Quotes About Freedom

A right is not what someone gives you; it's what no one can take from you.

But it is you, the possessors of divine intelligence and the freedom of will, who are the great creators of all life. It is you who created the morning sun, the evening sky, and the loveliness of all things that are. It is you indeed who created the remarkable creature called man so that you, who were brilliant lights in the Void of space, could experience all the wonderment of your created forms.

The purpose of life is to be a part of it, to be the creator of it, to illuminate it. There is no other destiny than to live and to allow yourself to be whatever you desire to be as life unfolds within you, moment to moment to moment. And in fulfilling that purpose, know that you have the unlimited freedom to become and do and be whatever you desire.

The precondition to freedom is security.

A free society will abide unofficial, private discrimination, even when that means allowing hate-filled groups to exclude people based on the color of their skin.

Do we fear terrorism so much that we throw out our Constitution, and are we unwilling and afraid to debate our Constitution?

I believe we should work to end all racism in American society and staunchly defend the inherent rights of every person.

For most of our history, no one dared to tell Americans, 'you don't build that.'

If our freedom is taken, the American dream will wither and die.

The great and abiding lesson of American history, particularly the cold war, is that the engine of capitalism, the individual, is mightier than any collective.

American inventiveness and the desire to build developed because we were guaranteed the right to own our success.

A reminder that for some people in this world, freedom and ordinary aren't basic rights. They're luxuries you should never take for granted.

You know what? Who cares what normal is, Simone. Let's protest. From now on we're the anti-normal, anti-average, anti-standard. You can eat when you want to, I'll wear what I want, and we'll die with a packet of chips in our hand and a tablecloth on our head.

Not at all. I mean, yeah, you're weird by teenage standards. But weird in a good way. I mean, it's your life, your liver, your brain cells. It's weird not to respect choice. Whether you're choosing to get pissed or go sober, or get high on weed or chocolate, everybody's gotta make their own choices.

HAVING ONE'S OWN shop, working on projects of one's own choosing, making enough money today so one could do the same tomorrow: These were the modest goals of Thomas Edison when he struck out on his own as full-time inventor and manufacturer. The grand goal was nothing other than enjoying the autonomy of entrepreneur and forestalling a return to the servitude of employee.

Most of us know, now, that Rousseau was wrong: that man, when you knock his chains off, sets up the death camps. Soon we shall know everything the 18th century didn't know, and nothing it did, and it will be hard to live with us.

The tags' chain stirs with the wind; and I sleep Paid, dead, and a soldier. Who fights for his own life Loses, loses: I have killed for my world, and am free.

No nation can enslave a race of people for hundreds of years, set them free bedraggled and penniless, pit them, without assistance in a hostile environment, against privileged victimizers, and then reasonably expect the gap between the heirs of the two groups to narrow. Lines, begun parallel and left alone, can never touch.

One hundred fifty years before, one hundred fifty miles to the west, slaves in Haiti had won their freedom by defeating the sixty-thousand-man army of Napoleon Bonaparte. This, never told to class.

while "freedom" from magic is certainly invoked as a constitutive element of modern modes of subjectivity, this freedom is purchased only at the price of potent new forms of social control and regimentation." -- Making Magic , p. 13

Please don't take my wings...

When men know they cannot hope in a country, in a political belief, or in themselves, they become free to hope in God.

And then there is the most dangerous risk of all - the risk of spending your life not doing what you want on the bet you can buy yourself the freedom to do it later.

Anybody out there who is a parent, if your kids want to paint their bedrooms,as a favor to me, let them do it. It'll be OK.