Quotes About Freedom

the great, generous Russian people have been added in their naïve majesty and might to the forces that are fighting for freedom in the world, for justice, and for peace. Here is a fit partner for a League of Honor.

This world offers a form of liberty—the freedom to pursue one's own self-interest—and a form of authority: the power of the magistrate "to punish transgressors, to correct fraud and violence, and to oblige men, however reluctant, to consult their own real and permanent [long-term] interests.

In short, a democracy like Athens or a republic like Florence was a cooperative partnership, in which men agree to be the best they can be in both their public and their private lives, instead of (as in Plato's Republic) having those rules imposed from above. Only under liberty could men realize their true nature as human beings both as free individuals and as part of a greater whole.

This was why the ancient Athenians had defied the tyranny of Persia against all odds. This was why the early Romans had risked everything to overthrow their kings, so that they could live free or die. And that was why the Florentines had to be ready to die to defend their liberty, Leonardo Bruni concluded—because without liberty, "life [has] no meaning for them.

For example, Socrates explains that the dissolute freedom of democracies like that of Athens, "which treats all men as equals whether they are equal or not," must lead inevitably to moral corruption, civic disorder, and mob rule.

it was believed, liberty opens the door to a standard of excellence in both public and private affairs unknown to those living in servitude or unfree societies. In short, a republic built on Aristotle's model will allow men to achieve their highest potential not only as political animals, but as complete moral beings.

Renaissance Florence did not forget about the importance of Christianity and sacred values. It was said that Manetti knew three works by heart: the Ethics of Aristotle, Saint Paul's letters, and Augustine's City of God.17 Still, the Florentines did insist that education needed to reflect the new secular emphasis on human freedom and the pursuit of excellence for its own sake.

Good laws will make good men, and the best laws are forged not in the heat of crisis or the give-and-take of ordinary political debate, where men's appetites take over, but through the exercise of knowledge and reason. Self-interest must learn to yield to the common interest; and men must be united if they are to be free. Taken together, that remains Plato's most important political legacy.

Fundamental to the Scottish notion of history is the idea of progress. The Scots argued that societies, like individuals, grow and improve over time. They acquire new skills, new attitudes, and a new understanding of what individuals can do and what they should be free to do. The Scots would teach the world that one of the crucial ways we measure progress is by how far we have come from what we were before. The present judges the past, not the other way around.

Freedom, in short, must eventually lead to unfreedom. If this was true, Europeans asked, then why not start with unfreedom and be done with it? The solution seemed to be ceding all authority to a single absolute sovereign, who consciously modeled his power and glory after the ancient Roman emperors and their Neoplatonist propagandists.

And both were working on the same problem from different ends. This was figuring out how human beings fit into an infinite universe—and how we can salvage our freedom from the forces of blind necessity, in either the physical or the political realms. The answer they found was the nature of nature itself, as the product of a Beneficent Creator. Like Newton, behind nature and reason Locke always recognized the person and voice of God.

The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges everyone; and Reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it."33 Was it possible that God would devise such a system of natural laws and put man in the middle of them in order to create a nation of slaves? Locke said no.

In Avoca, Pennsylvania, an Austrian American was accused of criticizing the Red Cross. A group of vigilantes tied him up, hoisted him thirty feet in the air, and blasted him with water from a fire hose for a full hour.

the duty of the sovereign to respect that liberty: and when he doesn't, when "he that in a State of Society would take away the Freedom that belongs to those of that Society," and pretends to be our master rather than our servant, then it is he, not us, who is the real rebel against society.

with lawlessness freedom is inconsistent

For Lenin, "self-determination" was a clarion call not for democracy and freedom but for revolt and bloodshed that would rock the capitalist imperialist order down to its foundations.

Then honor to the day that gave him birth, For it is also Freedom's natal day.

Misschien acteer ik, zegt ze, omdat wij al zoveel mogelijkheden in de steen hebben moeten achterlaten. Maar dat is nu juist het verschil tussen het beeld en de beeldhouwer, roep ik haar na, de een moet wachten tot iemand iets in hem ziet, de ander is vrij zichzelf vorm te geven.

Zij steunden elkaar in het idee dat vrouwen zichzelf tekort doen door op hun gevoel te vertrouwen en dat ze pas werkelijk vrij zullen zijn wanneer de intuïtie voor eens en altijd door het intellect wordt overwonnen. Hierover rebbelden ze met een passie die hun gelijk ongewild bewees.

I went to Communism as one goes to a spring of fresh water, and I left Communism as one clambers out of a poisoned river strewn with the wreckage of flooded cities and the corpses of the drowned.

For, contrary to the common opinion, it is the wealthy who are greedy of wealth; while the populace are to be gained by talking to them about liberty, their unknown god. And so much are they enchanted by the words liberty, freedom, and such like, that the wise can go to the poor, rob them of what little they have, dismiss them with a hearty kick, and win their hearts and their votes for ever, if only they will assure them that the treatment which they have received is called liberty.

Where choice begins, Paradise ends, innocence ends, for what is Paradise but the absence of any need to choose this action?

I stopped in the middle of that building and I saw — the sky. I saw the things that I love in this world. The work and the food and time time to sit and smoke. And I looked at the pen and said to myself, what the hell am I grabbing this for? Why am I trying to become what I don't want to be? What am I doing in an office, making a contemptuous, begging fool of myself, when all I want is out there, waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am! Why can't I say that, Willy?

I went out under the sky, Muse! and I was your vassal.