FREEDOM QUOTES IV

quotations about freedom

Freedom quote

Freedom can be manifested only in the void of beliefs, in the absence of axioms, and only where the laws have no more authority than a hypothesis.

EMIL CIORAN

History & Utopia


The unity of all who dwell in freedom is their only sure defense.

DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER

Second Inaugural Address, Jan. 21, 1957


Once a man has tasted freedom, he will never be content to be a slave.

WALT DISNEY

radio address, Mar. 1, 1941


For one to be free there must be at least two. Freedom signifies a social relation, an asymmetry of social conditions: essentially it implies social difference--it presumes and implies the presence of social division. Some can be free only in so far as there is a form of dependence they can aspire to escape.

ZYGMUNT BAUMAN

Freedom


It is like living among snow-capped peaks with clouds wrapped around them and the sun and moon starkly shining over them... Aloneness becomes their companion, their spiritual consort, part of their being. Wherever they go they are alone, whatever they do they are alone. Whether they relate socially with friends or meditate alone ... aloneness is there all the time. That aloneness is freedom, fundamental freedom.

CHOGYAM TRUNGPA

The Myth of Freedom


Freedom is the fundamental condition for any growth.

ERICH FROMM

Escape from Freedom


Modern European and American history is centered around the effort to gain freedom from the political, economic, and spiritual shackles that have bound men. The battles for freedom where fought by the oppressed, those who wanted new liberties, against those who had privileges to defend. While a class was fighting for its own liberation from domination, it believed itself to be fighting for human freedom as such and thus was able to appeal to an ideal, to the longing for freedom rooted in all who are oppressed. In the long and virtually continuous battle for freedom, however, classes that were fighting against oppression at one stage sided with the enemies of freedom when victory was won and new privileges were to be defended.

ERICH FROMM

Escape from Freedom


Without total freedom, every perception, every objective regard, is twisted. It is only the man who is totally free who can look and understand immediately. Freedom implies really, doesn't it, the total emptying of the mind. Completely to empty the whole content of the mind--that is real freedom. Freedom is not mere revolt from circumstances, which again breeds other circumstances, other environmental influences, which enslave the mind. We are talking about a freedom that comes naturally, easily, unasked for, when the mind is capable of functioning at its highest level.

JIDDU KRISHNAMURTI

On Freedom


If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too.

W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Strictly Personal


They never fail who die
In a great cause: the block may soak their gore:
Their heads may sodden in the sun; their limbs
Be strung to city gates and castle walls--
But still their Spirit walks abroad. Though years
Elapse, and others share as dark a doom,
They but augment the deep and sweeping thoughts
Which overpower all others, and conduct
The world at last to Freedom.

LORD BYRON

Marino Faliero


Freedom to reject is the only freedom.

SALMAN RUSHDIE

The Ground Beneath Her Feet


The anchor in our world today is freedom, holding us steady in times of change, a symbol of hope to all the world.

GEORGE H.W. BUSH

State of the Union Address, Jan. 31, 1990


History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.

DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER

inaugural address, Jan. 20, 1953


I am as free as Nature first made man,
Ere the base laws of servitude began,
When wild in woods the noble savage ran.

JOHN DRYDEN

The Conquest of Granada


We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

MARTIN LUTHER KING

JR., "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," 1963


We know what works: Freedom works. We know what's right: Freedom is right. We know how to secure a more just and prosperous life for man on Earth: through free markets, free speech, free elections, and the exercise of free will unhampered by the state.

GEORGE H. W. BUSH

Inaugural Address, Jan. 20, 1989


What some people term Freedom is nothing else than a liberty of saying and doing disagreeable things. It is but carrying the notion a little higher, and it would require us to break and have a head broken reciprocally without offense.

WILLIAM SHENSTONE

Essays on Men and Manners


Freedom has a scent
Like the top of a new born baby's head

U2

"Miracle Drug"


I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpations.

JAMES MADISON

speech at the Virginia Convention to ratify the Federal Constitution, Jun. 6, 1788


We ... would rather die on our feet than live on our knees.

FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT

speech, June 1941