Quotes About Freedom

If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is compromise.

To the reactive-responsive person it is not acceptable to spend your life on what you love, because what you love is not tied to the circumstances.

You have freedom when you're easy in your harness.

If society fits you comfortably enough, you call it freedom.

I shall set forth for somewhere,I shall make the reckless choiceSome say when they are in voiceAnd tossing so as to scareThe white clouds over them on,I shall have less to say,But I shall be gone.

The only certain freedom's in departure.

You have freedom when you're easy in your harness.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall.

Before I built a wall I'd ask to knowWhat I was walling in or walling out.

I hold it to be the inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way.

Surely there is grandeur in knowing that in the realm of thought, at least, you are without a chain; that you have the right to explore all heights and depth; that there are no walls nor fences, nor prohibited places, nor sacred corners in all the vast expanse of thought...

The man who does not do his own thinking is a slave, and is a traitor to himself and his fellow men.

There is no slavery but ignorance.

The glory of science is, that it is freeing the soul -- breaking the mental manacles -- getting the brain out of bondage -- giving courage to thought -- filling the world with mercy, justice, and joy.

If abuses are destroyed, man must destroy them. If slaves are freed, man must free them. If new truths are discovered, man must discover them. If the naked are clothed; if the hungry are fed; if justice is done; if labor is rewarded; if superstition is driven from the mind; if the defenseless are protected and if the right finally triumphs, all must be the work of man. The grand victories of the future must be won by man, and by man alone.

Liberty a word without which all other words are vain.

What light is to the eyes – what air is to the lungs – what love is to the heart, liberty is to the soul of man.

Nearly all people stand in great horror of annihilation, and yet to give up your individuality is to annihilate yourself. Mental slavery is mental death, and every man who has given up his intellectual freedom is the living coffin of his dead soul.

There is no slavery but ignorance. Liberty is the child of intelligence.

With every drop of my blood I hate and execrate every form of tyranny, every form of slavery. I hate dictation. I love liberty.

Is it a small thing to quench the flames of hell with the holy tears of pity -- to unbind the martyr from the stake -- break all the chains -- put out the fires of civil war -- stay the sword of the fanatic, and tear the bloody hands of the Church from the white throat of Science? Is it a small thing to make men truly free -- to destroy the dogmas of ignorance, prejudice and power -- the poisoned fables of superstition, and drive from the beautiful face of the earth the fiend of fear?

Every man should stand under the blue and stars, under the infinite flag of nature, the peer of every other man.

Liberty sustains the same relation to mind that space does to matter.

When I think of how much this world has suffered; when I think of how long our fathers were slaves, of how they cringed and crawled at the foot of the throne, and in the dust of the altar, of how they abased themselves, of how abjectly they stood in the presence of superstition robed and crowned, I am amazed.