Quotes About Freedom

The forests and morasses of Germany were filled with a hardy race of barbarians, who despised life when it was separated from freedom; and though, on the first attack, they seemed to yield to the weight of the Roman power, they soon, by a signal act of despair, regained their independence, and reminded Augustus of the vicissitude of fortune.

Freedom is the first step to curiosity and knowledge. -V6

Augustus was sensible that mankind is governed by names; nor was he deceived in his expectation, that the senate and people would submit to slavery, provided they were respectfully assured that they still enjoyed their ancient freedom.

How elegant! how choice! how gay! To think one doesn't have to pay. There is sound of falling tears; It comes from nowhere to the ears. Some tiny creature, filled with wrath, Is coming nearer on the path.

Civil liberty," explained Federalist leader John Jay, who then served as New York's governor, "consists not in a right to every man to do just as he pleases, but it consists in an equal right…to do…whatever the equal and constitutional laws of the country admit to be consistent with the public good.

The free men in Manchester knew the tenuousness of their lives and always endeavored to be upstanding; they knew they were slaves with just another title.

It mattered only that those kind of chains were gone and that he had crawled out into the clearing and was able to stand up on his hind legs and look around and appreciate the difference between then and now, even on the awful Richmond days when the now came dressed as the then.

It ain't right, Celeste said. It just ain't right to go and do what they bought you for. Why make it easy?

In 1855 in Manchester County, Virginia, there were thirty-four free black families, with a mother and father and one child or more, and eight of those free families owned slaves, and all eight knew each other's business.

They say that people should be free to do as they like. That's what I think. But if they start preaching at me, they can go to hell.

It was evident that Madame Restell not only liked to do as she pleased, but to talk about it as well.

Slowly the silent bird turned its head. It could do so, if it chose, through more than three hundred and sixty degrees.

Patrick asked him, not for the first time, but with renewed desperation, what it would mean to be free, to live beyond the tyranny of dependency and conditioning and resentment.

Once he had taken heroin he could imagine being without it;

the desire is overwhelming. Why? Because there is availability without accountability.

You would think that anyone would jump at the chance to escape shame. But that isn't the way it happens. Though shamed people are happy to guide others out of their dark prisons, they are always sure to get back to their own prisons by nightfall. That's home. That's what they are used to.

It is just to say that, for the addict, slavery with the object of desire is sometimes preferable to freedom without it.

Shame can be removed, and you can still be you. Despite your feeling that your destiny and shame's destiny are identical—that if shame no longer exists, you won't either—the reality is that you will be more you without shame.

Imagine having drug cravings subdued by the joy of knowing and obeying Christ. Imagine having temptations lose their allure because there is more pleasure in walking humbly with our God. Imagine waking up and strategizing how to please the God who loves you rather than where you will get your next drink. This would be freedom. Sound impossible? It isn't.

When that day of jubilee finally arrives, all of us will be there with you, walking, heads held high, crowns a-glitter, because we do have a right to be here.

Freedom is a passing thing, a man said. Someone can always come and snatch it away.

I felt broken at the end of the meeting, but a little closer to being free.

the police in the city really knew how to hold human beings trapped in cages, even women like Manman who was accused of having wings of flame.

But no one has ever gone from slavery to freedom with the slaveholders cheering them on, nor contributed significantly to the evolution of our species by working a forty-hour week, nor achieved any significant accomplishment by taking refuge in cynicism.