Quotes About Freedom

What we have to do is to judge which side stands for freedom and enlightenment and which for medievalism and superstition.

Suddenly the events of the time took shape in his imagination as a duel of wills between these two: one the champion of democracy, of government by popular consent, of the rights of the individual to think his own thoughts, to speak his own mind, to live his own life so long as he did not interfere with the equal rights of his fellows; the other the champion of those ancient dark forces of tyranny and oppression which had ruled the world before the concept of freedom had been born.

The very freedom we are so proud of is their assurance of success; we are made impotent by it, and cannot imagine taking action against those who use their freedom to destroy ours.

love. It was good to do with it, but also good to be able to do without

Everybody knew who had murdered Castillo—except those heads of the government who believed in democracy and peace, in civil liberties and freedom of speech, so ardently that they couldn't make any move against the sworn enemies of these blessings.

Most people had the impression that slavery had been abolished throughout the world some time ago, but when a king is also an oil magnate he can carry on a semi-secret slave trade across the Gulf of Aden, and his slaves are not automatically set free when they board an American war vessel.

The artist is by nature, one might say by definition, an anarchist. He lives in the freedom of his own imagination, and represents the experimental element of life. If "authority" should intervene and tell him what to think or to feel, the experiment would not be tried, the brain-child would be born dead.

Eternal Spirit of the chainless Mind! Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art: For there thy habitation is the heart— The heart which love of thee alone can bind; And when thy sons to fetters are consigned— To fetters, and the damp vault's dayless gloom, Their country conquers with their martyrdom, And Freedom's fame finds wings on every wind.

They had the keenest realization of danger to the cause of freedom and social justice. They all wanted to do something; but first they had to agree what to do, and apparently they couldn't; they talked and argued until they were exhausted.

But the more unsaintly the world became, the more it had need of new saints, by whatever name they were called—persons who believed in justice and freedom more than they believed in personal comfort and the good opinion of the personally comfortable.

She was, as Lanny had told Esther, a true granddaughter of the Puritans. Her forefathers had sailed in a tiny vessel across a turbulent sea and landed on a cold, inhospitable coast; they had risked their lives for the sake of freedom of conscience. Now Bess was ready to give her happiness for the sake of this new religion which despised religion but which manifested all the symptoms and practiced all the zealotry of those who had received a revelation direct from God.

Semper eadem, always the same, was the motto of their Holy Mother Church, and within the last century her Popes have solemnly repudiated all that charter of liberties upon which the democratic world is being built—freedom of speech, press and worship.

Capitalist governments talk about liberty but what they mean is property. If they have to choose between a Nazi and a Red, they are for the Nazi ninety-nine times out of a hundred.

In that country, rich or poor, a man was free... So America was a place of which lovers and young people dreamed.

The Communists, who preached dictatorship, used the freedom of France to tear down that freedom: so said the capitalist press, and in order to protect freedom they proposed to destroy freedom and set up an anti-dictatorship dictatorship. Look at Daladier and his "governing by decree"!

It was as Nazruddin had said, when I asked him about visas and he had said that bank notes were better. 'You can always get into those places. What is hard is to get out. That is a private fight. Everybody has to find his own way.

My wish for an adventure with Yvette was a wish to be taken up to the skies, to be removed from the life I had – the dullness, the pointless tension, 'the situation of the country'. It wasn't a wish to be involved with people as trapped as myself.

Fuck you, Tony. I don't need you. I don't need anyone.

Sophie; there was space

Que poder y claridad hay en la palabra, la palabra libre y desinhibida! La palabra que se pronuncia a pesar de todos los temores. Vida y Destino

La historia de la humanidad es la historia de su libertad [...] El progreso es, en esencia, progreso de la libertad humana.

la sua ragion d'essere è ribadire l'uguaglianza nel lavoro, l'onestà e la libertà, fondandosi sulla convinzione che lavoro, uguaglianza e libertà sono un diritto di tutti, su questa terra.

The sea was not freedom; it was a likeness of freedom, a symbol of freedom...How splendid freedom must be if a mere likeness of it, a mere reminder of it, is enough to fill a man with happiness.

The State became the master. The national element moved from the realm of form to the realm of content; it became what was most central and essential, turning the socialist element into a mere wrapping, a verbal husk, an empty shell. Thus was made manifest, with tragic clarity, a sacred law of life: Human freedom stands above everything. There is no end in the world for the sake of which it is permissible to sacrifice human freedom.