Quotes About Freedom

If I ever form my own clan, we'll be the Anti-Cheerleaders. We will not sit in the bleachers. We will wander underneath them and commit mild acts of mayhem.

Has she received any letters from Lockton?' The question hit me like a bucket of cold water. 'You asking me to spy again?' 'Listen,' he started, 'Our freedom-' I did not let him continue. 'You are blind. They don't want us free. They just want liberty for themselves.

Like most blacks in Philadelphia, Eliza was free. She said Philadelphia was the best city for freed slaves or freeborn Africans.

What if a king made bad laws; laws so unnatural that a country broke them by declaring its freedom?" He threw his arms in the air. "Now you are spouting nonsense. Two slaves running away from their rightful master is not the same as America wanting to be free of England. Not the same at all." "How is it then that the British offer freedom to escaped slaves, but the Patriots don't?

too large," the mayor said. "If it breaks free of its chains

Freedom would not be handed to us like a gift. Freedom had to be fought for and taken.

This is not our fight,' the old man said. 'British or American, that is not the choice. You must choose your own side, find your road through the valley of darkness that will lead you to the river Jordan.

It would have eased her mind if I thanked her for wanting to buy me away from Madam. I tried to be grateful but could not. A body does not like being bought and sold like a basket of eggs, even if the person who cracks the shells is kind.

When we were girls we rode horses disguised as bicycles

Let me ask you something. We're fighting for freedom, right?" I picked my words carefully. "So why is that man allowed to own Baumfree and Bett?" "Well," he said slowly, "we're fighting for our freedom. Not theirs.

Without Freedom of Thought, there can be no such Thing as Wisdom; and no such Thing as publick Liberty, without Freedom of Speech. —Benjamin Franklin, 1722

You can't speak up for your right to be silent, that's letting the bad guys win.

LIBERTY IS EQUALLY AS PRECIOUS TO A BLACK MAN, AS IT IS TO A WHITE ONE, AND BONDAGE EQUALLY AS INTOLERABLE TO THE ONE AS IT IS TO THE OTHER . . . . AN AFRICAN, OR A NEGRO MAY JUSTLY CHALLENGE, AND HAS AN UNDENIABLE RIGHT TO HIS LIBERTY: CONSEQUENTLY, THE PRACTISE OF SLAVE-KEEPING, WHICH SO MUCH ABOUNDS IN THIS LAND IS ILLICT. —ESSAY WRITTEN BY AFRICAN AMERICAN LEMUEL HAYNES, VETERAN OF THE BATTLE OF LEXINGTON E

Halloween - the day when we could pretend to be whatever we wanted - seemed to be letting everyone be who they really were.

Mr. Freeman taps his chin. He looks way too serious to be an art teacher. He's making me nervous. Mr. Freeman: This has meaning. Pain. The bell rings. I leave before he can say more.

I laid down one long road of a sentence in my remembery: "For all men being originally equals, no one by birth could have a right to set up his own family in perpetual preference to all others for ever." Way I saw it, Mr. Paine was saying all people were the same, that no one deserved a crown or was born to be higher than another. That's why America could make its own freedom.

AS THE GENERAL IS INFORMED, THAT NUMBERS OF FREE NEGROES ARE DESIROUS OF INLISTING, HE GIVES LEAVE TO THE RECRUITING OFFICERS TO ENTERTAIN THEM, AND PROMISES TO LAY THE MATTER BEFORE THE CONGRESS, WHO HE DOUBTS NOT WILL APPROVE OF IT. —GENERAL ORDERS OF GEORGE WASHINGTON T

IT WOULD BE USELESS FOR US TO DENOUNCE THE SERVITUDE TO WHICH THE PARLIAMENT OF GREAT BRITAIN WISHES TO REDUCE US, WHILE WE CONTINUE TO KEEP OUR FELLOW CREATURES IN SLAVERY JUST BECAUSE THEIR COLOR IS DIFFERENT FROM OURS. —SIGNER OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE DR. BENJAMIN RUSH, WHO PURCHASED WILLIAM GRUBBER IN 1776 AND DID NOT FREE HIM UNTIL 1794 O

THE SUFFRAGETTES FOUGHT FOR THE RIGHT TO SPEAK. THEY WERE ATTACKED, ARRESTED, AND THROWN IN JAIL FOR DARING TO DO WHAT THEY WANTED. LIKE THEY WERE, I AM WILLING TO STAND UP FOR WHAT I BELIEVE. NO ONE SHOULD BE FORCED TO GIVE SPEECHES. I CHOOSE TO STAY SILENT.

Maybe we'll run away to South America after the funeral and raise goats

THE MAN THAT SAYS SLAVES BE QUITE HAPPY IN SLAVERY—THAT THEY DON'T WANT TO BE FREE—THAT MAN IS EITHER IGNORANT OR A LYING PERSON. —MARY PRINCE, BORN 1778, THE FIRST WOMAN TO WRITE ABOUT HER LIFE IN SLAVERY

Board of Education, Island Trees Union Free School District No. 26 v. Pico, 457 US 853, 872 (1982), when the Supremes memorably sang: Supreme Court precedent condemns school officials who remove books "simply because they dislike the ideas contained in those books and seek by their removal to 'prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion.

I HAD THOUGHT ONLY SLAVERY DREADFUL, BUT THE STATE OF A FREE NEGRO APPEARED TO ME NOW EQUALLY SO AT LEAST, AND IN SOME RESPECTS EVEN WORSE, FOR THEY LIVE IN CONSTANT ALARM FOR THEIR LIBERTY. —OLAUDAH EQUIANO, MARINER AND FORMER SLAVE

Now I knew. I would fight the eagle and the chains and that mountain as long as I had breath.