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.
Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.
No people are truly free until they can determine their own destiny.
Less glory is more liberty. When the drum is silent, reason sometimes speaks.
Only a work democracy can create the foundation of genuine freedom.
The liberty of the people, he says, whom power restrains unduly, perishes through liberty.
I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.
Liberty is not merely a privilege to be conferred; it is a habit to be acquired.
To will oneself moral and to will oneself free are one and the same decision.
Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.