When you realize that every stressful moment you experience is a gift that points you to your own freedom, life becomes very kind.
—Byron Katie (b.1942) American Speaker, Author
Governing sense, mind and intellect, intent on liberation, free from desire, fear and anger, the sage is forever free.
—The Bhagavad Gita Hindu Scripture
For in the end, freedom is a personal and lonely battle; and one faces down fears of today so that those of tomorrow might be engaged.
—Alice Walker (b.1944) American Novelist, Activist
Liberty is one of the most precious gifts which heaven has bestowed on man; with it we cannot compare the treasures which the earth contains or the sea conceals; for liberty, as for honor, we can and ought to risk our lives; and, on for the other hand, captivity is the greatest evil that can befall man.
—Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish Novelist
When you reach the point of becoming independent of external events, you’re truly free.
—Steve Pavlina (b.1971) American Motivational Speaker
Freedom lies in being bold.
—Robert Frost (1874–1963) American Poet
The fly that touches honey cannot use it’s wings; so too the soul that clings to spiritual sweetness ruins it’s freedom and hinders contemplation.
—Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian Mystic, Philosopher, Poet
In every country where man is free to think and to speak, difference of opinion will arise from difference of perception, and the imperfection of reason; but these differences, when permitted, as in this happy country, to purify themselves by free discussion, are but as passing clouds overspreading our land transiently, and leaving our horizon more bright and serene.
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) American Head of State, Lawyer
To some, freedom means the opportunity to do what they want to do; to most it means not to do what they don’t want to do.
—Eric Hoffer (1902–83) American Philosopher, Author
We are all of us the worse for too much liberty.
—Terence (c.195–159 BCE) Roman Comic Dramatist
The progress of freedom depends more upon the maintenance of peace, the spread of commerce, and the diffusion of education, than upon the labors of cabinets and foreign offices.
—Richard Cobden
How is freedom measured, in individuals as in nations? By the resistance which has to be overcome, by the effort it costs to stay aloft. One would have to seek the highest type of free man where the greatest resistance is constantly being overcome: five steps from tyranny, near the threshold of the danger of servitude.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German Philosopher, Scholar, Writer
Do you want to be right more than you want to know the truth? It’s the truth that set me free. Acceptance, peace, and less attachment to a world of suffering are all effects of doing The Work. They’re not the goals. Do The Work for the love of freedom, for the love of truth.
—Byron Katie (b.1942) American Speaker, Author
For me, the principal fact of life is the free mind. For good and evil, man is a free creative spirit. This produces the very queer world we live in, a world in continuous creation and therefore continuous change and insecurity. A perpetually new and lively world, but a dangerous one, full of tragedy and injustice. A world in everlasting conflict between the new idea and the old allegiances, new arts and new inventions against the old establishment.
—Joyce Cary (1888–1957) English Novelist, Artist
When a person places the proper value on freedom, there is nothing under the sun that he will not do to acquire that freedom. Whenever you hear a man saying he wants freedom, but in the next breath he is going to tell you what he won’t do to get it, or what he doesn’t believe in doing in order to get it, he doesn’t believe in freedom. A man who believes in freedom will do anything under the sun to acquire… or preserve his freedom.
—Malcolm X (1925–65) American Civil Rights Leader
Freedom is the sure possession of those alone who have the courage to defend it.
—Pericles (c.490–429 BCE) Athenian Statesman, General
We are not to make the ideas of contentment and aspiration quarrel, for God made them fast friends.—A man may aspire, and yet be quite content until it is time to rise; and both flying and resting are but parts of one contentment. The very fruit of the gospel is aspiration. It is to the heart what spring is to the earth, making every root, and bud, and bough desire to be more.
—Henry Ward Beecher (1813–87) American Clergyman, Writer
People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.
—Soren Kierkegaard (1813–55) Danish Philosopher, Theologian
American freedom consists largely in talking nonsense.
—E. W. Howe (1853–1937) American Novelist, Editor
Freedom also includes the right to mismanage your own affairs.
—Unknown
History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.
—Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American Head of State, Military Leader
In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. The first is freedom of speech and expression—everywhere in the world. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way—everywhere in the world. The third is freedom from want—which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants—everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear—which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression gainst any neighbor—anywhere in the world.
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) American Head of State, Lawyer
So far as a person thinks; they are free.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.
—Frederick Douglass (1817–95) American Abolitionist, Author, Editor, Diplomat, Political leader
I had crossed de line of which I had so long been dreaming. I was free; but dere was no one to welcome me to de land of freedom. I was a stranger in a strange land …
—Harriet Tubman (c.1820–1913) American Abolitionist, Social Reformer
Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security, will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) American Political Leader, Inventor, Diplomat
Democracy arose from men’s thinking that if they are equal in any respect, they are equal absolutely.
—Aristotle (384BCE–322BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Scholar
We have to call it “freedom”: who’d want to die for “a lesser tyranny?”
—Mignon McLaughlin (1913–83) American Journalist, Author
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.
—Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American Head of State
Mankind has a free will; but it is free to milk cows and to build houses, nothing more.
—Martin Luther (1483–1546) German Protestant Theologian
Freedom is not enough.
—Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–73) American Head of State, Political leader
What most clearly characterizes true freedom and its true employment is its misemployment.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–99) German Philosopher, Physicist
A bird in the hand is a certainty, but a bird in the bush may sing.
—Bret Harte (1836–1902) American Short Story Writer, Poet
Freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of person under protection of habeas corpus; and trial by juries impartially selected, these principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us, and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation.
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) American Head of State, Lawyer
The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.
—Edmund Burke (1729–97) British Philosopher, Statesman
The only freedom worth possessing is that which gives enlargement to a people’s energy, intellect, and virtues. The savage makes his boast of freedom. But what is its worth? He is, indeed, free from what he calls the yoke of civil institutions. But other and worse chains bind him. The very privation of civil government is in effect a chain; for, by withholding protection from property it virtually shackles the arm of industry, and forbids exertion for the melioration of his lot. Progress, the growth of intelligence and power, is the end and boon of liberty; and, without this, a people may have the name, but want the substance and spirit of freedom.
—William Ellery Channing (1780–1842) American Unitarian Theologian, Poet
All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man’s life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.
—Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born Physicist
Freedom unexercised may become freedom forfeited.
—Margaret Chase Smith (1897–1995) American Politician
Responsibility and self-discipline give you the freedom to be more spontaneous because you won’t risk abusing your freedom.
—Steve Pavlina (b.1971) American Motivational Speaker
Yet we can maintain a free society only if we recognize that in a free society no one can win all the time. No one can have his own way all the time, and no one is right all the time.
—Richard Nixon (1913–94) American Head of State, Lawyer
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty and property of their constituents. There is no safe deposit for these but with the people themselves; nor can they be safe with them without information. Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe.
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) American Head of State, Lawyer
Void of freedom, what would virtue be?
—Alphonse de Lamartine (1790–1869) French Poet, Politician, Historian
The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one
—Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971) Russian-born American Composer, Musician
Impeccability of the word can lead you to personal freedom, to huge success and abundance; it can take away all fear and transform it into joy and love.
—Miguel Angel Ruiz (b.1952) Mexican Spiritualist Author
Man is a masterpiece of creation if for no other reason than that, all the weight of evidence for determinism notwithstanding, he believes he has free will.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–99) German Philosopher, Physicist
It is quite impossible to guarantee world peace. But is should be possible to guarantee world freedom.
—Unknown
Emancipation from the bondage of the soil is no freedom for the tree.
—Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali Poet, Polymath
There is no better measure of a person than what he does when he is absolutely free to choose.
—Wilma Askinas
Freedom begins as we become conscious of it.
—Vernon Howard (1918–92) American Spiritual Teacher, Philosopher
Freedom isn�t selective; it is either complete, unfettered, and now . . . or it is not freedom.
—Guy Finley