quotations about freedom
It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either.
MARK TWAIN
Following the Equator
Our submission to general principles is necessary because we cannot be guided in our practical action by full knowledge and evaulation of the consequences. So long as men are not omniscient, the only way in which freedom can be given to the individual is by such general rules to delimit the sphere in which the decision is his. There can be no freedom if the government is not limited to particular kinds of action but can use its powers in any ways which serve particular ends.
FRIEDRICH HAYEK
Individualism and Economic Order
Individual freedom, wherever it has existed, has been largely the product of a prevailing respect for such principles which, however, have never been fully articulated in constitutional documents. Freedom has been preserved for prolonged periods because such principles, vaguely and dimly perceived, have governed public opinion. The institutions by which countries of the Western world have attempted to protect individual freedom against progressive encroachment by government have always proved inadequate when transferred to countries where such traditions did not prevail. And they have not provided sufficient protection against the effects of new desires which even among the peoples of the West now often loom larger than the older conceptions--conceptions that made possible the periods of freedom when these peoples gained their present position.
FRIEDRICH HAYEK
Law
Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you're a man, you take it.
MALCOLM X
Malcolm X Speaks
The worst way to defend our freedom is to let our leaders start taking away our freedoms! It is exactly during times like these [a national crisis] that we need more freedom of speech, a strong and critical press, and a citizenry that is not afraid to stand up and say that the emperor has no clothes.
MICHAEL MOORE
Stupid White Men
Individual liberty is individual power, and as the power of a community is a mass compounded of individual powers, the nation which enjoys the most freedom must necessarily be in proportion to its numbers the most powerful nation.
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS
letter to James Lloyd, Oct. 1, 1822
For it is in the field where meaning is constitutive that man's freedom reaches its highest point. There too his responsibility is greatest. There there occurs the emergence of his existential subject, finding out for himself that he has to decide for himself what he is to make of himself.
BERNARD LONERGAN
The Lonergan Reader
Whoever will be free must make himself free. Freedom is no fairy gift to fall into a man's lap.
MAX STIRNER
Forbes, 1956
So free we seem, so fettered fast we are!
ROBERT BROWNING
Andrea del Sarto
Without freedom there can be no morality.
CARL JUNG
Two Essays on Analytical Psychology
You get freedom by letting your enemy know that you'll do anything to get your freedom; then you'll get it. It's the only way you'll get it.
MALCOLM X
Advice to the Youth of Mississippi, Dec. 31, 1964
The freedom of all is essential to my freedom.
MIKHAIL BAKUNIN
Man
Every event has a cause--that is ... for every event e1 there exists an event e2 (or a class of events e2, e3 ...) which precedes e1 and of which e1 is a necessary consequence.... If we assent to this statement then your "choice" to do A rather than B, whatever may have been at the time your sensation of freedom from any constraint, was entirely necessitated. You could not have done otherwise and hence, according to this conception of freedom, were not free.
ERMANNO BENCIVENGA
Freedom: A Dialogue
All men are born free: just not for long.
JOHN LE CARRÉ
A Murder of Quality
Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
letter to Abbés Chalut and Arnaud, Apr. 17, 1787
Without freedom, there is no creation.
JIDDU KRISHNAMURTI
On Freedom
Real freedom is having nothing. I was freer when I didn't have a cent.
MIKE TYSON
Sports Illustrated, Mar. 1988
The anchor in our world today is freedom, holding us steady in times of change.
GEORGE H. W. BUSH
State of the Union Address, Jan. 31, 1990
Freedom is obedience to self-formulated rules.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
Ignorance may be bliss, but it certainly is not freedom, except in the minds of those who prefer darkness to light and chains to liberty. The more true information we can acquire, the better for our enfranchisement.
ROBERT HUGH BENSON
Intellectual Slavery