Best 5891 quotes in «freedom quotes» category

I am not here as a public official, but as a citizen of a troubled world who finds hope in a growing consensus that the generally accepted goals of society are peace, freedom, human rights, environmental quality, the alleviation of suffering, and the rule of law.

I am strongly convinced that the people or society is the best and the most unerring critic.

I am the American heartbreak- The rock on which Freedom Stumped its toe.

I anticipate with pleasing expectations that retreat in which I promise myself to realize, without alloy, the sweet enjoyment of partaking, in the midst of my fellow citizens, the benign influence of good laws under a free government, the ever favorite object of my heart, and the happy reward, as I trust, of our mutual cares, labors, and dangers.

I am you; you are ME. You are the waves; I am the ocean. Know this and be free, be divine.

I ask you...to adopt the principles proclaimed by yourselves, by your revolutionary fathers, and by the old bell in Independence Hall.

I believe in freedom of speech, but I believe we should also have the right to comment on freedom of speech.

I believe that it would be almost impossible to find anywhere in America a black man who has lived further down in the mud of human society than I have; or a black man who has been any more ignorant than I have; or a black man who has suffered more anguish during his life than I have. But it is only after the deepest darkness that the greatest joy can come; it is only after slavery and prison that the sweetest appreciation of freedom can come.

I believe that the most essential element of our defense of freedom is our insistence on speaking out for the cause of religious liberty.

I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy - but that could change.

I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad.

I chose America as my home because I value freedom and democracy, civil liberties and an open society.

I do not want to see any of the people cringing supplicants for the favor of the Government, when they should all be independent masters of their own destiny.

I condemn all incidents of violence where religious minorities were targeted, no religious group can incite violence ... my government will ensure there is complete freedom of faith.

I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the culture of all lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any

I dance not to entertain but to help people better understand each other. Because through dance I have experienced the wordless joy of freedom, I seek it more fully now for my people and for all people everywhere.

If an individual agrees with everybody, he lacks conviction; if he likes everybody and is everybody's friend, he is indifferent to one and all.

If a little knowledge is dangerous, where is the man who has so much as to be out of danger?

If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.

I do think there are certain times we should infringe on your freedom.

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.

If business is going to continue to sell through the decades, it must also promote an understanding of what made those products possible, what is necessary to a free market, and what our free market means to the individual liberty of each of us, to be certain that the freedoms under which this nation was born and brought to this point shall endure in the future ... for America is the product of our freedoms.

If everyone is thinking alike, then no one is thinking.

If God exists, how can we lay claim to freedom, since He is its beginning and its end?

If fame came near to you to get you, you must run away from it very fast! Because this is a matter of freedom and captivity!

If everything is noted, all your emotional difficulties will disappear. When you feel happy, don't get involved in happiness. When you feel sad, don't get involved with it. Whatever comes, don't worry, just be aware of it.

if I fall, I will fall five-feet four-inches forward in the fight for freedom.

If ignorance is bliss, why aren't more people happy?

If I had my mouth, I would bite; if I had my liberty, I would do my liking. In the meantime, let me be that I am, and seek not toalter me.

I find freedom to be the most important issue facing any human being today, because without freedom, then life is pointless. The more dependent you become on centralized power, the more easily you are lead around.

If liberty has any meaning it means freedom to improve.

If mankind is to profit freely from the small and sporadic crop of the heroically gifted it produces, it will have to cultivate the delicate art of handling ideas. Psychology is now able to tell us with reasonable assurance that the most influential obstacle to freedom of thought and to new ideas is fear; and fear which can with inimitable art disguise itself as caution, or sanity, or reasoned skepticism, or on occasion even as courage.

If men use their liberty in such a way as to surrender their liberty, are they thereafter any the less slaves? If people by a plebiscite elect a man despot over them, do they remain free because the despotism was of their own making?

If I really want to improve my situation, I can work on the one thing over which I have control - myself.

If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in government to the utmost.

If justice, good faith, honor, gratitude and all the other qualities which enoble the character of a nation, and fulfill the ends of Government be the fruits of our establishments, the cause of liberty will acquire a dignity and lustre, which it has never yet enjoyed, and an example will be set, which can not but have the most favorable influence on the rights of Mankind.

I foresee it and yet I hardly ever carry it out as I foresee it. It transforms itself by the actual paint. I don't in fact know very often what the paint will do, and it does many things which are very much better than I could make it do.

If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.

If the opposition disarms, well and good. If it refuses to disarm, we shall disarm it ourselves.

If the people were to ever find out what we have done, we would be chased down the streets and lynched.

If somebody else is making the rules for you, no matter how good the payoff is for you, you're being conned.

If the American Revolution had produced nothing but the Declaration of Independence, it would have been worthwhile.

If the layman cannot participate in decision making, he will have to turn himself over, essentially blind, to a hermetic elite. ... [The fundamental question becomes] are we still capable of self-government and therefore freedom? Margaret Mead wrote in a 1959 issue of Daedalus about scientists elevated to the status of priests. Now there is a name for this elevation, when you are in the hands of-one hopes-a benevolent elite, when you have no control over your political decisions. From the point of view of John Locke, the name for this is slavery.

If the psychic energies of the average mass of people watching a football game or a musical comedy could be diverted into the rational channels of a freedom movement, they would be invincible.

If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought, not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.

If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle.

If the women of the United States, with their free schools and all their enlarged liberties, are not superior to women brought upunder monarchical forms of government, then there is no good in liberty.

If this spirit shall ever be so far debased, as to tolerate a law not obligatory on the legislature, as well as on the people, the people will be prepared to tolerate any thing but liberty.

If we can implant in our people the Christian virtues which we sum up in the word character, and, at the same time, give them a knowledge of the line which should be drawn between voluntary action and governmental compulsion in a democracy, and of what can be accomplished within the stern laws of economics, we will enable them to retain their freedom, and at the same time, make them worthy to be free.

If we advert to the nature of republican government, we shall find that the censorial power is in the people over the government, and not in the government over the people.