Quotes About Freedom

The one who merely flees is not yet free. In fleeing he is still conditioned by that from which he flees.

It is not a very pleasing spectacle to observe uncultivated ignorance and crudity of mind, with neither form nor taste, without the capacity to concentrate its thoughts on an abstract proposition, still less on a connected statement of such propositions, confidently proclaiming itself to be intellectual freedom and

But if they realize that their true freedom consists in the acceptance of principles, of laws which are the own, a synthesis of universal and particular interests becomes possible.

The state of nature is in theory what we find it in practice. Freedom as the ideal of the original state of nature does not exist as original and nature. It must first be acquired and won; and that is possible only through an infinite process of the discipline of knowledge and will power. The state of nature, therefore is rather the state of injustice, violence, untamed natural impulses – of inhuman deeds and emotions.

It is this final goal - freedom - toward which all the world's history has been working. It is this goal to which all the sacrifices have been brought upon the broad altar of the earth in the long flow of time.

Universal liberty can't produce any work or any positive action, only negative action. Universal liberty is only the rush to erase.

The sole work and deed of universal freedom is therefore death, a death too which has no inner significance or filling, for what is negated is the empty point of the absolutely free self. It is thus the coldest and meanest of all deaths, with no more significance than cutting off a head of cabbage or swallowing a mouthful of water

The pallid shades of memory struggle in vain with the life and freedom of the Present.

Bowling is sex. Bowling is a symbolic form of intercourse, except you don't have to bother about the feelings of some other person. Bowling is sex without guilt. Bowling is what people have wanted down through all the millennia: sex without the slightest responsibility. It's the very distillation of the essence of sex.

It is also true that when a people, long kept in a boiling cauldron of oppression, suddenly find the lid removed, they spend their remaining energy battling chimerical enemies.

at the basis of every virtue is our power to break its hold

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.

All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently, the first condition of progress is the removal of censorship.

Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody can read. [As quoted in Literary Censorship in England (in Current Opinion , Vol. 55, No. 5, November 1913)]

Those who talk most about the blessings of marriage and the constancy of its vows are the very people who declare that if the chain were broken and the prisoners left free to choose, the whole social fabric would fly asunder. You cannot have the argument both ways. If the prisoner is happy, why lock him in? If he is not, why pretend that he is?

No use slaving for me and then saying you want to be cared for: who cares for a slave? If you come back, come back for the sake of good fellowship; for you'll get nothing else.

The ordinary man is an anarchist. He wants to do as he likes. He may want his neighbour to be governed, but he himself doesn't want to be governed. He is mortally afraid of government officials and policemen.

Mirovên geÅŸbîn û reÅŸbîn, her du jî ji bo civakê pêwîst in. GeÅŸbîn balafirê didahêne; reÅŸbîn sîwana rizgariyê.

The ultimate form of censorship is assassination.

The risks of liberty we must let everyone take; but the risks of ignorance and self-helplessness are another matter.

But whether the risks to which liberty exposes us are moral or physical our right to liberty involves the right to run them. A man who is not free to risk his neck as an aviator or his soul as a heretic is not free at all; and the right to liberty begins, not at the age of 21 years but 21 seconds.

La libertad supone responsabilidad. Por eso la mayor parte de los hombres la temen tanto.

The ordinary man is an anarchist. He wants to do as he likes. He may want his neighbor to be governed, but he himself doesn't want to be governed.

It is quite useless to declare that all men are born free if you deny that they are born good.