
- Democracy
I come to state that I’m a man, free to think for myself and do as I please.
Clarence Thomasborn 1948I Am a Man, a Black Man, an American (1998)
- Thinking
The law will never make men free; it is men who have got to make the law free.
Henry David Thoreau1817–1862“Slavery in Massachusetts” (1854)
- Laws
I heartily accept the motto,⁠—“That government is best which governs least;” and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe⁠—“That government is best which governs not at all;” and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.
Henry David Thoreau1817–1862Civil Disobedience (1849)In context
- Government