Quotes About Freedom

The party had all the best qualities of a riot and a night on the barricades.

I saw in their eyes something I was to see over and over in every part of the nation—a burning desire to go, to move, to get under way, anyplace, away from any Here. They spoke quietly of how they wanted to go someday, to move about, free and unanchored, not toward something but away from something.

We still go where we want, even if we got to crawl for the right.' - Tom Joad (Jr.)

The door was closed to men. It was a sanctuary where women could be themselves—smelly, wanton, mystic, conceited, truthful, and interested. The whalebone corsets came off at Dessie's, the sacred corsets that molded and warped woman-flesh into goddess-flesh. At Dessie's they were women who went to the toilet and overate and scratched and farted. And from this freedom came laughter, roars of laughter.

Help him, Adam--help him. Give him his chance. Let him be free. That's all a man has over the beasts. Free him! Bless him!

You can't start with a democracy. You have to work up through stuff like tyranny and monarchy first. That way people are so relieved when they get to democracy that they hang on to it.

I know,' said Winter, 'but they don't know.' And he went on with a thought he had been having. 'A time-minded people,' he said, 'and the time is nearly up. They think that just because they have only one leader and one head, we are all like that. They know that ten heads lopped off will destroy them, but we are a free people; we have as many heads as we have people, and in a time of need leaders pop up among us like mushrooms.

There wasn't any limit, no boundary at all, to the future. And it would be so a man wouldn't have room to store his happiness.

And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world.

The people don't like to be conquered, sir, and so they will not be. Free men cannot start a war, but once it is started, they can fight on in defeat. Herd men, followers of a leader, cannot do that, and so it is always the herd men who win battles and the free men who win wars. You will find that is so, sir.

Thou wilt die soon and thou are not yet simple nor free from perturbations, nor without suspicion of being hurt by external things, nor kindly disposed towards all; nor dost thou yet place wisdom only in acting justly.

When a man is finally boxed and he has no choice, he begins to decorate his box. So Hazel, condemned to the presidency, since he could not escape it, began to ornament it. A man can climb high on the steps of responsibility.

It's a hard thing to leave any deeply routined life, even if you hate it.

It is a hard thing to leave any deeply routined life, even if you hate it.

Free men cannot start a war, but once it is started, they can fight on in defeat. Herd men, followers of a leader, cannot do that, and so it is always the herd men who win battles and the free men who win wars. You will find that is so, sir.

Law changes, he said, but 'got to's' go on. You got the right to do what you got to do.

My son will read and open the books, and my son will write and will know writing. And my son will make numbers, and these things will make us free because he will know - he will know and through him we will know.

Cathy spoke very quietly. "Adam, I didn't want to come here. I am not going to stay here. As soon as I can I will go away.

I don't think they's luck or bad luck. On'y one thing in this worl' I'm sure of, an' that's I'm sure nobody got a right to mess with a fella's life. He got to do it all hisself. Help him, maybe, but not tell him what to do.

And now the forces marshaled around the concept of the group have declared a war of extermination on that preciousness, the mind of man. By disparagement, by starvation, by repressions, forced direction, and the stunning hammerblows of conditioning, the free, roving mind is being pursued, roped, blunted, drugged. It is a sad suicidal course our species seems to have taken.

Saw in their eyes something I was to see over and over in every part of the nation—a burning desire to go, to move, to get under way, anyplace, away from any here. They spoke quietly of how they wanted to go someday, to move about, free and unanchored, not toward something but away from something.

Every kid got a turtle some time or other. Nobody can't keep a turtle though. They work at it and work at it, and at last one day they get out and away they go--off somewheres. It's like me.

Worry had crept on a corroding world, and what was lost--good manners, ease and beauty? Ladies were not ladies any more, and you couldn't trust a gentleman's word. There was a time when people kept their fly buttons fastened. And man's freedom was boiling off. Where did all the good stones go, and all simplicity?

And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual.