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Quotes about freedom

567 quotes from 261 people

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Hereditary bondsmen! know ye not
Who would be free themselves must strike the blow?
Lord Byron1788–1824Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812–1818), Canto the SecondIn context
It is harder to preserve than to obtain liberty.
John C. Calhoun1782–1850Speech in the Senate (January 1848)
- Liberty
Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better.
Albert Camus1913–1960
Everywhere the human soul stands between a hemisphere of light and another of darkness on the confines of two everlasting hostile empires, — Necessity and Free Will.
Thomas Carlyle1795–1881Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (1827–1855), Essays, Goethe’s Works.
- Philosophy
The love of liberty is a common blood that flows in our American veins.
Jimmy Carter1924–2024Farewell Address (January 1981)
- America
- Liberty
I will begin with this confession: whatever I have done in the course of my life, whether it be good or evil, has been done freely; I am a free agent.
Giacomo Casanova1725–1798Memoirs of J. Casanova de Seingalt (1894)
In this world, there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way.
Charlie Chaplin1889–1977The Great Dictator (1940), the barber’s closing speech
- Life & Death
It is easy to take liberty for granted, when you have never had it taken from you.
Dick Cheney1941–2025
- Liberty
The Declaration of Independence dogmatically bases all rights on the fact that God created all men equal; and it is right; for if they were not created equal, they were certainly evolved unequal. There is no basis for democracy except in a dogma about the divine origin of man.
G. K. Chesterton1874–1936What I Saw In America
- America
- God
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
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
The free man owns himself. He can damage himself with either eating or drinking; he can ruin himself with gambling. If he does he is certainly a damn fool, and he might possibly be a damned soul; but if he may not, he is not a free man any more than a dog.
G. K. Chesterton1874–1936
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)
The bird that would soar above the level plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings. It is a sad spectacle to see the weaklings bruised, exhausted, fluttering back to earth.
Kate Chopin1850–1904The Awakening (1899), Chapter XXVIIIn context
- Courage
If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a small chance of survival. There may even be a worse case: you may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.
Winston Churchill1874–1965The Second World War, Volume I: The Gathering Storm (1948) Chapter 19 (Prague, Albania, and the Polish Guarantee).
- War & Peace