Inspirational Quotes on Freedom

“People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.”

“If God were to remove all evil from our world (but somehow leave human beings on the planet), it would mean that the essence of 'humanness' would be destroyed. We would become robots. Let me explain what I mean by this. If God eliminated evil by programming us to perform only good acts, we would lose this distinguishing mark - the ability to make choices. We would no longer be free moral agents. We would be reduced to the status of robots. Let's take this a step further. Robots do not love. God created us with the capacity to love. Love is based upon one's right to choose to love. We cannot force others to love us. We can make them serve us or obey us. But true love is founded upon one's freedom to choose to respond.”

“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.”

“The framers of our Constitution meant we were to have freedom of religion, not freedom from religion.”

“I have found both freedom and safety in my madness; the freedom of loneliness and the safety from being understood, for those who understand us enslave something in us.”

“True freedom consists not in the freedom to sin, but the freedom not to sin.”

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

“The human race is a monotonous affair. Most people spend the greatest part of their time working in order to live, and what little freedom remains so fills them with fear that they seek out any and every means to be rid of it.”

“Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

“If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”

“Free at last, Free at last, Thank God almighty we are free at last.”

“Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.”

“The rifle itself has no moral stature, since it has no will of its own. Naturally, it may be used by evil men for evil purposes, but there are more good men than evil, and while the latter cannot be persuaded to the path of righteousness by propaganda, they can certainly be corrected by good men with rifles.”

“In politics as in philosophy, my tenets are few and simple. The leading one of which, and indeed that which embraces most others, is to be honest and just ourselves and to exact it from others, meddling as little as possible in their affairs where our own are not involved. If this maxim was generally adopted, wars would cease and our swords would soon be converted into reap hooks and our harvests be more peaceful, abundant, and happy.”

“Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.”

“The greatest purveyor of violence in the world : My own Government, I can not be Silent.”

“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

“But what is liberty without wisdom and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint. Those who know what virtuous liberty is, cannot bear to see it disgraced by incapable heads, on account of their having high-sounding words in their mouths.”