FREEDOM

Related Subjects: Democracy, Dependence, Equality, Government, Liberty, People, Rights, Security

1. The free man is he who does not fear to go to the end of his thought.—LEON BLUM
   

2. "Freedom!" their battle cry—
   "Freedom! or leave to die!"—G. H. BOKER, The Black Regiment
   

3. Without free speech no search for truth is possible, without free speech no discovery of truth is useful, without free speech progress is checked and the nations no longer march forward toward the nobler life which the future holds for man. Better a thousand-fold abuse of free speech than a denial of free speech. The abuse dies in a day, but the denial slays the life of the people, and entombs the hope of the race.—CHARLES BRADLAUGH
   

4. A man can be free even within prison walls. Freedom is something spiritual. Whoever has once had it, can never lose it. There are some people who are never free outside a prison. The body can be bound with chains, the spirit never. One's thoughts are free.—BERT BRECHT, A Penny for the Poor
   

5. We have suddenly discovered that what we took for the enduring presuppositions of our life are in danger of being destroyed. Today we value freedom, I think, as we have not valued it before. Just as a man never appreciates his home so much as when he is compelled to leave it so now we realize our inestimable blessings when they are threatened. We have been shaken out of our smugness and warned of a great peril, and in that warning lies our salvation.—JOHN BUCHAN, Pilgrim's Way
   

6. Yet, Freedom! yet thy banner, torn, but flying,
   Streams like the thunder-storm against the wind.—BYRON, Childe Harold
   

7. For freedom's battle, once begun,
   Bequeath'd by bleeding sire to son,
   Though baffled oft, is ever won.—BYRON, The Giaour
   

8. I would have nobody to control me, I would be absolute; and who but I? Now, he that is absolute can do what he likes; he that can do what he likes, can take his pleasure; he that can take his pleasure, can be content; and he that can be content, has no more to desire. So the matter's over; and come what will come, I am satisfied.—CERVANTES, Don Quixote

9. Freedom has a thousand charms to show,
   That slaves, howe'er contented, never know.—COWPER, Table Talk
   

10. I am as free as Nature first made man,
    Ere the base laws of servitude began,
    When wild in woods the noble savage ran.—DRYDEN, The Conquest of Granada
    

11. For what avail the plough or sail,
    Or land or life, if freedom fail?—EMERSON, Boston
    

12. There were some who said that a man at the point of death was more free than all others, because death breaks every bond, and over the dead the united world has no power.—FENELON, Telemachus
    

13. Without freedom of thought there can be no such thing as wisdom; and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech; which is the right of every man as far as by it he does not hurt or control the right of another; and this is the only check it ought to suffer and the only bounds it ought to know.—FRANKLIN
    

14. Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err.—MAHATMA GANDHI
    

15. Freedom is the recognition of necessity.—J. B. S. HALDANE, I Believe
    

16. The seed of liberal principles sprouts first in green abstraction and must be allowed to grow slowly into concrete, knotty actuality. Freedom, which hitherto has become man only here and there, must enter the very masses, must pass into the lowest classes of society and become the people.—HEINE
    

17. In the course of history no people has ever been made a present of freedom, and if freedom did cost nothing no people would ever keep it! Freedom has a high price, and men must ever struggle to preserve it.—ADOLF HITLER, Nat'l Soc. Party Congress, 1935
    

18. As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free.—JULIA WARD HOWE, Battle Hymn of the Republic
    

19. That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.—LINCOLN, Gettysburg Address
    

20. In giving freedom to the slave we assure freedom to the f ree,— honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve.—LINCOLN
    

21. Among freemen there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet, and . . . they who take such appeal are sure to lose their case and pay the cost.—LINCOLN
    

22. If I have freedom in my love,
    And in my soul am free,
    Angels alone that soar above
    Enjoy such liberty.—RICHARD LOVELACE,To Althea in Prison
    

23. And I honor the man who is willing to sink
    Half his present repute for the freedom to think.
    And, when he has thought, be his cause strong or weak,
    Will risk t' other half for the freedom to speak.—LOWELL, A Fable for Critics
    

24. The life of nations and of states must in the future be dominated by a new idea of freedom, as of a limited individualism constrained by social forces. Only through the victory of this idea of freedom, the idea of super-national democracy, can happiness, peace, and order be secured for Europe—in the place of an anarchy which leads again and again to bloody wars and is destroying civilization.—THOMAS MANN, This War
    

25. Liberal institutions straight­way cease from being liberal the moment they are soundly established: once this is attained no more grievous and more thorough enemies of freedom exist than liberal institutions.—NIETZSCHE, The Twilight of the Idols
    

26. Blandishments will not fascinate us, nor will threats of a "halter" intimidate. For, under God, we are determined that wheresoever, whensoever, or howsoever we shall be called to make our exit, we will die
    free men.—JOSIAH QUINCY
    

27. The people who settled in New England came here for religious freedom, but religious freedom to them meant freedom only for their kind of religion. They were not going to be any more liberal to others who differed with them in this new country, than others had been with them in the countries from which they came. This attitude seems to be our attitude in many situations today.—ELEANOR ROOSEVELT
    

28. Man is born free, and everywhere he is in irons.—ROUSSEAU, The Social Contract
    

29. I saw a woman sleeping. In her sleep she dreamt Life stood before her, and held in each hand a gift—in the one Love, in the other Freedom. And she said to the woman, "Choose!" And the woman waited long: and she said, "Freedom!"—OLIVE SCHREINER, Dreams
    

30. Can the individual man standing on his own right make secure his freedom by means of free speech, free discussion, a free press, and in the last resort by the invocation of the aid of an independent judiciary? Or on the other hand, do all his rights come from his government and does his security depend solely upon the privileges which that government sees fit to grant him? These are the two essential conceptions of individual rights which have been fighting in this world during the past thousand years.—HENRY L. STIMSON, Democracy and Nationalism In Europe
    

31. We know all this, and in our hearts we know, too, that for each of us to gain the most freedom we must keep all the doors to life forever freely open to every man and woman.—CLARENCE STREIT, Union Now
    

32. Freedom is not saved by powerlessness. Freedoni is inseparably linked with power and the will and capacity to use it.—DOROTHY THOMPSON, On the Record

33. There are times in the lives of all people when freedom is the twin of duty, sacrifice the companion of happiness, and when courage—parent of fortitude, endurance, determination—is the first virtue.—DOROTHY THOMPSON, On the Record
    

34. Now, the very idea of freedom rests on a profound respect for hu­manity. It rests in a profound conception of human dignity. It rests in the belief in human brotherhood. It is deeply religious, or, if you prefer, ethical and moral in its basis.—DOROTHY THOMPSON, Let the Record Speak
    

35. I do not agree with a word that you say,
    But I will defend to the death your right to say it.—VOLTAIRE
    

36. We cannot be free at home unless we are free to go and come across the world. Our continent cannot confine the dynamite of democratic opportunity.—WILLIAM A. WHITE, Defense for America
    

37. Are we preserving freedom in this land of ours, the hope of all the earth? Have we, inheritors of this continent and of the ideals to which the fathers consecrated it,—have we maintained them, realizing them, as each generation must, anew? Are we, in the consciousness that the life of man is pledged to higher levels here than elsewhere, striving still to bear aloft the standards of liberty and hope; or, disillusioned and defeated, are we feeling the disgrace of having had a free field in which to do new things and of not having done them?—WOODROW WILSON, The New Freedom