Quotes About Freedom

What is the value of any political freedom, but as a means to moral freedom?

I heartily accept the motto, — 'That government is best which governs least'; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically.

La legge non renderà mai gli uomini liberi; sono gli uomini a dover mantenere libera la legge.

Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which I also believe,—That government is best which governs not at all; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.

There are none happy in the world but beings who enjoy freely a vast horizon

I want a whole continent to breathe in, and a good deal of solitude and silence, such as all Wall Street cannot buy, — nor Broadway with its wooden pavement. I must live along the beach, on the southern shore, which looks directly out to sea, — and see what that great parade of water means, that dashes and roars, and has not yet wet me, as long as I have lived.

If a man who has no property refuses but once to earn nine shillings for the State, he is put in prison for a period unlimited by any law that I know, and determined only by the discretion of those who put him there; but if he should steal ninety

Todo lo bueno es libre y salvaje

The progress from an absolute to a limited monarchy, from a limited monarchy to a democracy, is a progress toward a true respect for the individual.

I had gone down to the woods for other purposes. But, wherever a man goes, men will pursue and paw him with their dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their desperate odd-fellow society.

Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously course labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them.

That government is best which governs least;" and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe—"That government is best which governs not at all;

If a man does not march in step to his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.

La libert? existe toujours. Il suffit d`en payer le prix. -La vie, ce n`est pas la prise, c`est desir. -Le suicide est le dernier acte par lequel un homme puisse montrer qu`il a domin? sa vie.

for as I am, in reality, the founder of a new province of writing, so I am at liberty to make what laws I please therein.

and the great advantage of being a literary woman, was that you could go everywhere and do everything.

You wanted to look at life for yourself - but you were not allowed; you were punished for your wish. You were ground in the very mill of the conventional!

I have never allowed a gentleman to dictate to me, or to interfere with anything I do.

Live as you like best, and your character will take care of itself. Most things are good for you; the exceptions are very rare.

The real offense, as she ultimately perceived, was her having a mind of her own at all.

It was the air she wanted and the world she would now exclusively choose; the quiet chambers, nobly overwhelming, rich but slightly veiled, opened out round her and made her presently say 'If I could lose myself here!' There were people, people in plenty, but, admirably, no personal question. It was immense, outside, the personal question; but she had blissfully left it outside....

She gave an envious thought to the happier lot of men, who are always free to plunge into the healing waters of action.

Nothing exceeds the license occasionally taken by the imagination of very rigid people.

That was originally what I had loved him for: that at a period when our native land was nude and crude and provincial, when the famous 'atmosphere' it is supposed to lack was not even missed, when literature was lonely there and art and form akmost impossible, he had found the means to live and write like one of the first; to be free and general and not at all afraid; to feel, understand, and express everything.