Quotes About Freedom

The most desirable state of mankind is that which maintains general security with the smallest encroachment upon individual independence.

None but a people advanced to a high state of moral and intellectual excellence are capable in a civilized condition of forming and maintaining free governments, and among those who are so far advanced, very few indeed have had the good fortune to form constitutions capable of endurance.

The Freedom Riders literally put their lives and limbs on the line in order to bring about an America that lives up to its own stated ideals. They are nothing short of American patriots, and honoring them more than 60 years after their historic acts is the least we can do.

We're supposed to be an example of freedom, and if we are doing things that are injustice to people, then what is our statement?

I have made a public statement about me and Ralph by being seen with him. I don't need to make any other. You can live the way you want.

I'm making the statement that we should all live life and have a laugh. Nakedness is a thing where people take notice. If you do it in the right way, people laugh.

If one more 'journalist' makes a cavalier statement about me and my band, I will personally or with my fans' help, greet them at their home and discover just how much they believe in their freedom of speech.

Making records is fun. It's not some big statement. You're allowed to make mistakes.

No one individual vote, no one individual quote or no one individual statement defines me, my beliefs, or my record.

They talk about the American Dream. I still believe in that. I still believe that this is a great country, where great things can happen, where anybody can become president of the United States. Just that simple statement there defines so much about the whole business of liberty and freedom and the pursuit of happiness.

Every artist has to make their own statements and they have to live with them.

I don't make political statements; let's all have a laugh. Let's all live and be free. I try and live to the letter of the law, but right on the edge of it.

I thought fashion was just the pretext to do images with lots of freedom and get them published in magazines. You could express your point of view, make statements about women and about what you believe in.

When I was going to gay bars in my 20s and 30s, the older guys there explained to me that the police would occasionally raid these places and march the clients out, load them onto paddy wagons, drive them down to the station, photograph them, fingerprint them and put their names on a list. They were doing nothing wrong, and it was criminalized.

If you operate a TV or radio station, you have to have a license. It has nothing to do with fundamental freedom. It has to do with protection of the average citizen against abuses.

I felt bad about the controversy because they stopped playing my songs on American radio stations. But there was nothing wrong with what I did. Now everybody sings the national anthem the way they want.

I don't want to play these games of statistics any more; I have done that. I don't want to be imprisoned by that, or by the morality that is expected of activists. I have never been that pristine person, that role model.

The statue of Freedom has not been cast yet, the furnace is hot, we can all still burn our fingers.

As I looked up at the Statue of Liberty, I thought at that time, 'What a wonderful country.'

I've asked every grammar schoolteacher in the nation to have their students write on the meaning of the Statue of Liberty. Wouldn't it be wonderful if the winning kid got up to the microphone and, in front of the world, had to dig into a pocket to pull out a crumpled sheet of paper containing the words that would move us all?

When my mother, sisters and I arrived on the shores of America when I was 8 years old, the boat on which we came, a freighter, passed the Statue of Liberty.

The first time I saw America was from my perch on the mast of a Spanish naval ship, where I could spot the Statue of Liberty reaching proudly into the open, endless American sky.

We've all been brought up with the view that religion has some kind of special privileged status. You're not allowed to criticise it.

I have no nationality - the best possible status for an intellectual.