Quotes About Freedom

Like anything else that happens on its own, the act of writing is beyond currency. Money is great stuff to have, but when it comes to the act of creation, the best thing is not to think of money too much. It constipates the whole process.

Some birds are not meant to be caged, that's all. Their feathers are too bright, their songs too sweet and wild. So you let them go, or when you open the cage to feed them they somehow fly out past you.

Get busy living or get busy dying.

Some birds are not meant to be caged, that's all. Their feathers are too bright, their songs too sweet and wild. So you let them go, or when you open the cage to feed them they somehow fly out past you. And the part of you that knows it was wrong to imprison them in the first place rejoices, but still, the place where you live is that much more drab and empty for their departure.

Speaking personally, you can have my gun, but you'll take my book when you pry my cold, dead fingers off of the binding.

It is a great tool of dictators and tyrants, who want to get masses of people to do what they want, to make sure there are no libraries...The fact that there was no public library in Rwanda is one reason why genocide was possible.

We based our government on the doctrine promulgated in the Declaration of Independence that all men are created free and equal and are by nature entitled to certain inalienable rights, which are mentioned in the declaration. We did not say that all men in the United States were born free and equal, but we said that all men, wherever they are born, stand on terms of equality.…

No man is good enough to govern another man without the other's consent.

We all face a choice between freedom and grief. The former requires not thinking so much of yourself you forget what road you're on. Modesty is a requirement if you're walking a long way.

Sweet was the hour I freedom felt To call my Jesus mine; To see his smiling face, and melt In pleasures all divine.

We are motivated more by aversion to the unpleasant than by a will toward truth, freedom, or healing. We are constantly attempting to escape our life, to avoid rather than enter our pain we, and we wonder why it is so difficult to be fully alive. (43)

When you break the big laws, you do not get liberty; you do not even get anarchy. You get the small laws.

When you are fighting for freedom and your soul, what won't you do?

Perhaps it was a failure right from the start: slave owners preaching freedom and equality. But it would be a lie, an evil lie, to say that the American experiment did not give the world a glorious and transcendent vision of human beings: worth affirming in their differences, vital in their contradiction. That is still a vision of human existence worth fighting for.

The most potent muse of all is our own inner child

He was a democrat in practice as well as theory, was opposed to the slave trade, tried to keep it out of the Territories beyond the Ohio river and was in favor of freeing the slaves in Virginia.

In a 1774 court case, Adams wrote that "an Englishman's dwelling House is his Castle," and that every person "shall enjoy in his own dwelling House as compleat a security, safety and Peace and Tranquility as if it was . . . defended with a Garrison and Artillery."67 Adams exercised the right personally—when he sailed to France in 1778, he took along a pocket pistol.68

Patrick Henry shot back that the power to resist oppression rests upon the right to possess arms: Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined.

Even so, the right of a pacifist not to bear arms was recognized too: "No person who is conscientiously scrupulous about the lawfulness of bearing arms, shall be compelled thereto, provided he will pay an equivalent."98 To be sure, the Bill of Rights had limits. The Protestant religion was state supported, and only Christians "shall be equally under the protection of the law."99 Freedom of speech was recognized only in the legislature.

One of the final speeches, and the final word on the right to have arms, was by Zachariah Johnson, who observed that the new Constitution could never result in religious persecution or other oppression. He added: "The people are not to be disarmed of their weapons.

By contrast, freedom of religion sparked controversy. When Benjamin Franklin revised the Declaration of Rights, he suggested no change in the right to bear arms clause yet unsuccessfully opposed the profession of faith required for assemblymen.94 Newspaper attacks on the religious guarantees and certain other matters were extreme and persistent, but bearing arms was not questioned.

Timothy Dwight, a chaplain in the Connecticut Continental Brigade during the Revolution and later president of Yale College, would write: "The people of New-England have always had, and have by law always been required to have, arms in their hands. Every man is, or ought to be, in the possession of a musket." Yet he did not know of "a single instance, in which arms have been the instruments of carrying on a private quarrel."121

Stephen P. Halbrook

It is a natural right which the people have reserved to themselves, confirmed by the Bill of Rights, to keep arms for their own defence; and as Mr. Blackstone observes, it is to be made use of when the sanctions of society and law are found insufficient to restrain the violence of oppression.