Quotes About Freedom

The rate of concentration varies (other factors being equal) with the economic freedom permitted by morals and the laws. Despotism may for a time retard the concentration; democracy, allowing the most liberty

Voltaire learned that he was again on the way to the Bastille. Like a good philosopher, he took to his heels—merely utilizing the occasion to elope with another man's wife.

This ridiculous foible is perhaps one of our most fatal characteristics; for is there anything more absurd than to wish to carry continually a burden which one can always throw down?

When the Duke of Wei offered him the prime ministry he dismissed the royal messengers with a curtness indicative of a writer's dreams: "Go away quickly, and do not soil me with your presence. I had rather amuse and enjoy myself in a filthy ditch than be subject to the rules and restrictions in the court of a sovereign.

apparently there was no reason now why a man should not do as he pleased, so long as he remained within the law. A disintegrating individualism had weakened the Athenian character

Democracy is a luxury of disseminated intelligence, security, and peace.

Seek ye first the good things of the mind," Bacon admonishes us, "and the rest will either be supplied or its loss will not be felt."2 Truth will not make us rich, but it will make us free.

For when fear is overcome, curiosity and constructiveness are free, and man passes by natural impulse towards the understanding and embellishment of life.

Leave men free, and their natural inequalities will multiply almost geometrically[.]

Obey even the unjust law, answers Spinoza, if reasonable protest and discussions are allowed and speech is left free to secure a peaceful change.

The more a government strives to curtail freedom of speech, the more obstinately is it resisted; not indeed by the avaricious, . . . but by those whom good education, sound morality, and virtue have rendered more free.

To check the growth of inequality, liberty must be sacrificed[.]

Academies that are founded at the public expense are instituted not so much to cultivate men's natural abilities as to restrain them. But in a free commonwealth arts and sciences will be better cultivated to the full if every one that asks leave is allowed to teach publicly, at his own cost and risk.

Yet democracy is on the whole inferior to aristocracy.92 For it is based on a false assumption of equality; it "arises out of the notion that those who are equal in one respect (e.g., in respect of the law) are equal in all respects; because men are equally free they claim to be absolutely equal.

Then democracy comes: the poor overcome their opponents, slaughtering some and banishing the rest; and give to the people an equal share of freedom and power" (557).

Truth will not make us rich, but it will make us free. Some

Voltaire might say, "I have no scepter, but I have a pen.

Every man is free to do that which he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man.

rules were not made for geniuses;

He gave the human mind a great impetus; he prepared us for freedom.

I do not agree with a word that you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

If the average man had had his way there would probably never have been any state. Even today he resents it, classes death with taxes, and yearns for that government which governs least. If he asks for many laws it is only because he is sure that his neighbor needs them; privately he is an unphilosophical anarchist, and thinks laws in his own case superfluous.

The elements of instruction . . . should be presented to the mind in childhood, but not with any compulsion; for a freeman should be a freeman too in the acquisition of knowledge . . . . Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion has no hold on the mind. Therefore do not use compulsion, but let early education be rather a sort of amusement; this will better enable you to find out the natural bent of the child (536).

only the man who is below the average in economic ability desires equality; those who are conscious of superior ability desire freedom; and in the end superior ability has its way.