Best 5891 quotes in «freedom quotes» category

There was beauty in the idea of freedom, but it was an illusion. Every human heart was chained by love.

There was no such thing as Kazakhstan. It was just a chunk of Soviet Union. I had to build a country, to establish an army, our own police, our internal life, everything from roads to the constitution. I had to change the minds of the people 180 degrees, from totalitarian regime to freedom, from state property to private property. Nobody wanted to understand that. My comrades from the communist party were against me. I had to train myself too... I wasn't raised with democracy and freedom of speech.

There was something of relative freedom in that feudal gesture of the vow; for no man asks vows from slaves anymore than from spades.

There wasn’t a question of what compromise there should be or what kind of peace process we should engage in. There was only one discussion: How do we remove the colonial power that is occupying our country?

There will dawn a day when these hostile hours, these days of hatred and violence, seem the faintest of memories, but dark and steep and long is the road up out of hell. So do not tire, do not despair, do not abandon your brethren, and do not forget that through this darkness we and we alone carry the light of freedom. We must defend it with every cell in our bodies. If not now, when? If not us, who?

There will always be wars," Maggie told him. "Yes," Reeve replied. "But there will also be brothers, sisters, comrades and lovers as well, and they are who we fight for. Our comrades--our brothers--beside us on the field; our wives and families at home. Wallace wishes for freedom. It is a gife given by God and should not be taken by men; it is the right of every man to be free and it is our duty to protect that right so that our children may know what it is to be free and not live under oppression.

There will always be some delay between the first neuropsychological events that kindle my next conscious thought and the thought itself. And even if they weren't — even if all mental states were truly coincident with their underlying brain states — I cannot decide what I will next think or intend until a thought or intention arises. What will my next mental state be? I do not know — it just happens. Where is the freedom in that?

There will be so much more in between. So much uncertainty. I don't know if we'll survive the catacombs, let alone the rest of it. But it doesn't matter. For now, these steps are enough. These first few precious steps into darkness. Into the unknown. Into freedom.

There will be times of noise and there will be times of silence, both are necessary to hear your soul.

There will never be a better time than now to - well... Do anything you desire... Be anything you want... Go wherever you please... Know your worth, embrace life and love but most of all, embrace yourself...

The rich run a global system that allows them to accumulate capital and pay the lowest possible price for labour. The freedom that results applies only to them. The many simply have to work harder, in conditions that grow ever more insecure, to enrich the few. Democratic politics, which purports to enrich the many, is actually in the pocket of those bankers, media barons and other moguls who run and own everything.

The right to "liberty" and "pursuit" of happiness is incompatible with a government that makes choices for you.

The richest freedom is the power to choose inner peace.

The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedom." [Public Utilities Commission v. Pollak, 343 U.S. 451, 467 (1952) (dissenting)]

The roots of tyranny and freedom trace back to long before recorded history, and are etched in our genes.

The ruling classes use broken and smashed up childhoods as weaponised instruments of domination around the world. This is why the government has no incentive to end child abuse; because the government needs abuse victims as enforcers.

The saddest instance of the lack of real freedom, arising from the lack of real knowledge, is revealed to us in Leo Tolstoy's latest work, a work which at the same time, by virtue of its creative, poetic force, ranks almost first among all that has appeared in Russian literature since 1840. No! without culture, without freedom in the widest sense, freedom within oneself, freedom from preconceived ideas, freedom with regard to one's own nation and history, without this, the real artist is unthinkable; without this free air he cannot breathe.

The saddest feeling is knowing you deserve freedom and still feeling caged.

The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the Hand of Divinity itself, and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.

The science of artificial intelligence starts with freedom of humanity and should not end in slavery in any form. The only constraint to freedom is the freedom of others and nothing else.

The scientist seeks laws; the historian, causes; the artist, freedom.

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread.

The science (vignan) of religion and the knowledge (gnan) of religion are different things. There is liberation through science!

The search for liberty is simply part of the greater search for a world where respect for the rule of law and human rights is universal—a world free of dictators, terrorists, warmongers and fanatics, where men and women of all nationalities, races, traditions and creeds can coexist in the culture of freedom, where borders give way to bridges that people cross to reach their goals limited only by free will and respect for one another's rights. It is a search to which I've dedicated my writing, and so many have taken notice. But is it not a search to which we should all devote our very lives? The answer is clear when we see what is at stake

These be they that have put off the mortal clothing, and put on the immortal, and have confessed the name of God: now are they crowned, and receive palms.

The second role is "the task of the public," which should be very limited. It is not for the public, Lippman observes to "pass judgment on the intrinsic merits" of an issue or to offer analysis or solutions, but merely, on occasion, to place "its force at the disposal" of one or another group of "responsible men" from the specialized class. The public "does not reason, investigate, invent, persuade, bargain or settle." Rather, "the public acts only by aligning itself as the partisan of someone in a position to act executively," once he has given the matter at hand sober and disinterested thought. "The public must be put in its place," so that we "may live free of the trampling and the roar of a bewildered herd." The herd "has its function": to be "the interested spectators of action," not the participants; that is the duty of "the responsible man.

The Second Amendment is timeless for our Founders grasped that self-defense is three-fold: every free individual must protect themselves against the evil will of the man, the mob and the state.

The secret is in realizing your internal gifts and then setting them free.

The secret of happiness is freedom but to be totally free you need to earn: courage, persistence and boldness.

The secret of happiness is freedom, the secret of freedom is courage.

The secret to happiness is freedom; the secret to is courage.' Thucydides said that. But the secret to courage is honor and the secret to honor is love. I said that.

These diverse effects of slavery and freedom are easily understood: … the men in Kentucky [neither] have zeal nor enlightenment … cross over into Ohio in order to utilize their industry and to be able to exercise it without shame … in Kentucky, masters make slaves work without being obliged to pay them, but they receive little fruit from their efforts, while the money that they would give to free workers would be recovered with interest from the value of their labors.

These examples and many others demonstrate an alarming trend whereby the privacy and dignity of our citizens is being whittled away by sometimes imperceptible steps. Taken individually, each step may be of little consequence. But when viewed as a whole, there begins to emerge a society quite unlike any we have seen -- a society in which government may intrude into the secret regions of man's life at will." [Osborn v. United States, 385 U.S. 323, 343 (1966) (dissenting)]

The secret to happiness is freedom and the secret to freedom is courage.' Thucydides said that. But the secret to courage is honor and the secret to honor is love.

The sequestering of the family in the big house feels to those within the walls like a strange curtailment of their liberty. To those in the village it is no great novelty. For them, even before the wall’s building was complete, to stray about the park, without express permission, was to risk having a leg bitten off by a mantrap. Prisoners lament their confinement. Sometimes to be at large is an equal deprivation

These squatters aren’t just aliens, drifters and undesirables. They’re new world barbarians, conquering free spaces and making them their own.

These observations bring out the fact that, whenever liberty is regarded merely as the power to do something which it is desired to do, the tyrant need only base himself on the desires of the masses to suppress the liberties cherished by a few. But can anyone fail to see that the very concrete problem here posed is the problem of the sation of satisfactions, and not the problem of liberty at all? How, then, has it come about that we have drifted away from what we were discussing? This is the very definition of liberty which we allowed as our starting-point. Its development makes it clear that the thing discussed does not merit the fair name of liberty. It is certain that every man desires addition to his power and chafes at the obstacles which stand in his way; it is also certain that the quest for a power which is wider binds him to a growing dependence on other men; it is certain, lastly, that this dependence creates a growing tendency to quarrel about distribution. All that is important, but it is the story not of liberty but of human imperialism. And whoever thinks to see the essence of liberty in the power of man is is utterly lacking in any true feeling for liberty.

These three children own the summer. They know the wood as surely as they know the micro landscapes of their own grazed knees; put them down blindfolded in any dell or clearing and they could find their way out without putting a foot wrong. This is their territory, and they rule it wild and lordly as young animals; they scramble through its trees and hide-and-seek in its hollows all the endless day long, and all night in their dreams.

The sieges of Gvozdansko (1578) and Alamo (1836) tell the true stories of the small bands of the heroes who stood against the massive armies to defend their homelands. They echo innate human devotion to the idea of fighting for freedom.

The sieges of Gvozdansko, Croatia and Alamo, U.S. tell the true stories of small bands of heroes who stood against massive armies to defend their homelands. They echo innate human devotion to the idea of fighting for freedom across the world. Alamo was designate by UNESCO as a World Heritage site in 2015. Gvozdansko deserves more research and the same level of respect and protection for its equal relevance. The Croatian landmark was the site of the pivotal 103-day Battle of Gvozdansko in 1578 against the Ottoman army. Among those who fought and died there were the common miners together with their families.

The snow had vanished, and already the grass had returned to the fields, and the leaves to the branches: what a marvelous time! To kiss the sky with his sun-drenched lips?

The size of a plane does not change the weather but it will get you above it. The size of your faith may not change your situation but it will get you over it.

...the so much boasted constitution of England...is imperfect, subject to convulsions, and incapable of producing what it seems to promise...

The smell of cigarette smoke in the air in a tavern that changes names often, a bar cursed because of a girl who died of a drug overdose in the basement, we put a few coins in the jukebox; chose “Angel Band” by Johnny Cash and sat down at the bar, ordered a soda, you wanted a whiskey on the rocks. We saw the coal miner who moved here from West Virginia knocking back liquor like I drink sweet tea. No one asked why he was so solemn today. It was warm. It was relatively quiet. To anyone else, this place could feel sinister. But to us, it was freedom. It was a hiding place. No one was ever here long enough to know us. And we liked it that way.

The Sodomy sea shall cast out fish, and make a noise in the night, which many have not known: but they shall all hear the voice thereof.

The spectre of an absolute menace that requires absolute eradication binds leader and people in a hermetic utopian embrace, and the individual - always an annoyance to totality - ceases to exist.

The spirit of bondage works by fear for the slave fears the rod: but love cries, Abba, Father; it disposes us to go to God, and behave ourselves towards God as children; and it gives us clear evidence of our union to God as His children, and so casts out fear. So that it appears that the witness of the Spirit the apostle speaks of, is far from being any whisper, or immediate suggestion or revelation; but that gracious holy effect of the Spirit of God in the hearts of the saints, the disposition and temper of children, appearing in sweet childlike love to God, which casts out fear or a spirit of a slave.

The spiritual freedom we seek cannot be found by grasping at, retreating to, or protecting our perceived safe spaces. Our freedom lies in remaining open continuously, not only to Life's changes but also to the Divine Light within us and others.

The spiritual freedom we seek cannot be found by grasping at, retreating to, or protecting our perceived safe spaces. Our freedom lies in remaining open continuously, not only to Life’s changes but also to the Divine Light within us and others. This is our choice. Although often perceived as a weakness, being open and surrendering to the experience of the present moment is our greatest strength. By authentically living Life in the Now, we submit to Divine guidance where we find the freedom to see everything equally and sacred in Truth.

The state can't give you free speech, and the state can't take it away. You're born with it, like your eyes, like your ears. Freedom is something you assume, then you wait for someone to try to take it away. The degree to which you resist is the degree to which you are free...