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Quotes About Freedom

you talk of Bonaparte—why, when he was working toward his goal, he went forward step by step; he was free; he had nothing except his goal to consider, and he attained it. But tie yourself to a woman and you're bound hand and foot—all freedom gone.
~ Leo Tolstoy
Estou dizendo ao senhor. Sempre digo aos senhores funcionários da magistratura - prosseguiu o advogado - que não consigo vê-los sem me sentir grato, porque se eu não estou na prisão, e o senhor também, e todos nós, é apenas graças à bondade deles. Levar cada um de nós à privação dos direitos particulares e a lugares não tão distantes é a coisa mais fácil do mundo.
~ Leo Tolstoy
Do not the figures make it clear that not the English, but the Indians, have enslaved themselves?' One
~ Leo Tolstoy
Italy. 'I must use my freedom while I feel so much strength and youth in me,' he said to himself. 'Pierre was right when he said we must believe in the possibility of happiness in order to be happy, and now I do believe in it. Let the dead bury their dead, but while there is life we must live and be happy!' thought he.
~ Leo Tolstoy
Government authority, even if it does suppress private violence, always introduces into the life of men fresh forms of violence, which tend to become greater and greater in proportion to the duration and strength of the government.
~ Leo Tolstoy
The difference between what he had been then and what he now was, was enormous...Then he was free and fearless...now he felt himself caught in the meshes of a stupid, empty, valueless, frivolous life...He remembered how proud he was at one time of his straightforwardness, how he had made a rule of always speaking the truth...and he was now sunk deep in lies...lies considered as truth by all who surrounded him.
~ Leo Tolstoy Ressurrection
Some of them were scarred from head to foot where they had been whipped. One man's back was nearly all one scar, as if the skin had been chopped up and left to heal in ridges. Another had scars on the back of his neck, and from that all the way to his heels every little ways; but that was not such a sight as the one with the great solid mass of ridges from his shoulders to his hips. That beat all the antislavery sermons ever yet preached.
~ Leon F. Litwack
I used to think if I could be free I should be the happiest woman," a young Mississippi woman recalled. "But when my master come to me, and says 'Lizzie, you is free!' it seems like I was in a kind of daze. And when I would wake up in the morning I would think to myself, Is I free? Hasn't I got to get up before daylight and go into the field and work?
~ Leon F. Litwack
They had sung these verses before but there was no longer any need to conceal what they meant by them; the words had not changed, only their immediacy, only the emphasis with which certain phrases were intoned. "Now they gradually threw off the mask," Washington recalled, "and were not afraid to let it be known that the 'freedom' in their songs meant freedom of the body in this world."4
~ Leon F. Litwack
No I wont whip you. Never no more. Sit down thar all of you and listen to what I got to tell you. I hates to do it but I must. You all aint my niggers no more. You is free. Just as free as I am. Here I have raised you all to work for me, and now you are going to leave me. I am an old man, and I cant get along without you. I dont know what I am going to do.
~ Leon F. Litwack
What, then, was "freedom" and who was "free"? The fluctuating moods of individual masters, unexpected changes in the military situation, the constant movement of troops, and widespread doubts about the validity and enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation were bound to have a sobering effect on the slaves' perceptions of their status and rights, leaving many of them quite confused if not thoroughly disillusioned.
~ Leon F. Litwack
I'd always thought about this, and wanted this day to come, and prayed for it and knew God meant it should be here sometime," a Savannah slave declared as she shook her head in disbelief, "but I didn't believe I should ever see it, and it is so great and good a thing, I cannot believe it has come now; and I don't believe I ever shall realize it, but I know it has though, and I bless the Lord for it."37
~ Leon F. Litwack
A slave-owner who through cunning and violence shackles a slave in chains, and a slave who through cunning or violence breaks the chains – let not the contemptible eunuchs tell us that they are equals before a court of morality!
~ Leon Trotsky
Com­rades, we love the sun that gives us light, but if the rich and the ag­gressors were to try to mono­pol­ize the sun, we should say: "Let the sun be ex­tin­guished, let dark­ness reign, etern­al night…
~ Leon Trotsky
quality demands a democracy of producers and consumers, freedom of criticism and initiative – conditions incompatible with a totalitarian regime of fear, lies and flattery.
~ Leon Trotsky
The artist can not serve his struggle for freedom unless he subjectively assimilates the social content, unless he feels in his very nerves its meaning and drama and freely seeks to give his own inner world incarnation in his art.
~ Leon Trotsky
I am very proud of this work because it is more about the meaning of the Easter Rising and its relationship to what this whole century has been about, people liberating themselves, freeing themselves.
~ Leon Uris
Today a great shot for freedom was heard. I think it stands a chance of being heard forever. It marls a turning point in the history of the Jewish people. The beginning of the return to a statues of dignity we have not known for two thousand years. Yes, today was the first step back. My battle is done. Now I turn the command over to the soldiers.
~ Leon Uris
It takes bravery to end a relationship.
~ Leona Lewis
The joy of music should never be interrupted by a commercial.
~ Leonard Bernstein
Our nation was founded on the principals of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
~ Leonard Boswell
A heavy burden lifted from my soul, I heard that love was out of my control.
~ Leonard Cohen
Like a bird on a wire, like a drunk in a midnight choir, I have tried in my way to be free!!
~ Leonard Cohen
Yeah I missed you since the place got wrecked By the winds of change and the weeds of sex looks like freedom but it feels like death it's something in between, I guess it's closing time.
~ Leonard Cohen