Freedom Quotes
Presidents are over-represented here. George W. Bush has the most entries, ahead of Thomas Jefferson and John F. Kennedy, which says more about how often presidents talk about freedom than about how well they put it. The better writing tends to be elsewhere: Madison in the Federalist Papers (1787), Hannah Arendt in The Human Condition (1958), Dalí in his diary.
Two of the most repeated freedom quotes are flagged. “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it” is credited to Voltaire. Evelyn Beatrice Hall wrote it in The Friends of Voltaire (1906), as a summary of his views. “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance” is credited to Jefferson, but nobody has found it in his writings. The closest early version is by John Philpot Curran, in a speech of 1790.
A University should be a place of light, of liberty, and of learning.
The liberty of the individual ends where it starts to harm the interests of the collective.
The advance of liberty is the path to both a safer and better world.
Freedom, by its nature, cannot be imposed. It must be chosen.
Under democracy individual liberty of opinion and action is jealously guarded.
The dearest ambition of a slave is not liberty but to have a slave of his own.
In America, through pressure of conformity, there is freedom of choice, but nothing to choose from.