Quotes About Freedom

You know, and I know, that the country is celebrating one hundred years of freedom one hundred years too soon.

Furthermore, I have met only a very few people--and most of these were not Americans--who had any real desire to be free. Freedom is hard to bear. It can be objected that I am speaking of political freedom in spiritual terms, but the political institutions of any nation are always menaced and are ultimately controlled by the spiritual state of that nation.

is galling indeed to have stood so long, hat in hand, waiting for Americans to grow up enough to realize that you do not threaten them.

They say the kids are dumb and so they're teaching them to work with their hands. Those kids aren't dumb. But the people who run these schools want to make sure that they don't get smart: they are really teaching the kids to be slaves.

It is only 'the so-called American Negro' who remains trapped, disinherited, and despised, in a nation that has kept him in bondage for nearly four hundred years and is still unable to recognise him as a human being.

I had one margarita, though we all knew it was against the goddamn motherfucking shiteating law, and Fonny had a whiskey because at 21 you have a legal right to drink.

Nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom.

That door is the gateway he has sought so long out of this dirty world, this dirty body. It

nobody stays in the garden of Eden.

It is one thing to overthrow a dictator or to repel and invader and quite another thing really to achieve a revolution.

Me, I want to escape,' he had told me, 'Je veux m'evader--this dirty world, this dirty body. I never wish to make love again with anything more than the body.

It I'd galling indeed to have stood so long, hat in hand, waiting for Americans to grow up enough to realize that you do not threaten them. (From The Fure Next Time)

I would not allow myself to be defined by other people, white or black." —James Baldwin

It I'd galling indeed to have stood so long, hat in hand, waiting for Americans to grow up enough to realize that you do not threaten them. (from The Fire Next Time)

At this point too, it may be suggested, the legend of Paris has done its deadly work, which is, perhaps, so to stun the traveler with freedom that he begins to long for the prison of home - home then becoming the place where questions are not asked.

Words like "freedom," "justice," "democracy" are not common concepts; on the contrary, they are rare. People are not born knowing what these are. It takes enormous and, above all, individual effort to arrive at the respect for other people that these words imply. --"The Crusade of Indignation," in Nation

You know and I know that the country is celebrating one hundred years of freedom one hundred years too early. We cannot be free until they are free.

How strange and beautiful—it must be one of the few real reasons for remaining alive, of desiring to—to dance with your daughter, your son, and your wife; touching, really digging it, laughing, and keeping the beat, free

The necessity, then, of those "lesser breeds without the law"—those wogs, barbarians, niggers—is this: one must not become more free, not become more base than they: must not be used as they are used, nor yet use them as their abandonment allows one to use them: therefore, they must be civilized. But, when they are civilized, they may simply "spuriously imitate [the civilizer] back again," leaving the civilizer with no satisfaction on which to rest.

He had power over her not because she was free but because she was guilty. To enforce his power over her he had only to keep her guilt awake.

I think the country has to find out what it means by freedom. Freedom is a very dangerous thing. Anything else is disastrous. But freedom is dangerous. You've got to make choices. You've got to make very dangerous choices. You've got to be taught that your life is in your hands.

the little girl who walked into the Little Rock School House and was spat on was much freer than the white child who sat there with a misconceived notion.

Poetry is man's rebellion against being what he is. (1879-1958)

The good-to-great companies built a consistent system with clear constraints, but they also gave people freedom and responsibility within the framework of that system. They hired self-disciplined people who didn't need to be managed, and then managed the system, not the people.