Quotes About Freedom

No truth is more evident to my mind than that the Christian religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people.

If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.

In the literal sense, there has been no relevant evolution since the trek from Africa. But there has been substantial progress towards higher standards of rights, justice and freedom - along with all too many illustrations of how remote is the goal of a decent society.

The government of Israel doesn't like the kinds of things I say, which puts them into the same category as every other government in the world.

Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever.

I am opposed to the accumulation of executive power anywhere.

In many respects, the United States is a great country. Freedom of speech is protected more than in any other country. It is also a very free society.

Suppose that humans happen to be so constructed that they desire the opportunity for freely undertaken productive work. Suppose that they want to be free from the meddling of technocrats and commissars, bankers and tycoons, mad bombers who engage in psychological tests of will with peasants defending their homes, behavioral scientists who can't tell a pigeon from a poet, or anyone else who tries to wish freedom and dignity out of existence or beat them into oblivion.

There is no reason to accept the doctrines crafted to sustain power and privilege, or to believe that we are constrained by mysterious and unknown social laws. These are simply decisions made within institutions that are subject to human will and that must face the test of legitimacy. And if they do not meet the test, they can be replaced by other institutions that are more free and more just, as has happened often in the past.

If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.

If you assume that there is no hope, you guarantee that there will be no hope. If you assume that there is an instinct for freedom, that there are opportunities to change things, then there is a possibility that you can contribute to making a better world.

To those who insisted that the lot of the free white laborer was worse than that of the slave, Frederick Douglass liked to point out that his old position on the plantation had been vacant since his departure, and encouraged them to apply.

Whatever you choose, however many roads you travel, I hope that you choose not to be a lady. I hope you will find some way to break the rules and make a little trouble out there. And I also hope that you will choose to make some of that trouble on behalf of women." [ Commencement Address , Wellesley College, 1996]

The desire to get married is a basic and primal instinct in women. It's followed by another basic and primal instinct: the desire to be single again.

Oh, how I regret not having worn a bikini for the entire year I was twenty-six. If anyone young is reading this, go, right this minute, put on a bikini, and don't take it off until you're thirty-four.

You could do anything, anything you want with your life.

I could live alone forever if I just had a view of the sea.

Like the Maccabees, most people want the right to pray to God in their own way. This right is called freedom of religion. The spirit of Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights, is shared by all people who love freedom.

When I first heard about statistics in 1951, I firmly believed it to be the best technique around, and it took me 26 years to be completely free of its spell.

Self-reliance is the autonomy of individuals to navigate issues as they arise, control his or her own path, and sustain the resources to get there.

Protection," John Stuart Mill wrote, "against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough; there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling.

The highest freedom is the freedom from evil, not the freedom of doing evil.

I insist on caprice as a necessary countermeasure to slavery. Otherwise, my own dictatorial mind must take -- unknown to me -- its instructions from a mastermind.

The day Was like the buzzard on the pine.