The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.
– Aung San Suu Kyi
The way to final freedom is within thy self.
– The Book of the Golden Precepts
The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. . . .If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.
– Frederick Douglas
Those who profess to favor freedom, yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without planting up the ground. They want rain without thunder or lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. The struggle may not be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will.
Relationships--of all kinds--are like sand held in your hand. Held loosely, with an open hand, the sand remains where it is. The minute you close your hand and squeeze tightly to hold on, the sand trickles through your fingers. You may hold onto some of it, but most will be spilled. A relationship is like that. Held loosely, with respect and freedom for the other person, it is likely to remain intact. But hold too tightly, too possessively, and the relationship slips away and is lost.
– Kaleel Jamison
Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of the citizens to keep and bear arms. This is not to say that firearms should not be carefully used and that definite safety rules of precaution should not be taught and enforced. But the right of the citizens to bear arms is just one guarantee against arbitrary government and one more safeguard against a tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible.
– Hubert Humphrey
People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid.
– Socrates
Only free men can negotiate; prisoners cannot enter into contracts. Your freedom and mine cannot be separated.
– Nelson Mandela
Power in defense of freedom is greater than power on behalf of tyranny and oppression.
– Malcolm X
The basic test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in what we are free not to do.
– Eric Hoffer
The freedom fighters of Nicaragua ... are the moral equal of our Founding Fathers and the brave men and women of the French Resistance.
– Ronald Reagan
Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.
– Mahatma Gandhi
Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom.
– John Adams
Freedom is being able to live with the consequences of your decisions.
– James X. Mullen
In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility-I welcome it.
– John Fitzgerald Kennedy
Americans are a free people, who know that freedom is the right of every person and the future of every nation. The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world it is God's gift to humanity.
– George W. Bush
And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you -- ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world, ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.
They have exiled me now from their society and I am pleased, because humanity does not exile except the one whose noble spirit rebels against despotism and oppression. He who does not prefer exile to slavery is not free by any measure of freedom, truth and duty.
– Kahil Gibran, Spirits Rebellious
...and that this country shall have a new birth of freedom, and that this government, of the people, for the people, by the people, shall not perish from the Earth.
– Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
A democracy is two wolves and a small lamb voting on what to have for dinner. Freedom under a constitutional republic is a well armed lamb contesting the vote.
– Benjamin Franklin
A man should never put on his best trousers when he goes out to battle for freedom and truth.
– Henrik Ibsen
A society like ours, which professes no one religion and has allowed all religions to decay, which indulges freedom to the point of license and individualism to the point of anarchy, needs all the support that responsible, cultivated homes can furnish. I hope your generation will provide a firmer shelter for civilized standards.
– Alan Simpson
A society that puts equality... ahead of freedom will end up with neither.
– Milton Friedman
After I asked him what he meant, he replied that freedom consisted of the unimpeded right to get rich, to use his ability, no matter what the cost to others, to win advancement.
– Norman Thomas
All great things are simple, and many can be expressed in single words: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.
– Sir Winston Churchill
