Freedom

Freedom of expression is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom. ~ Benjamin N. Cardozo

Freedom is the state of not being imprisoned or enslaved or of being unconstrained.

See also Liberty.

Quotes

The great revolution in the history of man, past, present and future, is the revolution of those determined to be free. ~ John F. Kennedy
Our liberty ... is endangered if we pause for the passing moment, if we rest on our achievements, if we resist the pace of progress. ~ John F. Kennedy
Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free. ~ John F. Kennedy
What constitutes the bulwark of our own liberty and independence? ... Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere. Destroy this spirit, and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors. ~ Abraham Lincoln
My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular. ~ Adlai Stevenson
  • At all times sincere friends of freedom have been rare, and its triumphs have been due to minorities, that have prevailed by associating themselves with auxiliaries whose objects often differed from their own; and this association, which is always dangerous, has been sometimes disastrous, by giving to opponents just grounds of opposition, and by kindling dispute over the spoils in the hour of success. No obstacle has been so constant, or so difficult to overcome, as uncertainty and confusion touching the nature of true liberty. If hostile interests have wrought much injury, false ideas have wrought still more; and its advance is recorded in the increase of knowledge, as much as in the improvement of laws.
  • The person who says freedom must have collateral damage is either trying to make a buck or has been duped by someone making a buck on them. This is the primary justification for any group or person engaged in the sale of weapons and killing machines.
    • Nicholas Colin McLaughlin, in "Of Nature: The Hopes and Delusions of a Species" (2011)
  • The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities.
  • We thought (the United States) could lead us to freedom, but they led us into feardom, not freedom.
  • Ambulances always come with clouds of smoke. And then they disappear in a whistle. But what they bring is fear. Not freedom. Feardom is what they bring. And they bring fire and smoke. Oh, my nerves are bad tonight, yes, bad. I fear freedom. I, above all, fear the freedom that is above all feardom.
  • For Freedom's battle once begun,
    Bequeath'd by bleeding sire to son,
    Though baffled oft is ever won.
  • Freedom of expression is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom.
  • I call that mind free, which jealously guards its intellectual rights and powers, which calls no man master, which does not content itself with a passive or hereditary faith, which opens itself to light whencesoever it may come, which receives new truth as an angel from heaven.
    I call that mind free, which sets no bounds to its love, which is not imprisoned in itself or in a sect, which recognises in all human beings the image of God and the rights of his children, which delights in virtue and sympathizes with suffering wherever they are seen, which conquers pride, anger, and sloth, and offers itself up a willing victim to the cause of mankind.
  • He is the freeman whom the truth makes free,
    And all are slaves besides.
  • For so long as but a hundred of us remain alive, we will in no way yield ourselves to the dominion of the English. For it is not for glory, nor riches, nor honour that we fight, but for Freedom, which no good man lays down but with his life.
  • Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.
  • Freedom cannot be bestowed — it must be achieved.
    • Elbert Hubbard, in his essay on Booker T. Washington in Little Journeys For 1908, p. 21; Franklin D. Roosevelt later used this line on the occasion of the 74th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation: "In the truest sense, freedom cannot be bestowed; it must be achieved".
  • If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.
    • Jesus of Nazareth as quoted in John 8:31 (NIV)
    • Variant translation: Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
    • Jesus as quoted in John 8:31 (KJV).
  • Without debate, without criticism, no Administration and no country can succeed--and no republic can survive. [...] And that is why our press was protected by the First Amendment-- the only business in America specifically protected by the Constitution- -not primarily to amuse and entertain, not to emphasize the trivial and the sentimental, not to simply "give the public what it wants"--but to inform, to arouse, to reflect, to state our dangers and our opportunities, to indicate our crises and our choices, to lead, mold, educate and sometimes even anger public opinion. This means greater coverage and analysis of international news--for it is no longer far away and foreign but close at hand and local. It means greater attention to improved understanding of the news as well as improved transmission. And it means, finally, that government at all levels, must meet its obligation to provide you with the fullest possible information outside the narrowest limits of national security [...]. [...] And so it is to the printing press — to the recorder of man's deeds, the keeper of his conscience, the courier of his news — that we look for strength and assistance, confident that with your help man will be what he was born to be: free and independent.
  • I come here today to look across this world of threats to a world of peace. In that search we cannot expect any final triumph — for new problems will always arise. We cannot expect that all nations will adopt like systems — for conformity is the jailor of freedom, and the enemy of growth.
  • Our goal is not victory of might but the vindication of right — not peace at the expense of freedom, but both peace and freedom, here in this hemisphere and, we hope, around the world. God willing, that goal will be achieved.
  • The essence of Vanderbilt is still learning, the essence of its outlook is still liberty, and liberty and learning will be and must be the touchstones of Vanderbilt University and of any free university in this country or the world. I say two touchstones, yet they are almost inseparable, inseparable if not indistinguishable, for liberty without learning is always in peril, and learning without liberty is always in vain.
  • And this Nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free.
  • But Goethe tells us in his greatest poem that Faust lost the liberty of his soul when he said to the passing moment: "Stay, thou art so fair." And our liberty, too, is endangered if we pause for the passing moment, if we rest on our achievements, if we resist the pace of progress.
  • I say to you that our goal is freedom, and I believe we are going to get there because however much she strays away from it, the goal of America is freedom. Abused and scorned though we may be as a people, our destiny is tied up in the destiny of America.
  • What universities are saying by these codes, special protections, and double standards — to women, to blacks, to Hispanics, to gay and lesbian students — is, "You are too weak to live with freedom. You are too weak to live with the First Amendment." If someone tells you you are too weak to live with freedom, they have turned you into a child.
  • Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose.
    • Kris Kristofferson and Fred Foster, "Me and Bobby McGee" (1969); phrased as "Freedom is another word for having nothing else to lose" by Clint Eastwood in "Go ahead God Make My day", Interview by Martin Palmer for Live magazine, The Mail on Sunday (UK) newspaper (January 16 2011).
  • If there breathe on earth a slave,
    Are ye truly free and brave?
    If ye do not feel the chain,
    When it works a brother's pain,
    Are ye not base slaves indeed,
    Slaves unworthy to be freed?
  • Is true Freedom but to break
    Fetters for our own dear sake,
    And, with leathern hearts, forget
    That we owe mankind a debt?

    No! true freedom is to share
    All the chains our brothers wear,
    And, with heart and hand, to be
    Earnest to make others free!

  • Freedom is a more complex and delicate thing than force. It is not as simple to live under as force is.
  • Non bene, crede mihi, servo servitur amico;
    Sit liber, dominus qui volet esse meus.
    • Service cannot be expected from a friend in service; let him be a freeman who wishes to be my master.
    • Martial, Epigrams (c. 80-104 AD), II. 32. 7.
  • 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.
  • I believe in only one thing and that thing is human liberty. If ever a man is to achieve anything like dignity, it can happen only if superior men are given absolute freedom to think what they want to think and say what they want to say. I am against any man and any organization which seeks to limit or deny that freedom … the superior man can be sure of freedom only if it is given to all men.
    • H. L. Mencken, as quoted in Letters of H. L. Mencken (1961) edited by Guy J. Forgue, p. xiii.
  • Since God could have created a freedom in which there could be no evil (i.e., a state when men were happy and free and certain not to sin), it follows that He wished evil to exist. But evil offends Him. A commonplace case of masochism.
  • Democracy and freedom do not guarantee the millennium. No, we do not choose political freedom because it promises us this or that. We choose it because it makes possible the only dignified form of human coexistence, the only form in which we can be fully responsible for ourselves. Whether we realize its possibilities depends on all kinds of things — and above all on ourselves.
  • It is wrong to think that belief in freedom always leads to victory; we must always be prepared for it to lead to defeat. If we choose freedom, then we must be prepared to perish along with it.
  • My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.
  • Without security, civilization is cramped and dwarfed. Without security, there can be no freedom. Nor shall I say too much, when I declare that security, guarded of course by its offspring, freedom, is the true end and aim of government.
  • Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
    Where knowledge is free
    Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
    By narrow domestic walls
    Where words come out from the depth of truth
    Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
    Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
    Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
    Where the mind is led forward by thee:Into ever-widening thought and action
    Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.
  • Any form of orthodoxy is just not part of a poet's province ... A poet must be able to claim ... freedom to follow the vision of poetry, the imaginative vision of poetry ... And in any case, poetry is religion, religion is poetry. The message of the New Testament is poetry.
    • R. S. Thomas, in "R. S. Thomas : Priest and Poet" (BBC TV, 2 April 1972).
  • Pro libertate"
  • Give a man a free hand and he'll try to put it all over you.
    • Mae West, as "Frisco Doll" in Klondike Annie.
  • True freedom is not a freedom of choice made from a safe distance, like choosing between a strawberry cake or a chocolate cake; true freedom overlaps with necessity, one makes a truly free choice when one's choice puts at stake one's very existence — one does it because one simply "cannot do it otherwise."
  • "You know, there are some words I've known since I was a schoolboy: 'With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably.' Those words were uttered by Judge Aaron Satie as wisdom and warning. The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. I fear that today..."

Lyrics

  • Find the cost of freedom, buried in the ground
    Mother earth will swallow you
    Lay your body down
  • I'M FREE! — I'm free,
    And freedom tastes of reality,
    I'm free — I'm free,
    An' I'm waiting for you to follow me.
  • Take my love, take my land
    Take me where I cannot stand
    I don't care, I'm still free
    You can't take the sky from me
  • Believe in all the good things you keep inside
    There is no freedom in life without freedom of mind

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 294-96.
  • Freedom all solace to man gives:
    He lives at ease that freely lives.
  • Whose service is perfect freedom.
    • Book of Common Prayer, Collect for Peace.
  • …for righteous monarchs,
    Justly to judge, with their own eyes should see;
    To rule o'er freemen, should themselves be free.
    • Henry Brooke, Earl of Essex, Act I.
  • Here the free spirit of mankind, at length,
    Throws its last fetters off; and who shall place
    A limit to the giant's unchained strength,
    Or curb his swiftness in the forward race?
  • Sound the loud timbrel o'er Egypt's dark sea!
    Jehovah hath triumphed—his people are free.
    • Lord Byron, Sacred Songs, Sound the loud Timbrel.
  • Hope for a season bade the world farewell,
    And Freedom shrieked as Kosciusko fell!
    * * * * * *
    O'er Prague's proud arch the fires of ruin glow.
  • England may as well dam up the waters of the Nile with bulrushes as to fetter the step of Freedom, more proud and firm in this youthful land than where she treads the sequestered glens of Scotland, or couches herself among the magnificent mountains of Switzerland.
  • Nulla enim minantis auctoritas apud liberos est.
    • To freemen, threats are impotent.
    • Cicero, Epistles, XI. 3.
  • O what a loud and fearful shriek was there!
    …
    Ah me! they view'd beneath an hireling's sword
    Fallen Kosciusco.
  • No, Freedom has a thousand charms to show
    That slaves, howe'er contented, never know.
  • I want free life, and I want fresh air;
    And I sigh for the canter after the cattle,
    The crack of the whip like shots in battle,
    The medley of horns, and hoofs, and heads
    That wars, and wrangles, and scatters and spreads;
    The green beneath and the blue above,
    And dash, and danger, and life and love.
    • Frank Desprez, Lasca.
  • I am as free as nature first made man,
    Ere the base laws of servitude began,
    When wild in woods the noble savage ran.
  • My angel,—his name is Freedom,—
    Choose him to be your king;
    He shall cut pathways east and west,
    And fend you with his wing.
  • We grant no dukedoms to the few,
    We hold like rights and shall;
    Equal on Sunday in the pew,
    On Monday in the mall.
    For what avail the plough or sail,
    Or land, or life, if freedom fail?
  • I gave my life for freedom—This I know;
    For those who bade me fight had told me so.
    • W. N. Ewer, Five Souls.
  • Bred in the lap of Republican Freedom.
    • Godwin, Enquirer, II, XII. 402.
  • Yes! to this thought I hold with firm persistence;
    The last result of wisdom stamps it true;
    He only earns his freedom and existence
    Who daily conquers them anew.
  • Frei athmen macht das Leben nicht allein.
  • Ay, call it holy ground,
    The soil where first they trod,
    They have left unstained, what there they found,—
    Freedom to worship God.
  • Quisnam igitur liber? Sapiens, sibi qui imperiosus;
    Quem neque pauperies, neque mors, neque vincula terrent
    Responsare cupidinibus, contemnere honores
    Fortis; et in se ipso totus, teres atque rotundus.
    • Who then is free? the wise man who is lord over himself;
      Whom neither poverty nor death, nor chains alarm; strong to withstand his passions and despise honors, and who is completely finished and rounded off in himself.
    • Horace, Satires, Book II, VII. 83.
  • In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
    With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me;
    As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
    While God is marching on.
  • One should never put on one's best trousers to go out to fight for freedom.
  • All we have of freedom—all we use or know—
    This our fathers bought for us, long and long ago.
  • What constitutes the bulwark of our own liberty and independence? It is not our frowning battlements, our bristling sea coasts, the guns of our war steamers, or the strength our gallant and disciplined army? These are not our reliance against a resumption of tyranny in our fair land. All of those may be turned against our liberties, without making us weaker or stronger for the struggle. Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in our bosoms. Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere. Destroy this spirit, and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors. Familiarize yourselves with the chains of bondage and you are preparing your own limbs to wear them. Accustomed to trample on the rights of those around you, you have lost the genius of your own independence, and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises.
    • Abraham Lincoln's speech at Edwardsville, Illinois (September 11, 1858); quoted in Lincoln, Abraham; Mario Matthew Cuomo, Harold Holzer, G. S. Boritt, Lincoln on Democracy (Fordham University Press, September 1, 2004), 128. ISBN 978-0823223459.
      • Variant of the above quote: What constitutes the bulwark of our own liberty and independence? It is not our frowning battlements, our bristling sea coasts, our army and our navy. These are not our reliance against tyranny All of those may be turned against us without making us weaker for the struggle. Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in us. Our defense is in the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism at your own doors. Familiarize yourselves with the chains of bondage and you prepare your own limbs to wear them. Accustomed to trample on the rights of others, you have lost the genius of your own independence and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises among you.
  • …That this nation, under God shall have a new birth of freedom.
  • I intend no modification of my oft-expressed wish that all men everywhere could be free.
    • Abraham Lincoln, letter to Horace Greeley. Aug. 22, 1862. See Raymond's History of Lincoln's Administration.
  • Freedom needs all her poets; it is they
    Who give her aspirations wings,
    And to the wiser law of music sway
    Her wild imaginings.
  • Quicquid multis peccatur, inultum est.
  • Libertas ultima mundi
    Quo steterit ferienda loco.
    • The remaining liberty of the world was to be destroyed in the place where it stood.
    • Marcus Annaeus Lucanus, Pharsalia, VII. 580.
  • They can only set free men free…
    And there is no need of that:
    Free men set themselves free.
    • James Oppenheim, The Slave.
  • An quisquam est alius liber, nisi ducere vitam
    Cui licet, ut voluit?
    • Is any man free except the one who can pass his life as he pleases?
    • Persius, Satires, V. 83.
  • Oh! let me live my own, and die so too!
    (To live and die is all I have to do:)
    Maintain a poet's dignity and ease,
    And see what friends, and read what books I please.
  • Blandishments will not fascinate us, nor will threats of a "halter" intimidate. For, under God, we are determined that wheresoever, whensoever, or howsoever we shall be called to make our exit, we will die free men.
    • Josiah Quincey, Observations on the Boston Port Bill (1774).
  • Free soil, free men, free speech, Fremont.
    • Republican Rallying Cry (1856).
  • O, nur eine freie Seele wird nicht alt.
  • Freiheit ist nur in dem Reich der Träume
    Und das Schöne blüht nur im Gesang.
    • Freedom is only in the land of dreams, and the beautiful only blooms in song.
    • Friedrich Schiller, The Beginning of the New Century, Stanza 9.
  • Der Mensch ist frei geschaffen, ist frei
    Und würd' er in Ketten geboren.
    • Man is created free, and is free, even though born in chains.
    • Friedrich Schiller, Die Worte des Glaubens, Stanza 2.
  • Nemo liber est, qui corpori servit.
    • No man is free who is a slave to the flesh.
    • Seneca, Epistolæ Ad Lucilium, XCII.
  • The last link is broken
    That bound me to thee,
    And the words thou hast spoken
    Have render'd me free.
    • Fanny Steers, Song.
  • Rara temporum felicitate, ubi sentire quæ velis, et quæ sentias dicere licet.
    • Such being the happiness of the times, that you may think as you wish, and speak as you think.
    • Tacitus, Annales, I. 1.
  • Of old sat Freedom on the heights
    The thunders breaking at her feet:
    Above her shook the starry lights;
    She heard the torrents meet.
  • Red of the Dawn
    Is it turning a fainter red? so be it, but when shall we lay
    The ghost of the Brute that is walking and hammering us yet and be free?
  • Freedom exists only where the people take care of the government.
  • Our object now, as then, is to vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the life of the world as against selfish and autocratic power, and to set up among the really free and self-governed peoples of the world such a concert of purpose and of action as will henceforth insure the observance of those principles.
    • Woodrow Wilson, address to Congress. (War with Germany being declared.) April 2, 1917.
  • Only free peoples can hold their purpose and their honor steady to a common end, and prefer the interests of mankind to any narrow interest of their own.
    • Woodrow Wilson, address to Congress. (War with Germany being declared.) April 2, 1917.
  • How does the Meadow flower its bloom unfold?
    Because the lovely little flower is free
    Down to its root, and in that freedom, bold.
  • We must be free or die, who speak the tongue
    That Shakespeare spake; the faith and morals hold
    Which Milton held.
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Last modified on 7 April 2013, at 16:59