Quotes About Freedom

Denial is the true enemy of freedom. Our denial is more important to us than our safety, happiness or national security. Eric Blair 2018

Everett Ruess: A Vagabond for Beauty

And then I'm gonna step right into the wilderness. Just live on berries and shit. Not bother anybody. Not hurt anything. Something I have to do, man.

The law on the side of freedom is of great advantage only where there is power to make that law respected. - Frederick Douglass

In 1863 West Virginia was admitted to the Union as a separate state, with the proviso that it abolish slavery. A popular referendum then approved a plan whereby all blacks born after July 4, 1863, would enjoy freedom. By the end of the war, complete emancipation had been enacted.

The "underground railroad" should be understood not as a single entity but as an umbrella term for local groups that employed numerous methods to assist fugitives, some public and entirely legal, some flagrant violations of the law.

While freedom can be achieved, it may also be reduced or rescinded, It can never be taken for granted.

We shall lie down," Lincoln warned, "pleasantly dreaming that the people of Missouri are on the verge of making their State free; and we shall awake to the reality, instead, that the Supreme Court has made Illinois a slave State." Lincoln

The first emancipation proclamation in American history preceded Abraham Lincoln's by nearly ninety years. Its author was the Earl of Dunmore, the royal governor of colonial Virginia, who in November 1775 promised freedom to "all indentured servants, negroes, or others" belonging to rebels if they enlisted in his army.

The free man does what he likes in his working time and in his spare time what is required of him. The slave does what he is obliged to do in his working time and what he likes to do only when he is not at work.

The free man does what he likes in his working time and in his spare time what is required of him. The slave does what he is obliged to do in his working time and what he likes only when he is not at work.

If their way was a blind alley, let us not deny them the longing for liberty and justice which moved them.

We feel free when we escape, even if it be from the frying pan into the fire.

Those who see their lives as spoiled and wasted crave equality and fraternity more than they do freedom. If they clamor for freedom, it is but freedom to establish equality and uniformity. The passion for equality is partly a passion for anonymity: to be one thread of the many which make up a tunic; one thread not distinguishable from the others.12 No one can then point us out, measure us against others and expose our inferiority. They

We feel free when we escape - even if it be but from the frying pan to the fire.

It is doubtful if the oppressed ever fight for freedom. They fight for pride and power — power to oppress others. The oppressed want above all to imitate their oppressors. They want to retaliate.

They who clamor loudest for freedom are often the ones least likely to be happy in a free society. The frustrated, oppressed by their shortcomings, blame their failure on existing restraints. Actually their innermost desire is for an end to the "free for all." They want to eliminate free competition and the ruthless testing to which the individual is continually subjected in a free society. 29

It is maintained that a society is free only when dissenting minorities have room to throw their weight around. As a matter of fact, a dissenting minority feels free only when it can impose its will on the majority: what it abominates most is the dissent of the majority.     41

The savior who wants to turn men into angels is as much a hater of human nature as the totalitarian despot who wants to turn them into puppets.

Any marked improvement in economic conditions would almost certainly activate the tradition of freedom which is a tradition of revolt. In Russia, as pointed out in Section 45, the individual who pitted himself against Stalin had nothing to identify himself with, and his capacity to resist coercion was nil. But in a traditionally free country the individual who pits himself against coercion does not feel an isolated human atom but one of a mighty race—his rebellious ancestors. 122

Freedom aggravates at least as much as it alleviates frustration.

We join a mass movement to escape individual responsibility, or, in the words of the ardent young Nazi, "to be free from freedom.

The spokesmen of democracy offer no holy cause to cling to and no corporate whole to lose oneself in.

We feel free when we escape, even if it be but from the frying pan into the fire.