Quotes About Freedom

Being free is as difficult and as perpetual — or rather fighting for one's freedom, struggling towards being free, is like struggling to be a poet or a good Christian or a good jew or a good Moslem or a good Zen Buddhist. You work all day long and achieve some kind of level of success by nightfall, go to sleep and wake up in the next morning with the job still to be done. So you start all over again.

It was the awakening summer of 1960 and the entire country was in labor. Something wonderful was about to be born, and we were all going to be good parents to the welcome child. Its name was Freedom.

To be left alone on the tightrope of youthful unknowing is to experience the excruciating beauty of full freedom and the threat of eternal indecision. Few, if any, survive their teens. Most surrender to the vague but murderous pressure of adult conformity. It becomes easier to die and avoid conflicts than to maintain a constant battle with the superior forces of maturity.

I am a big bird winging over high mountains, down into serene valleys. I am ripples of waves on silver seas. I'm a spring leaf trembling in anticipation of full growth.

But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream his wings are clipped and his feet are tied so he opens his throat to sing. The caged bird sings with a fearful trill of things unknown but longed for still and his tune is heard on the distant hill for the caged bird sings of freedom. from Caged Bird

Nothing's wrong with going to jail for something you believe in. Remember, jail was made for people. Not horses.

I met that lovely Detroit lady and thought my time had come But just before I said "I do" I said "I got to run" and started to Pickin em up and layin em down, Pickin em up and layin em down, Pickin em up and layin em down, gettin to the next town Baby.

But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream his wings are clipped and his feed are tied so his opens his throat to sing. The caged bird sings with a fearful trill of things unknown but longed for still and his tune is heard on the distant ill for the caged bird sings of freedom.

Independence is a heady draft, and if you drink it in your youth, it can have the same effect on the brain as young wine does.

Ev'ry Voice and Sing"—words by James Weldon Johnson and music by J. Rosamond Johnson. Copyright by Edward B. Marks Music Corporation. Used by permission.

removed from their own day of glorious release

under my eye, but not my thumb.

Because the white world demonstrated in every possible way that he, a black boy, had to live within the murdering boundaries of racial restrictions, I had raised him to believe that he had a say in the living of his life, and that barring accidents, he should have a say in the dying of his death.

The caged bird sings with A fearful trill of things unknown But longed for still and his Tune is heard on the distant hill For the caged bird sings of freedom.

I wish we could stop the little lies. I don't mean that one has to be brutally frank. I don't believe that we should be brutal about anything, however, it is wonderfully liberating to be honest.

Dancing liberated me and even made me feel as if my body had a reason to be

It's one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, to forgive. Forgive everybody.

Nothing's wrong with going to jail for something you believe in. Remember, jail was made for people. Not horses.

We delight in the beauty of the butterfly.

There ain't no pay beneath the sun As sweet as rest when a job's well done. I was born to work up to my grave But I was not born To be a slave. One

Malcolm X was as good as his word. He said, "Black people are letting white Americans know that the time is coming for ballots or bullets. They know it is useless to ask their enemy for justice. And surely whites are the enemies of blacks, otherwise how did we get to this country in the first place?

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave

There is more to life than being a diligent maid with a permanent pussy.

Decide what makes you happy and damn what anyone else thinks or says