Freedom Quotes

Posterity! You will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it. -John Quincy Adams

The free man is not he who defies the rules…but he who, recognizing the compulsions inherent in his being, seeks rather to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest each day’s experience. -Bernard Iddings Bell, D.D.

Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err. -Mahatma Gandhi

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The basic test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in what we are free not to do. -Eric Hoffer

Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better.  -Albert Camus

A man who is willing to accept restriction and barriers and is not afraid of them is free. A man who does nothing but fight restrictions and barriers will usually be trapped. -L. Ron Hubbard

People hardly ever make use of the freedom they have, for example, freedom of thought; instead they demand freedom of speech as a compensation. -Soren Kierkegaard

There are two freedoms, the false where one is free to do what he likes, and the true where he is free to do what he ought. -Charles Kingsley

The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good, in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it. -John Stuart Mill

Whoever will be free must make himself free. Freedom is no fairy gift to fall into a man’s lap. What is freedom? To have the will to be responsible for one’s self. -Max Stirner

Order without liberty and liberty without order are equally destructive.  -Theodore Roosevelt

Depend upon it that the lovers of freedom will be free. -Edmund Burke

The supreme belief of our society is the dignity and freedom of the individual.  To the respect of that dignity, to the defense of that freedom, all effort is pledged. -Dwight D. Eisenhower

Freedom may come quickly in robes of peace or after ages of conflict and war, but come it will, and abide it will, so long as the principles by which it was acquired are held sacred. -Edward Everett

The measure of a democracy is the measure of the freedom of its humblest citizens. -John Galsworthy

Perfect freedom is as necessary to the health and vigor of commerce as it is to the health and vigor of citizenship. -Patrick Henry

To some, freedom means the opportunity to do what they want to do; to most it means not to do what they don’t want to do. -Eric Hoffer

It is better for a man to go wrong in freedom than to go right in chains. -Thomas H. Huxley

One should never put on one’s best trousers to go out to fight for freedom. -Henrik Ibsen

Freedom is a precious thing today.  Those who have it cherish it; those who fear it, want to destroy it; and those who don’t have it will still fight for it. -Harvey C. Jacobs

Freedom is not what a man does, nor what he is permitted to do.  Freedom is part of what a man is. – Robert Lessing

Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves,and, under a just God, cannot long retain it. -Abraham Lincoln

If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too. -Somerset Maugham

No nation deserves freedom or can long retain it which does not win it for itself.  Revolutions must be made by the people and for the people. -Giuseppe Mazzini

Countries are well cultivated, not as they are fertile, but as they are free. – Baron De Montesquieu

Those who expect to reap the blessing of freedom must undertake to support it. -Thomas Paine

Freedom without obligation is anarchy; freedom with obligation is democracy. -Earl Riney

The war for freedom will never really be won because the price of freedom is constant vigilance over ourselves and over our Government. -Eleanor Roosevelt

To have freedom is only to have that which is absolutely necessary to enable us to be what we ought to be, and to possess what we ought to possess. -Ibn Rahel

Freedom dies with every individual; it is not reborn with his successors; it must be achieved anew, generation by generation. -Henry M. Wriston