Freedom Quotes

“Freedom was my daring travel companion on the thrilling ride of life.”

“What a shame it would be, if upon death, one who lived his life following his religion, were to find out that there is no Heaven and no Hell and that all souls just go out and back to the places where they came from, finally free from the monsters that hung onto their backs while they were in this world! And what a shame it would be, if upon death, one who lived life with no thought of her own soul, were to find out that some souls go to some place wonderful and some souls go to some place horrible! But what a shame it would be, for anyone, to live a life here on this Earth full of fear, void of freedom and happiness, meaningless and empty, due to either the probability of Heaven and Hell or the absence thereof! So what is really true, is that you and I have bones in our bodies and have flesh under our skin and we ought to live this life right here in such a way that creates Heaven on Earth and puts Hell far away.”

“Private property is redundant. "Public property" is an oxymoron. All legit property is private. If property isn't private it's stolen.”

“Lights," I said softly. This had become my favorite word over the past week. In my mind, it had become synonymous with freedom.”

“But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness, I want sin.''In fact,' said Mustapha Mond, 'you're claiming the right to be unhappy.' 'All right then,' said the Savage defiantly, 'I'm claiming the right to be unhappy.''Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind.' There was a long silence. 'I claim them all,' said the Savage at last.Mustapha Mond shrugged his shoulders. 'You're welcome," he said.”

“Since Castro took power, the Cuban people have been denied basic human freedoms. No freedom of religion, no freedom of the press, no political freedom. And the regime uses brutality and violence to suppress these freedoms and impose its will.”

“Some bow to the spirit of collectivism, while you ascend to the spirit of your own eclectic rhythms.”

“If you want to experience joy and happiness in life, you must free your mind. Don't become a prisoner to your thoughts. Don't allow your perceptions to be the only views you believe. Allow truth to penetrate your core as it sets you free”

“I think about freedom as not only as the absence of oppression but also the presence of justice and joy.”

“One day I shall sit down and ponder!I shall ponder over how I used to wanderBut I shall never wander anymoreA day is coming! Oh yes a day is coming! A day is coming when I shall see redemptionNo more wandering! Oh yes! No more wandering! A day is surely comingOne day I shall sit down and remember!I shall remember how arduous the journey wasBut I shall never see an arduous journey anymoreA day is coming! Oh yes a day is coming! A day is coming when there shall never be a journey to takeNo more journeys! Oh yes! No more journeys! A day is surely comingOne day I shall sit down and count the footprints!I shall count the footprints of the tyrants and the oppressorsBut I shall never see tyranny and oppression anymoreA day is coming! Oh yes a day is coming! A day is coming when I shall see redemptionNor more tyranny! Oh yes! No more oppression! A day is surely comingOne day I shall sit down and think about the rejections.I shall remember the rejections from people far and nearBut I shall never experience their rejections anymoreA day is coming! Oh yes a day is coming! A day is coming when I shall never see rejectionNo more rejections! Oh yes! No more rejections! A day is surely comingOne day I shall come to an understanding!I shall come to understand the things that were far from my understandingAnd they shall never be far from my understanding anymore A day is coming! Oh yes a day is coming! A day is coming when I shall have an understandingAn understanding! Oh yes! An understanding! A day is surely coming”

“DOGMA: a political belief one is unreasonably committed to, such as the notion that freedom is good and slavery is bad.BIAS: predeliction for a particular dogma. For example, the feminist bias is that women are equal to men and the male chauvinist bias is that women are inferior. The unbiased view is that the truth lies somewhere in between.(an early comment on backlash, from "Glossary for the Eighties")”

“The stars are brilliant at this time of night and I wander these streets like a ritual I don’t dare to break for darling, the times are quite glorious.I left him by the water’s edge,still waving long after the ship was goneand if someone would have screamed my name I wouldn’t have heard for I’ve said goodbye so many times in my short life that farewells are a muscular task and I’ve taught them well. There’s a place by the side of the railway near the lake where I grew up and I used to go there to burry things and start anew. I used to go there to say goodbye. I was young and did not know many people but I had hidden things inside that I never dared to show and in silence I tried to kill them, one way or the other,leaving sin on my body scrubbing tears off with saltand I built my rituals in farewells. Endings I still cling to. So I go to the ocean to say goodbye.He left that morning, the last words still echoing in my headand though he said he’d come back one day I know a broken promise from a right onefor I have used them myself and there is no coming back.Minds like ours are can’t be tamed and the price for freedom is the price we pay.I turned away from the oceanas not to fall for its pleafor it used to seduce and consume meand there was this one nighta few years back and I was not yet accustomed to farewellsand just like now I stood waving long after the ship was gone.But I was younger then and easily fooledand the ocean was deep and dark and blueand I took my shoes off to let the water freeze my bones.I waded until I could no longer walk and it was too cold to swim but still I kept on walking at the bottom of the sea for I could not tell the difference between the ocean and the lack of someone I loved and I had not yet learned how the task of moving on is as necessary as survival.Then days passed by and I spent them with my work and now I’m writing letters I will never dare to send.But there is this one day every year or sowhen the burden gets too heavyand I collect my belongings I no longer needand make my way to the ocean to burn and drown and start anewand it is quite wonderful, setting fire to my chains and flames on written wordsand I stand there, starring deep into the heat until they’re all gone. Nothing left to hold me back.You kissed me that morning as if you’d never done it before and never would again and now I write another letter that I will never dare to send, collecting memories of loss like chains wrapped around my veins,and if you see a fire from the shore tonightit’s my chains going up in flames. The time of moon i quite glorious. We could have been so glorious.”

“I just kept it real and had the freedom to do what I want. It's not designed for any age group. It's not made for radio. There are no edits. The whole album contains explicit lyrics but that's because you need it.”

“Freedom is the one value conservatives place above all others, yet time and again, their ideal of freedom ignores the growing imbalance of power in our society that's eroding the freedoms of most people.”

“The fact is that men encounter more complicity in their woman companions than the oppressor usually finds in the oppressed; and in bad faith they use it as a pretext to declare that woman wanted the destiny they imposed on her. We have seen that in reality her whole education conspires to bar her from paths of revolt and adventure; all of society - beginning with her respected parents - lies to her in extolling the high value of love, devotion, and the gift of self and in concealing the fact that neither lover, husband nor children will be disposed to bear the burdensome responsibility of it. She cheerfully accepts these lies because they invite her to take the easy slope: and that is the worst of the crimes committed against her; from her childhood and throughout her life, she is spoiled, she is corrupted by the fact that this resignation, tempting to any existent anxious about her freedom, is mean to be her vocation; if one encourages a child to be lazy by entertaining him all day, without giving him the occasion to study, without showing him its value, no one will say when he reaches the age of man that he chose to be incapable and ignorant; this is how the woman is raised, without ever being taught the necessity of assuming her own existence; she readily lets herself count on the protection, love, help and guidance of others; she lets herself be fascinated by the hope of being able to realise her being without doing anything. She is wrong to yield to this temptation; but the man is ill advised to reproach her for it since it is he himself who tempted her.”

“Writing and other efforts to produce an enduring piece of artwork is a gallant response to the prospect of death. Every person knows that they must die, and consequently people build elaborate symbolic defenses mechanism to shield themselves from knowledge of their impermanence. Every person possesses autonomy of the will, the ability to choose how to conduct their life. The freedom to act towards objects is ultimately useless; it provides a person with no sense of meaning and supplies no purpose to life because a mere collection of objects will not transcend their physical demise. An artist does not deny their impermanence but embraces the prospect of their death by laboring to create a monument of their existence that will survive their expiry.”

“People are dying in vain because this country isn't holding their end of the bargain up as far as, you know, giving freedom and justice and liberty to everybody.”

“It's like freedom of speech - they can't tell you not to do it. When no one will put you on at a club or venue, you can go to the street, just start singing, and get a lot of good feedback from people as they walk by. I got really good at lip reading and seeing if a song is working. It was a good way to start.”

“In a democracy, there will be more complaints but less crisis, in a dictatorship more silence but much more suffering.”

“When men reject reason, they have no means left for dealing with one another — except brute, physical force.”