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Freedom

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“People have passed through a very dark tunnel at the end of which there was a light of freedom. Unexpectedly they passed through the prison gates and found themselves in a square. They are now free and they don't know where to go.”
Václav Havel (1936–2011) first seen 1990 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Address at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; quoted in The Independent, London (22 March 1990)
“We want to know in order to make ourselves free. That is our life: one universal cry for freedom.”
Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Not that freedom ensured happiness. Indeed, to be free was to live in absence. Of responsibilities, of loyalties, of the pressures that expectation imposed.”
Steven Erikson (born 1959) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“People in every country should be free to choose and live their faith based upon the persuasion of the mind, and the heart, and the soul. This tolerance is essential for religion to thrive, but it is being challenged in many different ways. […] Freedom of religion is central to the ability of peoples to live together.”
Barack Obama (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We believe that societies and economies only advance as far as individuals are free to carry them forward. And just as freedom cannot exist when people are imprisoned for their political views, true opportunity cannot exist when people are imprisoned by sickness, or hunger, or darkness.”
Barack Obama (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We have to do our best to uphold in our own lives the values that they were prepared to die for. We have to honor those who carry forward that legacy, recognizing that people cannot live in freedom unless free people are prepared to die for it.”
Barack Obama (born 1961) first seen 2014 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Remarks by President Obama at the 70th Anniversary of D-Day at Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial, Omaha Beach, Normandy, France at June 6, 2014
“Freedom is for honest people. No man who is not himself honest can be free — he is in his own trap.”
L. Ron Hubbard (1911–1986) first seen 1960 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Honest People Have Rights, Too" (February 8, 1960).
“Until justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with the color of men's skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact. To the extent that the proclamation of emancipation is not fulfilled in fact, to that extent we shall have fallen short of assuring freedom to the free.”
Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The only way that has ever been discovered to have a lot of people cooperate together voluntarily is through the free market. And that’s why it’s so essential to preserving individual freedom.”
Milton Friedman (1912–2006) first seen 2000 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: PBS “Interview: On freedom and free markets” Commanding Heights series (Oct. 1, 2000)
“It may be in our sexuality that we are most easily enslaved, both men and women. It may be there, even as free men and women, that we find freedom hardest to keep. The politics of the flesh are the roots of power.”
Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) first seen 1995 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Woman's Liberation", p. 158; first published in Asimov's (1995)
“But greed is a bottomless pit And our freedom's a joke we're just taking a piss And the whole world must watch the sad comic display If you're still free start runnin' away 'cause we're comin' for ya!”
Conor Oberst (born 1980) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Free labor understands and acts in the knowledge the the struggle for peace and the struggle for human freedom are inseparably tied together with the struggle for social justice.”
Walter Reuther (1907–1970) first seen 1956 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Address before the Indian Council of World Affairs, New Delhi, India, April 5, 1956, as quoted in Walter P Reuther: Selected Papers (1961), by Henry M. Christman, p. 131
“Today we know that a free society is not the product of nature, but of man; that it is not self-maintaining and self-winding, but demands the vigilant and constant support of responsible citizens... freedom is not inevitable and easy... but the product of a long, hard struggle of man's reason and man's faith that has to be fought over and won again by every generation.”
Peter Drucker (1909–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Once the truth is denied to human beings, it is pure illusion to try to set them free. Truth and freedom either go together hand in hand or together they perish in misery.”
Pope John Paul II (1920–2005) first seen 1998 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Encyclical Fides et Ratio, 14 September 1998
“I sat at my piano, a feminist woman, and I wrote it, to say that nothing you or anybody else can do to me can change the fact that, as the opening line goes: ‘Every night that goes between / I feel a little less.’...Freedom…I am a totally free woman, and I am independent, and that’s exactly what I always wanted to be.”
Stevie Nicks (born 1948) first seen 2020 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On her song “Storm” in “Stevie Nicks on art, ageing and attraction: ‘Botox makes it look like you’re in a satanic cult!’” in The Guardian (2020 Oct 14)
“While I suppose this means I’ll spend this Easter in Sedona rather than Siberia, I couldn’t be more proud of being sanctioned by Vladimir Putin for standing up for freedom and human rights for the Russian people and against Putin’s deadly aggression in Ukraine. I will never stop my efforts to support democracy, free speech, and the rule of law in Russia,”
John McCain (1936–2018) first seen 2015 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Remarks after being banned from entering Russia (3 March 2015)
“The vast number of titles which are published each year—all of them are to the good, even if some of them may annoy or even repel us for a time. For none of us would trade freedom of expression and of ideas for the narrowness of the public censor. America is a free market for people who have something to say, and need not fear to say it.”
Hubert Humphrey (1911–1978) first seen 1967 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Address to the National Book Awards ceremony in New York City (March 8, 1967), reported in The New York Times (March 9, 1967), p. 42.
“When we surrender moral government to the courts, we have surrendered the very essence of freedom, we have surrendered its only real meaning--and we will not be free again until we get it back.”
Alan Keyes (born 1950) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Hillsdale, Michigan (7 February 2004)
“Next to the bestowal of life itself, the right to direct that life is God’s greatest gift to man.... Freedom of choice is more to be treasured than any possession earth can give. It is inherent in the spirit of man. It is a divine gift to every normal being... Everyone has this most precious of all life’s endowments--the gift of free agency--man’s inherited and inalienable right.”
David O. McKay (1873–1970) first seen 1962 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Improvement Era (February 1962) p. 86
“What is happening to Assange should terrify the press...The silence about the treatment of Assange is not only a betrayal of him but a betrayal of the freedom of the press itself. We will pay dearly for this complicity.... Assange is on his own. Each day is more difficult for him. This is by design. It is up to us to protest. We are his last hope, and the last hope, I fear, for a free press.”
Chris Hedges (born 1956) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Most of the paint I use is a liquid, flowing kind of paint. The brushes I use are more a sticks rather than brushes – the brush doesn't touch the surface on the canvas, it's just above ... [so] I am able to be more free and to have greater freedom and move about the canvas, with greater ease.”
Jackson Pollock (1912–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You don't get something for nothing You can't have freedom for free. You won't get wise With the sleep still in your eyes No matter what your dream might be. -- Something for Nothing (1976)”
Neil Peart (1952–2020) said by 2020 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There's a fine line between giving the sense of freedom and being too free.”
Joe Satriani (born 1956) first seen 1996 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Discussing how he always works out parts that use pitch axis theory, as quoted in Guitar Magazine (November 1996).
“People are afraid to die, because they do not know what is death. The gnani has died before his death, he saw that there was nothing to be afraid of. The moment you know your real being, you are afraid of nothing. Death gives freedom and power. (…) The happiness of being absolutely free is beyond description. (…).”
Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) said by 1981 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Sartre observed that he had never felt so free as during the German occupation when (as a member of the French resistance) he was in constant danger of being arrested and shot. Could there be a more conclusive proof that human beings are freer than they realize, and that their freedom is eroded by habit and laziness?”
Colin Wilson (1931–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Man cannot be free if he does not know that he is subject to necessity, because his freedom is always won in his never wholly successful attempts to liberate himself from necessity.”
Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) first seen 1958 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Human Condition (1958), part 3, chapter 16
“There are no choices without personal freedom, Buckeroo. It's not us who are dead inside. These things you find so weak and contemptible in us - these are just the hazards of being free”
David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The white fathers told us, I think therefore I am; and the black mothers in each of us-the poet-whispers in our dreams, I feel therefore I can be free. Poetry coins the language to express and charter this revolutionary awareness and demand, the implementation of that freedom.”
Audre Lorde (1934–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I get a little nauseated, perhaps, when I hear the phrase "freedom of the Press" used as freely as it is, knowing that a large part of our proprietorial Press is not free at all”
Harold Wilson (1916–1995) first seen 1974 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (5 December 1974)
“So far only Wright has positively revealed the state of mind of a people bursting with energy, untroubled by feudal remains or a feudal past, soaked to the bone in traditions of individual freedom and free association—traditions constantly held before them as the basis of their civilization, yet utterly unrealized in the face of automation and the threat of atomic annihilation.”
Richard Wright (1908–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Constance Webb Richard Wright: A Biography (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1968)
“It was our hope that Libya with its revolution would become a model of freedom, popular democracy and a state free from oppression and injustice. However Libya became another conventional state, even a dictatorial or police state. This is deeply regrettable. We are not like that, nor do we want to be like that.”
Muammar Gaddafi (1942–2011) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to heads of justice of the Jamahiriya (20 May 2009)
“I am a free woman who asserts her freedom by telling her story.”
J. M. Coetzee (born 1940) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am not a story, Mr Foe…I choose rather to tell of the Island, of myself and Crusoe and Friday and what we three did there: for I am a free woman who asserts her freedom by telling her story according to her own desire.”
J. M. Coetzee (born 1940) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nations are not truly great solely because the individuals composing them are numerous, free, and active; but they are great when these numbers, this freedom, and this activity are employed in the service of an ideal higher than that of an ordinary man, taken by himself.”
Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) first seen 1861 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Democracy" (1861)
“So this, in a nutshell, was my Enlightenment: free inquiry, universal education, individual freedom, the outlawing of private violence, and the protection of individual property rights.”
Ayaan Hirsi Ali (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Banditry is freedom, but in a peasant society few can be free. most are shackled by double chains of lordship and labour, one reinforcing the other. For what makes peasants the victim of authority is not as much their economic vulnerability - indeed they are as often as not virtually self sufficient - as their mobility.”
Eric Hobsbawm (1917–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And someone saved my life tonight, sugar bear. You almost had your hooks in me, didn't you dear? You nearly had me roped and tied, Altar-bound, hypnotized. Sweet freedom whispered in my ear, You're a butterfly. And butterflies are free to fly, Fly away, high away, bye bye.”
Elton John (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We have to ensure that it is structured organically, so that it functions like a person functions internally, like the organs function.. .First in the examination of the matter. Secondly in that one develops a concept of.. ..a social order that have never existed before. That simply means: to realize freedom, democracy and socialism – free democratic socialism.”
Joseph Beuys (1921–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Your honor, it is over now. This has never been a case of trying to get free. I didn't ever want freedom. Frankly, I wanted death for myself. This was a case to tell the world that I did what I did not for reasons of hate, I hated no one. I knew I was sick or evil, or both. Now I believe I was sick. The doctors have told me about my sickness and now I have some peace.”
Jeffrey Dahmer (1960–1994) said by 1994 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Each individual man and each individual country, according to the principles of natural reason, is free from bondage. Consequently, if there is some threat that might infringe upon a country’s freedom, then that country should not hesitate even to take up arms against all the countries of the world.”
Fukuzawa Yukichi (1835–1901) first seen 1872 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Gakumon no Susume [An Encouragement of Learning] (1872–1876).
“Perhaps some day soon we will have arrived at the point when we can look back with irony at the barbaric old times when in order to be free we had to keep our own brothers and sisters slaves or to be equal we were constrained to inhuman sacrifices of freedom.”
Antonio Negri (1933–2023) said by 2023 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Our freedom as free lances Advances towards its end; The earth compels, upon it Sonnets and birds descend; And soon, my friend, We shall have no time for dances.”
Louis MacNeice (1907–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Since God could have created a freedom in which there could be no evil (i.e., a state when men were happy and free and certain not to sin), it follows that He wished evil to exist. But evil offends Him. A commonplace case of masochism.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Isn't it human to go beyond the limits, to grow beyond oneself, to strive toward freedom! The round is free. [quote on the Circus, 1950's]”
Fernand Léger (1881–1955) said by 1955 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote from Fernand Léger - The Later Years, catalogue ed. Nicolas Serota, published by the Trustees of the Whitechapel Art gallery, London, Prestel Verlag, 1988, p. 17
“When all the dark clouds roll away And the sun begins to shine I see my freedom from across the way And it comes right in on time Well it shines so bright and it gives so much light And it comes from the sky above Makes me feel so free makes me feel like me And lights my life with love.”
Van Morrison (born 1945) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The United States, ever since its founding fathers, has had an ideal, a mission to the world. In the '40s, it sacrificed the lives of many young people to achieve the freedom of the world. Nowadays, we need to focus on democracy and free trade.”
Alan García (1949–2019) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: President Bush Welcomes President García of Peru to the White House (April 23, 2007)
“We are neither for a majority nor for a minority government; neither for democracy not for dictatorship. We are for the abolition of the gendarme. We are for the freedom of all and for free agreement, which will be there for all when no one has the means to force others, and all are involved in the good running of society. We are for anarchy.”
Errico Malatesta (1853–1932) said by 1932 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Vast quantities of U.S. bombers, tanks and guns have been sent against Ho Chi Minh and his freedom-fighters; and now we are told that soon it will be 'advisable' to send America GI's into Indo-China in order that the tin, rubber and tungsten of Southeast Asia be kept by the "free world"-meaning white Imperialism.”
Paul Robeson (1898–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Bisexuality means I am free and I am as likely to want to love a woman as I am likely to want to love a man, and what about that? Isn't that what freedom implies?”
June Jordan (1936–2002) first seen 1992 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A New Politics of Sexuality" in Technical Difficulties (1992) and Some of Us Did Not Die (2002)
“Another revolution! Naples free and all of Italy in insurrection! How wonderful has been the march of the human mind in these last thirty years … so may it be till the last link of the chains of slavery is broken and the banner of freedom waves over the whole earth!”
Frances Wright (1795–1852) first seen 1820 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to William James MacNeven (1820); quoted in "The Red Harlot of Liberty: The Rise and Fall of Frances Wright" by Kimberly Nichols in Newtopia Magazine (15 May 2013)