FREEDOM QUOTES II
quotations about freedom
When we were told that by freedom we understood free enterprise, we did very little to dispel this monstrous falsehood, and all too often we have acted as though we too believed that it was wealth and abundance which were at stake in the postwar conflict between the "revolutionary" countries in the East and the West. Wealth and economic well-being, we have asserted, are the fruits of freedom, while we should have been the first to know that this kind of "happiness" was the blessing of America prior to the Revolution, and that its cause was natural abundance under "mild government," and neither political freedom nor the unchained, unbridled "private initiative" of capitalism, which in the absence of natural wealth has led everywhere to unhappiness and mass poverty. Free enterprise, in other words, has been an unmixed blessing only in America, and it is a minor blessing compared with the truly political freedoms, such as freedom of speech and thought, of assembly and association, even under the best conditions.
HANNAH ARENDT
On Revolution
Freedom is entirely different from revolt. There is no such thing as doing right or wrong when there is freedom. You are free and from that centre you act.
JIDDU KRISHNAMURTI
Freedom from the Known
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
The unity of all who dwell in freedom is their only sure defense.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
Second Inaugural Address, Jan. 21, 1957
Freedom is something that dies unless it's used.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON
Ancient Gonzo Wisdom
Unless your freedom turns into a creative realization, you will feel sad. Because you will see that you are free--your chains are broken, and you are no longer in prison; you are standing under the starry night, completely free. But where do you go?
OSHO
Freedom: The Courage to Be Yourself
Witness and stand back from Nature, that is the first step to the soul's freedom.
SRI AUROBINDO
The Life Divine
It is only after slavery and prison that the sweetest appreciation of freedom can come.
MALCOLM X
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Freedom (n.): To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing.
AYN RAND
The Fountainhead
The human cry for freedom is like the wind, when it starts blowing people can sniff it. All the powers of the world are afraid of it. The powers can build prisons, grow armies, police and kill all they want. But the buildings will fall to sand, the armies will melt away while the breeze just keeps on blowing.
BILL CREWS
"Tiananmen's yearning for freedom lives on in Ashfield", The Sydney Morning Herald, June 4, 2019
Freedom all solace to man gives
He lives at ease who freely lives.
JOHN BARBOUR
The Bruce
Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.
JOHN DALBERG-ACTON
The History of Freedom in Antiquity
It is the mind of man alone that is the cause of his bondage or freedom.
CHANAKYA
Vridda-Chanakya
For nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom.
JAMES BALDWIN
Giovanni's Room
History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
inaugural address, Jan. 20, 1953
The free man is he who does not fear to go to the end of his thought.
LEON BLUM
quoted in Webster's Quotations
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
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
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
What most clearly characterizes true freedom and its true employment is its misemployment.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG
"Notebook L", Aphorisms