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.
I am afraid of a new barbarism which is killing
man's freedom.
I’m a writer and I think that freedom of speech is essential if we are going to have literature.
Freedom is the ability to be themselves relative to each other and to the world.
So much is now lost in the city I love: the freedom to tell the truth.
Freedom is not a thing that we have, but a thing that we do.
"True liberation comes not only from political freedom but also from economic and social justice."