Quotes on freedom

Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.
Abraham Lincoln
It is easy to take liberty for granted, when you have never had it taken from you.
There are two freedoms – the false, where a man is free to do what he likes; the true, where he is free to do what he ought.
Charles Kingsley
Men fight for freedom, then they begin to accumulate laws to take it away from themselves.
Freedom is the will to be responsible to ourselves.
~Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, 1888
Freedom is that instant between when someone tells you to do something and when you decide how to respond.
Jeffrey Borenstein
Only free men can negotiate; prisoners cannot enter into contracts. Your freedom and mine cannot be separated.
Nelson Mandela
“We are driven by five genetic needs: survival, love and belonging, power, freedom, and fun.”
William Glasser
It is a strange fact that freedom and equality, the two basic ideas of democracy, are to some extent contradictory. Logically considered, freedom and equality are mutually exclusive, just as society and the individual are mutually exclusive.
~Thomas Mann
All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.
Winston Churchill
So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.
~Voltaire
“Freedom lies in being bold.”
Robert Frost
People hardly ever make use of the freedom they have. For example, the freedom of thought. Instead they demand freedom of speech as a compensation.
~Soren Kierkegaard
Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!
~Patrick Henry
If you want to be free, there is but one way; it is to guarantee an equally full measure of liberty to all your neighbors. There is no other.
~Carl Schurz
“Man is a being with free will; therefore, each man is potentially good or evil, and it’s up to him and only him (through his reasoning mind) to decide which he wants to be.”
Ayn Rand
The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.
~Hubert H. Humphrey
Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Men fight for liberty and win it with hard knocks. Their children, brought up easy, let it slip away again, poor fools. And their grandchildren are once more slaves.
~D.H. Lawrence, Classical American Literature, 1922