Quotes About Freedom

What is good about the United States is the sense that you can disagree with the government and not be seen as unpatriotic, although many in the government will try to make you seem unpatriotic.

Influence is a very unpleasant subject and I deal with it in a maybe irresponsible way, which is to really ignore it. It would be a nightmare if we started to really think about it; it would tie our hands, it would tie everyone else's hands.

There is a part of me that still wants to go out and grab a backpack and unplug - not take a cellphone or even a camera and just get out there and experience the world and travel. I have yet to do that, but someday I hope.

Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.

I feel that if I am freed of the burden of politics, then I can do more, and I can take more unpopular decisions.

When an unpopular minority is denied the right to marry, it is indeed the role of the courts to protect the rights of that minority, especially when a majority would deny them.

With police wielding unprecedented powers to invade privacy, tap phones and conduct searches seemingly at random, our civil liberties are in a very precarious condition.

The genius of the American Founders was to create an intricate system of balanced powers both within the state and between state and society - a system that has fostered unprecedented political, social, and intellectual freedom.

I was imprisoned in the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 attacks, when Egypt's state security was rounding people up in unprecedented numbers.

I love being unpredictable and unexpected.

I don't like the idea of fitting into a mould so as to conform. What I like is the danger, the difference - being unpredictable.

There's something really exciting about playing someone where you're given license to be unpredictable.

Everybody has to be reminded that there's another way to be. Another more mysterious, unpredictable way to be that's not necessarily based upon contrivances.

I was a very unpredictable child. I'd pack a bag and go off and do a hike in the mountains for 10 days.

The one indisputable reality of dictatorship is that dissent, insult, and malevolent language do not go unpunished if it is allowed at all.

Being able to surf in Tahiti and places like Brazil was unreal.

The 4th Amendment and the personal rights it secures have a long history. At the very core stands the right of a man to retreat into his own home and there be free from unreasonable governmental intrusion.

Yes, women should be free to cover their faces when walking down the street. But in our schools, hospitals, airports, banks and civil institutions, it is not unreasonable - nor contrary to the teachings of Islam - to expect women to show the one thing that allows the rest of us to identify them... namely, their face.

The Constitution has a good share of deliberately open-ended guarantees, like rights to due process of law, equal protection of the law, and freedom from unreasonable searches.

The great thing about NYU, and the reason I chose to go there, was the fact that they don't inhibit you as an actor and tell you, 'You only have to study acting. This is it for the rest of your life.' They're really great at balancing other things; you get to study two days a week anything you want unrelated to acting.

To be happy is only to have freed one's soul from the unrest of unhappiness.

You won't find me out in a club. I'm a bit unruly, in my own way.

My mother had two unshakable beliefs that she tried to drill into me. The first was that I had to study and work twice as hard as my white peers if I wanted to survive in America, and the second was that it was delusional and dangerous to believe I possessed the same freedom white people had to pursue my dreams.

I need to be free, to speak the unspeakable. You can't do that in office.