60+ Freedom and Liberty Quotes to Inspire Justice, Independence, and the Power of Choice
Freedom and liberty are deeply interconnected concepts, both representing the power to act, speak, or think without unnecessary constraints. Freedom is a broader term, often referring to personal independence, the absence of oppression, and the ability to make choices. Liberty, however, emphasizes the societal and legal framework that protects those freedoms, ensuring they are upheld responsibly. Together, they form the foundation of human dignity, empowering individuals to live authentically while respecting the rights of others.
- “The sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality.”
- “Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”
- “Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can’t ride you unless your back is bent.”
- “Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself.”
- “He only earns his freedom and his life who takes them every day by storm.”
- “This is the highest wisdom that I own; freedom and life are earned by those alone who conquer them each day anew.”
- “Nothing has been purchased more dearly than the little bit of reason and sense of freedom which now constitutes our pride.”
- “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.”
- “Excess of liberty, whether it lies in state or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery.”
- “Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty.”
- “There have been in this century only one great man and one great thing: Napoleon and liberty. For want of the great man, let us have the great thing.”
- “Freedom in art, freedom in society, this is the double goal towards which all consistent and logical minds must strive.”
- “When liberty returns, I will return.”
- “Every diminution of the liberty of the press is followed by a diminution of civilization. Wherever we see the freedom of the press interfered with, there we see the nutrition of the human family interrupted.”
- “All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.”
- “True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.”
- “The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over the government.”
- “Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been effort stored up in the past.”
- “Order without liberty and liberty without order are equally destructive.”
- “Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
- “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.”
- “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
- “I sometimes think that the price of liberty is not so much eternal vigilance as eternal dirt.”
- “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”
- “It is a strange desire, to seek power, and to lose liberty; or to seek power over others, and to lose power over a man’s self.”
- “Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.”
- “Free people, remember this maxim: we may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is once lost.”
- “By nature all men are equal in liberty, but not in other endowments.”
- “Necessity is blind until it becomes conscious. Freedom is the consciousness of necessity.”
- “The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom. For in all the states of created beings capable of law, where there is no law, there is no freedom.”
- “All mankind… being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions.”
- “I hope never to marry in this way; I wish to make my wife happy, but not to become rich by her means, so I will let things alone and enjoy my golden freedom till I am so well off that I can support both wife and children.”
- “It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.”
- “Atlas was permitted the opinion that he was at liberty, if he wished, to drop the Earth and creep away; but this opinion was all that he was permitted.”
- “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”
- “In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility – I welcome it.”
- “We cannot expect that all nations will adopt like systems, for conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.”
- “The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender, or submission.”
- “Israel was not created in order to disappear – Israel will endure and flourish. It is the child of hope and the home of the brave. It can neither be broken by adversity nor demoralized by success. It carries the shield of democracy and it honors the sword of freedom.”
- “The best road to progress is freedom’s road.”
- “Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.”
- “The path we have chosen for the present is full of hazards, as all paths are. The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender, or submission.”
- “The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.”
- “Money won’t create success, the freedom to make it will.”
- “Let freedom reign. The sun never set on so glorious a human achievement.”
- “There is no such thing as part freedom.”
- “There is no such thing as part freedom.”
- “There is no easy walk to freedom anywhere, and many of us will have to pass through the valley of the shadow of death again and again before we reach the mountaintop of our desires.”
- “Communists have always played an active role in the fight by colonial countries for their freedom, because the short-term objects of Communism would always correspond with the long-term objects of freedom movements.”
- “I will not leave South Africa, nor will I surrender. Only through hardship, sacrifice and militant action can freedom be won. The struggle is my life. I will continue fighting for freedom until the end of my days.”
- “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.”
- “The names of Dingane and Bambata, Hintsa and Makana, Squngthi and Dalasile, Moshoeshoe and Sekhukhuni, were praised as the glory of the entire African nation. I hoped then that life might offer me the opportunity to serve my people and make my own humble contribution to their freedom struggle.”
- “Our single most important challenge is therefore to help establish a social order in which the freedom of the individual will truly mean the freedom of the individual.”
- “Where globalization means, as it so often does, that the rich and powerful now have new means to further enrich and empower themselves at the cost of the poorer and weaker, we have a responsibility to protest in the name of universal freedom.”
- “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”
- “Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as a heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors.”
- “Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and under the rule of a just God, cannot long retain it.”
- “We find ourselves under the government of a system of political institutions, conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty, than any of which the history of former times tells us.”
- “We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
- “He who would be no slave must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves and, under a just God, cannot long retain it.”
- “In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free – honorable alike in that we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.”
- “The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty. Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of liberty.”
- “To deprive a man of his natural liberty and to deny to him the ordinary amenities of life is worse than starving the body; it is starvation of the soul, the dweller in the body.”
- “Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err.”
- “What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?”
- “Violent means will give violent freedom. That would be a menace to the world and to India herself.”
- “Freedom is never dear at any price. It is the breath of life. What would a man not pay for living?”