quotations about freedom
History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
inaugural address, Jan. 20, 1953
Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU
The Social Contract
Posterity: you will never know how much it has cost my generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it.
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS
attributed, The Rebirth of a Nation
Man is born free and is everywhere in chains.
PETER CAREY
Parrot and Olivier in America
Freedom, we're gonna ring the bell
Freedom to rock, freedom to talk
Freedom, raise your fist and yell
ALICE COOPER
"Freedom"
Freedom and not servitude is the cure of anarchy; as religion, and not atheism, is the true remedy of superstition.
EDMUND BURKE
speech on conciliation with America, 1775
Freedom all solace to man gives
He lives at ease who freely lives.
JOHN BARBOUR
The Bruce
The cause of Freedom is the cause of God!
WILLIAM LISLE BOWLES
Edmund Burke
Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
Out of My Later Years
Real freedom lies in wildness, not in civilization.
CHARLES LINDBERGH
attributed, Lindbergh
We ... would rather die on our feet than live on our knees.
FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT
speech, June 1941
I anticipate with pleasing expectations that retreat in which I promise myself to realize, without alloy, the sweet enjoyment of partaking, in the midst of my fellow citizens, the benign influence of good laws under a free government, the ever favorite object of my heart, and the happy reward, as I trust, of our mutual cares, labors, and dangers.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
farewell address, Sep. 17, 1796
For those who have it, freedom is like oxygen, it's something we just have. Many will not understand just how precious either is until they are at risk of losing it.
JOHN DUTCHER
"Crowd turns out for parade under beautiful sunny skies Monday", Gloversville Leader-Herald, May 28, 2019
The whole world yearns after freedom, yet each creature is in love with his chains.
SRI AUROBINDO
Thoughts and Glimpses
The cry for freedom is a sign of suppression. It will not cease to ring as long as man feels himself captive. As diverse as the cries for freedom may be, basically they all express one and the same thing: The intolerability of the rigidity of the organism and of the machine-like institutions which create a sharp conflict with the natural feelings for life. Not until there is a social order in which all cries for freedom subside will man have overcome his biological and social crippling, will he have attained genuine freedom.
WILHELM REICH
The Mass Psychology of Fascism
I've read and heard a lot of unbelievable stuff about those times when people lived in freedom -- that is, in disorganized wildness.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
We
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
The importance of our being free to do a particular thing has nothing to do with the question of whether we or the majority are ever likely to make use of that particular possibility. To grant no more freedom than all can exercise would be to misconceive its function completely. The freedom that will be used by only one man in a million may be more important to society and more beneficial to the majority than any freedom that we all use.
FRIEDRICH HAYEK
The Constitution of Liberty
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