Freedom quotes
2.3K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside freedom — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"The very fact that we wish for liberation shows that freedom from all bondage is our real nature. It is not to be freshly acquired. All that is necessary is to get rid of the false notion that we are bound."
"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a moneyed aristocracy that has set the Government at defiance. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs."
"He who is brave is free."
"If you think that you are bound, you remain bound; you make your own bondage. If you know that you are free, you are free this moment. This is knowledge, knowledge of freedom. Freedom is the goal of all nature."
"Peace is its own reward."
"Time is on the side of the oppressed today, it's against the oppressor. Truth is on the side of the oppressed today, it's against the oppressor. You don't need anything else."
"Act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world."
"Freedom may be the soul of humanity, but often you have to struggle to prove it."
"The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the larger centers has owned the Government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson..."
"A discriminating irreverence is the creator and protector of human liberty."
"Only law can give us freedom."
"The function of education has never been to free the mind and the spirit of man, but to bind them; and to the end that the mind and spirit of his children should never escape, Homo Sapiens has employed praise, ridicule, admonition, accusation, mutilation, and even torture to chain them to the culture pattern."
"Once conform, once do what others do because they do it, and a kind of lethargy steals over all the finer senses of the soul."
"I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free."
"The liberty of the press is not confined to newspapers and periodicals. It necessarily embraces pamphlets and leaflets."
"Absolute freedom is absolute responsibility."
"The tyrant claims freedom to kill freedom, and yet keep it for himself."
"In every country where man is free to think and to speak, difference of opinion will arise from difference of perception, and the imperfection of reason; but these differences, when permitted, as in this happy country, to purify themselves by free discussion, are but as passing clouds overspreading our land transiently, and leaving our horizon more bright and serene."
"When life does not go our way or we inadvertently make a mistake, it is so easy to make excuses, place blame on others, or argue that circumstances were against us. But we only progress in life to the extent that we take responsibility for our actions and attitudes, and put forth the initiative necessary to create our own circumstances."
"Forget safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be notorious."
