Do you often think about freedom, peace, and individual liberty? Freedom is one of the most important human rights. Living a free and independent existence is not only an aspiration of the human mind but also a universal liberty of every human being. We’ve created the following collection of liberating freedom quotes to raise awareness for all those whose freedom is restricted. Be sure to also have a look at our fabulous peace quotes.
When you grow up in a free society in which your rights as an individual are respected, the true value of freedom may not always be fully understood. If you are living in a country that allows freedom of speech and the unrestricted pursuit of happiness, you can count yourself quite lucky.
“Freedom is one of the deepest and noblest aspirations of the human spirit.”
Ronald Reagan
Being able to live a free life is truly precious. One may only be able to profoundly appreciate freedom by looking at how hard people had to fight for it and how much they suffered because of it. In our present day and age, we have grown used to freedom. We think that liberty is taken for granted and seldom think about how fragile it is.
Since the dawn of mankind, people like you and me have been enslaved by tyrants and oppressed by dictators. Thousands if not millions never were able to live a free and prosperous life. Instead, they were forced to obey the will and commands of their masters during their entire life.
110 Liberating Freedom Quotes
It’s difficult to find the right words to eloquently emphasize the importance of freedom. Luckily, numerous philosophers, poets, and leaders have articulated their profound thoughts about freedom in the most insightful ways. That’s where our collection of powerful freedom quotes comes in quite handy because we’ve handpicked the finest statements for you. Enjoy reading.
Here’s our collection of powerful freedom quotes
1.
“Better to die on one’s feet than to live on one’s knees.”
Jean Paul Sartre
2.
“For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.”
Nelson Mandela
3.
“The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. […] Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical; our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity.”
Charlie Chaplin
4.
“If you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else. This is not just a grab-bag candy game.”
Toni Morrison
5.
“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.”
Ronald Reagan
6.
“I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom.”
Bob Dylan
7.
“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.”
Charlotte Brontë
8.
“I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.”
Robert A. Heinlein
9.
“Letting go gives us freedom, and freedom is the only condition for happiness. If, in our heart, we still cling to anything – anger, anxiety, or possessions – we cannot be free.”
Thich Nhat Hanh
10.
“If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.”
Noam Chomsky
11.
“The personality susceptible to the dream of limitless freedom is a personality also prone, should the dream ever sour, to misanthropy and rage.”
Jonathan Franzen
12.
“I have never thought, for my part, that man’s freedom consists in his being able to do whatever he wills, but that he should not, by any human power, be forced to do what is against his will.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
13.
“Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves”
Abraham Lincoln
14.
“People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.”
Søren Kierkegaard
15.
“Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.”
Virginia Woolf
Can’t get enough of freedom quotes? Read on…
16.
“We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.”
William Faulkner
17.
“Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.”
Abraham Lincoln
18.
“He who has overcome his fears will truly be free.”
Aristotle
19.
“This is my doctrine: Give every other human being every right you claim for yourself.”
Robert G. Ingersoll
20.
“People have only as much liberty as they have the intelligence to want and the courage to take.”
Emma Goldman
21.
“Every man having been born free and master of himself, no one else may under any pretext whatever subject him without his consent. To assert that the son of a slave is born a slave is to assert that he is not born a man.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
22.
“Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.”
George Bernard Shaw
23.
“A man can be himself only so long as he is alone; and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom; for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.”
Arthur Schopenhauer
24.
“Freedom is the only worthy goal in life. It is won by disregarding things that lie beyond our control.”
Epictetus
25.
“The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.”
David Foster Wallace
These freedom quotes are liberating
26.
“True freedom is impossible without a mind made free by discipline.”
Mortimer J. Adler
27.
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
Benjamin Franklin
28.
“The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it.”
John Stuart Mill
29.
“Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.”
Mahatma Gandhi
30.
“No one loses anyone, because no one owns anyone. That is the true experience of freedom: having the most important thing in the world without owning it”
Paulo Coelho
31.
“Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.”
Sigmund Freud
32.
“Our task must be to free ourselves… by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and it’s beauty.”
Albert Einstein
33.
“I am an American; free born and free bred, where I acknowledge no man as my superior, except for his own worth, or as my inferior, except for his own demerit.”
Theodore Roosevelt
34.
“Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry his own weight, this is a frightening prospect.”
Eleanor Roosevelt
35.
“Laws alone can not secure freedom of expression; in order that every man presents his views without penalty there must be the spirit of tolerance in the entire population.”
Albert Einstein
36.
“A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.”
John Adams
37.
“Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.”
John F. Kennedy
38.
“All sentient beings should have at least one right—the right not to be treated as property”
Gary L. Francione
39.
“Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.”
Frederick Douglass
40.
“Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.”
John Milton
Freedom quotes like this are truly powerful
41.
“If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”
George Washington
42.
“If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary 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.”
John Stuart Mill
43.
“Today as always, men fall into two groups: slaves and free men. Whoever does not have two-thirds of his day for himself, is a slave, whatever he may be: a statesman, a businessman, an official, or a scholar.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
44.
“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
45.
“The secret of happiness is freedom, the secret of freedom is courage.”
Carrie Jones
46.
“The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are.”
Jim Morrison
47.
“Freedom lies in being bold.”
Robert Frost
48.
“Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does. It is up to you to give life a meaning.”
Jean-Paul Sartre
49.
“We are going to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery, for though others may free the body, none but ourselves can free the mind. Mind is our only ruler; sovereign.”
Marcus Garvey
50.
“You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don’t ever count on having both at once.”
Robert A. Heinlein
These freedoms quotes are filled with wisdom
51.
“A friend is someone who gives you total freedom to be yourself.”
Jim Morrison
52.
“Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another.”
Toni Morrison
53.
“Frederick Douglass taught that literacy is the path from slavery to freedom. There are many kinds of slavery and many kinds of freedom, but reading is still the path.”
Carl Sagan
54.
“When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.”
Ralph Ellison
55.
“Excess of liberty, whether it lies in state or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery.”
Plato
56.
“We have to free half of the human race, the women, so that they can help to free the other half.”
Emmeline Pankhurst
57.
“Faith in God is an opening up, a letting go, a deep trust, a free act of love – but sometimes it was so hard to love.”
Yann Martel
58.
“If you want total security, go to prison. There you’re fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking… is freedom. „
Dwight D. Eisenhower
59.
“Better to die fighting for freedom then be a prisoner all the days of your life.”
Bob Marley
60.
“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it.”
Thomas Paine
61.
“Free societies are societies in motion, and with motion comes tension, dissent, friction. Free people strike sparks, and those sparks are the best evidence of freedom’s existence.”
Salman Rushdie
62.
“The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty.”
James Madison
63.
“Mankind only exiles the one whose large spirit rebels against injustice and tyranny. He who does not prefer exile to servility is not free in the true and necessary sense of freedom.”
Kahlil Gibran
64.
“I prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
65.
“Life without liberty is like a body without spirit.”
Kahlil Gibran
66.
“Some birds are not meant to be caged, that’s all. Their feathers are too bright, their songs too sweet and wild. So you let them go […] and the part of you that knows it was wrong to imprison them in the first place rejoices.”
Stephen King
67.
“As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.”
Abraham Lincoln
68.
“The man who does not do his own thinking is a slave, and is a traitor to himself and to his fellowmen.”
Robert Ingersoll
69.
“The true miracle lies in our eagerness to allow, appreciate, and honor the uniqueness, and freedom of each sentient being to sing the song of their heart.”
Amit Ray
70.
“Freedom is something you assume, then you wait for someone to try to take it away. The degree to which you resist is the degree to which you are free…”
Utah Phillips
71.
“Thou canst not touch the freedom of my mind.”
John Milton
72.
“Freedom comes from the recognition of certain rights which may not be taken, not even by a 99% vote.”
Marvin Simkin
73.
“A man’s spirit is free, but his pride binds him with chains of suffocation in a prison of his own insecurities”
Jeremy Aldana
74.
“Liberty without learning is always in peril and learning without liberty is always in vain.”
John F. Kennedy
75.
“It takes getting everything you ever wanted, and then losing it to know what true freedom is.”
Lana Del Rey
Here are even more freedom quotes for you
76.
“Man cannot be freed by the same injustice that enslaved it.”
Pierce Brown
77.
“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”
Thomas Jefferson
78.
“Books are like imprisoned souls till someone takes them down from a shelf and frees them.”
Samuel Butler
79.
“It is the preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.”
Bertrand Russell
80.
“Posterity! you will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make good use of it.”
John Adams
81.
“Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free.”
Jim Morrison
82.
“You can’t hold a man down without staying down with him.”
Booker T. Washington
83.
Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.”
Bertrand Russell
84.
“There is a huge amount of freedom that comes to you when you take nothing personally.”
Don Miguel Ruiz
85.
“Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?”
Kurt Vonnegut
86.
“When a man is denied the right to live the life he believes in, he has no choice but to become an outlaw.”
Nelson Mandela
87.
“Happiness depends on being free, and freedom depends on being courageous.”
Marie Rutkoski
88.
“I hope we once again have reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited.”
Ronald Reagan
89.
“Forgetfulness is a form of freedom.”
Kahlil Gibran
90.
“He who is brave is free”
Seneca
91.
“The freedom to criticize ideas, any ideas – even if they are sincerely held beliefs – is one of the fundamental freedoms of society.”
Rowan Atkinson
92.
“Even a second of freedom is worth more than a lifetime of bondage.”
James Frey
93.
“Most modern freedom is at root fear. It is not so much that we are too bold to endure rules; it is rather that we are too timid to endure responsibilities.”
G.K. Chesterton
94.
“You say: I am not free. But I have raised and lowered my arm. Everyone understands that this illogical answer is an irrefutable proof of freedom.”
Leo Tolstoy
95.
“To be given dominion over another is a hard thing; to wrest dominion over another is a wrong thing; to give dominion of yourself to another is a wicked thing.”
Toni Morrison
96.
“It is impossible to enslave, mentally or socially, a Bible-reading people. The principles of the Bible are the groundwork of human freedom.”
Horace Greeley
97.
“We feel free because we lack the very language to articulate our unfreedom.”
Slavoj Žižek
98.
“It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.”
Edmund Burke
99.
“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.”
John Philpot Curran
100.
“Until every soul is freely permitted to investigate every book, and creed, and dogma for itself, the world cannot be free.”
Robert G. Ingersoll
101.
“Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
102.
“I think it only makes sense to seek out and identify structures of authority, hierarchy, and domination in every aspect of life, and to challenge them; unless a justification for them can be given, they are illegitimate, and should be dismantled, to increase the scope of human freedom.”
Noam Chomsky
103.
“The difference between technology and slavery is that slaves are fully aware that they are not free.”
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
104.
“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.”
Søren Kierkegaard
105.
“Free at last, Free at last, Thank God almighty we are free at last.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
106.
“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”
Samuel Adams
107.
“I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.”
Audre Lorde
108.
“Freedom is what we do with what is done to us.”
Jean-Paul Sartre
109.
“Whoever will be free must make himself free. Freedom is no fairy gift to fall into a man’s lap. What is freedom? To have the will to be responsible for one’s self.”
Max Stirner
110.
“Freedom is not something that anybody can be given. Freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be”
James Baldwin
I hope you enjoyed this collection of powerful freedom quotes. What would you do if freedom was taken away from you?
Stay victorious!
