Inspirational Quotes on Freedom

“Feinstein is dipping her toe into the very ugly, muddy waters of religious bigotry. America's Founding Fathers considered religious beliefs to be an asset, even essential to public officeholders. Sadly, Sen. Feinstein apparently believes the opposite of those wise men to whom we owe gratitude for our free and strong country.”

“Their blood is shed in confirmation of the noblest claim - the claim to feed upon immortal truth, to walk with God, and be divinely free.”

“Divine love is perfect peace and joy, it is a freedom from all disquiet, it is all content and happiness; and makes everything to rejoice in itself.”

“God calls me. In a deeper sense than any other species of earthbound creature, I am called. And in a deeper sense I am free, for I can ignore the call.”

“His was a party whose distinctive and animating spirit was the love of freedom, which broke out upon occasion in the wildest vagaries of speech and doctrine. Yet it justified itself in its leaders, including Milton and Cromwell, who accorded to the consciences of others the freedom they demanded for their own - the love of liberty meaning not merely the love of enjoying freedom, but that respect for the thing itself which renders a man incapable of violating it in another.”

“When it is stated in Genesis that God said to Adam, "Only from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you must not eat," it follows as a matter of course that Adam really has not understood this word, for how could he understand the difference between good and evil when this distinction would follow as a consequence of the enjoyment of the fruit? When it is assumed that the prohibition awakens the desire, one acquires knowledge instead of ignorance, and in that case Adam must have had a knowledge of freedom, because the desire was to use it. The explanation is therefore subsequent. The prohibition induces in him anxiety, for the prohibition awakens in him freedom's possibility. What passed by innocence as the nothing of anxiety has now entered into Adam, and here again it is a nothing -the anxious possibility of ”

“Discipline is given to restrain the excesses of freedom”

“But we don't want all those things," said an old bear. 'We want to be free. And we want to hear Aslan speak himself.' 'Now don't you start arguing,' said the ape, 'for it's a thing I won't stand. I'm a Man: you're only a fat, stupid old bear. What do you know about freedom? You think freedom means doing what you like. Well, you're wrong. That isn't true freedom. True freedom means doing what I tell you.”

“He has said that the Americans are our children, and how can they revolt against their parent? He says, that, if they are not free in their present state, England is not free; because Manchester, and other considerable places, are not represented. So, then, because some towns in England are not represented, America is to have no representative at all. They are "our children"; but when children ask for bread, we are not to give a stone. Is it because the natural resistance of things, and the various mutations of time, hinders our government, or any scheme of government, from being any more than a sort of approximation to the right, is it therefore that the colonies are to recede from it infinitely? When this child of ours wishes to assimilate to its parent, and to reflect with a true filial resemblance the beauteous countenance of British liberty, are we to turn to them the shameful parts of our constitution? are we to give them our weakness for their strength, our opprobrium for their glory, and the slough of slavery, which we are not able to work off, to serve them for their freedom?”

“Jamás conocerán los hombres el bienestar bajo un régimen de comunidad de bienes. ¿Por qué medios se podrá conseguir la prosperidad común si todos se niegan a trabajar? Nadie tendrá un estímulo personal, y la confianza en que todos trabajan le hará perezoso. Por otra parte, si la miseria subleva los espíritus y ya no es posible adquirir nada como propio, ¿no caerá la sociedad de modo fatal y constante en la rebelión y la venganza? Si, además, desaparece la autoridad de los jueces y el temor saludable que inspiran, ¿qué papel pueden tener en la sociedad hombres para quienes no existiría ninguna diferencia social? Es algo que ni siquiera me atrevo a imaginar.”

“To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's. -R. Raskolnikov”

“Ahelyett, hogy birtokba vetted volna az emberek szabadságát, még nagyobbra növelted! Vagy elfelejtetted, hogy az ember a nyugalmat, sőt akár a halált is többre becsüli, mint a szabad választást a jó és a gonosz megismerésében? Nincsen csábítóbb az ember számára, mint lelkiismeretének szabadsága, de nincs gyötrelmesebb sem.”

“Yes, we will make them work, but in the hours free from labor we will arrange their lives like a children's game, with children's songs, choruses, and innocent dancing. Oh, we will allow them to sin, too; they are weak and powerless, and they will love us like children for allowing them to sin. We will tell them that every sin will be redeemed if it is committed with our permission; and that we will allow them to sin because we love them.”

“Man does not live by bread alone.”

“There is for man no preoccupation more constant or more nagging than, while in a condition of freedom, quickly to find someone to bow down before.”

“We have never been respectable yet; don't let's begin now.”

“From the perspective of a single day, including this day of dedication, the issues and questions before our country are many. From the viewpoint of centuries, the questions that come to us are narrowed and few. Did our generation advance the cause of freedom? And did our character bring credit to that cause?”

“If we fail now, we shall have forgotten in abundance what we learned in hardship: that democracy rests on faith, that freedom asks more than it gives, and that the judgment of God is harshest on those who are most favored.”

“You are loosed from your moorings, and are free; I am fast in my chains, and am a slave! You move merrily before the gentle gale, and I sadly before the bloody whip! You are freedom's swift-winged angels, that fly round the world; I am confined in bands of iron! O that I were free!”

“Christian liberty is freedom not to indulge the flesh but to control the flesh, freedom not to exploit our neighbor but to serve our neighbor, freedom not to disregard the law but to fulfill the law.”