Best 5891 quotes in «freedom quotes» category

The great lesson that nature seems to teach us at all ages is self-dependence, self-protection, self-support. In the hours of our keenest sufferings all are thrown wholly on themselves for consolation.

The great experimental principle, then, is doubt, that philosophic doubt which leaves to the mind its freedom and initiative, and from which the virtues most valuable to investigators in physiology and medicine are derived.

The guru cannot awaken you; all that he can do is to point out what is.

The hardest lesson of my life has come to me late. It is that a nation can win freedom without its people becoming free.

The higher your station, the less your liberty.

The highest manifestation of life consists in this: that a being governs its own actions. A thing which is always subject to the direction of another is somewhat of a dead thing.

The highest measure of democracy is neither the 'extent of freedom' nor the 'extent of equality', but rather the highest measure of participation.

The highest pleasure to be got out of freedom, and having nothing to do, is labor.

The history of any nation is not only a succession of events, but also a chain of ideas.

The history of the world is none other than the progress of the , consciousness of freedom.

The hostile multitudes are vast as spaceWhat chance is there that all should be subdued? Let but this angry mind be overthrownAnd every foe is then and there destroyed

The human race has entered a stage where we are all dependent on each other. No other country or nation should be regarded in total separation from another, let alone pitted against another.

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is generally understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else.

The importance of our being free to do a particular thing has nothing to do with the question of whether we or the majority are ever likely to make use of that particular possibility. To grant no more freedom than all can exercise would be to misconceive its function completely. The freedom that will be used by only one man in a million may be more important to society and more beneficial to the majority than any freedom that we all use.

The individual man, in introspecting the fact of his own consciousness, also discovers the primordial natural fact of his freedom: his freedom to choose, his freedom to use or not use his reason about any given subject. In short, the natural fact of his "free will." He also discovers the natural fact of his mind's command over his body and its actions: that is, of his natural ownership over his self.

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.

The intense happiness of our union is derived in a high degree from the perfect freedom with which we each follow and declare our own impressions.

The internet's like one big bathroom wall with a lot of people who anonymously can say really mean things. It's fine, I believe in freedom of speech and I think people should think what they want, but I don't care to hear it.

Their poverty secured their freedom, since our desires and our possessions are the strongest fetters of despotism.

The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing.

The last stage but one of every civilisation, is characterised by the forced political unification of its constituent parts, into a single greater whole.

The job facing American voters… in the days and years to come is to determine which hearts, minds and souls command those qualities best suited to unify a country rather than further divide it, to heal the wounds of a nation as opposed to aggravate its injuries, and to secure for the next generation a legacy of choices based on informed awareness rather than one of reactions based on unknowing fear.

The laws of economics tell us that the expansion of the central state can't go on forever. Its limit is reached when the looted turn on the looters.

The laws expressing the relations between energy and matter are, however, not solely of importance in pure science. They necessarily come first in order ... in the whole record of human experience, and they control, in the last resort, the rise or fall of political systems, the freedom or bondage of nations, the movements of commerce and industry, the origin of wealth and poverty, and the general physical welfare of the race.

The law will never make a man free; it is men who have got to make the law free.

The literature of a people must so ring from the sense of its nationality; and nationality is impossible without self-respect, and self-respect is impossible without liberty.

The Liberty Bell is "a very significant symbol for the entire democratic world.

The liberty of the press is not confined to newspapers and periodicals. It necessarily embraces pamphlets and leaflets.

[T]he liberty, the unalienable, indefeasible rights of men, the honor and dignity of human nature, the grandeur and glory of the public, and the universal happiness of individuals, were never so skillfully and successfully consulted as in that most excellent monument of human art, the common law of England.

The liberties of none are safe unless the liberties of all are protected.

The majority is never right. Never, I tell you! That's one of these lies in society that no free and intelligent man can help rebelling against. Who are the people that make up the biggest proportion of the population -- the intelligent ones or the fools?

The man hunched over his motorcycle can focus only on the present... he is caught in a fragment of time cut off from both the past and the future... he has no fear, because the source of fear is in the future, and a person freed of the future has nothing to fear.

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

The man who takes the liberty to live is superior to all the laws, by virtue of his relation to the lawmaker.

The man who is asleep reacts; he knows nothing of action. And reaction is a binding: it binds you into new prisons, new chains. Response is out of freedom, hence it brings more freedom. Reaction is out of the past; you act according to your memories, built-in by your experiences, conditionings. You react not to the present, not in the present. You don`t reflect the real situation as it is; you go on interpreting it according to your past, your past experiences. The man who is awake is like a mirror: he reflects that which is the case. HE IS AWAKE.

The market economy is the social system of the division of labor under private ownership of the means of production. Everybody acts on his own behalf; but everybodys actions aim at the satisfaction of other peoples needs as well as at the satisfaction of his own. Everybody in acting serves his fellow citizens.

The mass of men are very easily imposed on. They have their runways in which they always travel, and are sure to fall into any pit or box-trap set therein.

The man who produces while others dispose of his product is a slave.

The mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.

The man who would choose security over freedom deserves neither.

The measure of a society is found in how they treat their weakest and most helpless citizens. As Americans, we are blessed with circumstances that protect our human rights and our religious freedom, but for many people around the world, deprivation and persecution have become a way of life.

The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home.

The Marxist combination of materialism and determinism is fatally anti-humanistic. It denies a consciousness, a mind, that is independent of material conditions and class relations. It denies a will and volition that are capable of shaping the course of history. It denies an individuality that is not reducible to class. It denies both the idea and the reality of freedom, a freedom that is something more than the "bourgeois" freedom to buy and sell. It denies a morality that transcends class interests. And it denies the spirituality of man.

The mere fact of leaving ultimate social control in the hands of the people has not guaranteed that men will be able to conduct their lives as free men. Those societies where men know they are free are often democracies, but sometimes they have strong chiefs and kings.they have, however, one common characteristic: they are all alike in making certain freedoms common to all citizens, and inalienable.

The man is free who is protected from injury.

The more internal freedom you achieve, the more you want: it is more fun to be happy than sad, more enjoyable to choose your own emotions than to have them inflicted on you by mechanical glandular processes, more pleasurable to solve your problems than to be stuck with them forever.

The mind unlearns with difficulty what it has long learned.

The more developed a nation is, the more complete is the independence of the individual, and the safer the individual from encroachments by another.

The more you depend on forces outside yourself, the more you are dominated by them.

The more we reduce ourselves to machines in the lower things, the more force we shall set free to use in the higher.