Freedom quotes
Quotations about freedom, outward and inward: Mandela on chains, Henley on the unconquerable soul, Epictetus on what is in our power, Seneca on taking back our time. Freedom is a favourite of misattributors, so each entry names its earliest verifiable source and, where it is a translation, the translator.
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
The rank is but the guinea’s stamp, / The Man’s the gowd for a’ that.
A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.
I have walked that long road to freedom. I have tried not to falter; I have made missteps along the way. But I have discovered the secret that after climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb.
In the future days which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. The first is freedom of speech and expression — everywhere in the world.
That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will, which I now exert to leave you.
I celebrate myself, and sing myself, / And what I assume you shall assume, / For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul, / I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
I wish I were a girl again, half savage and hardy, and free;
If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
Let there be justice for all. Let there be peace for all. Let there be work, bread, water, and salt for all.
I am the master of my fate, / I am the captain of my soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance / I have not winced nor cried aloud. / Under the bludgeonings of chance / My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.
Nowhere either with more quiet or more freedom from trouble does a man retire than into his own soul.
Of things some are in our power, and others are not.
Out of the night that covers me, / Black as the pit from pole to pole, / I thank whatever gods may be / For my unconquerable soul.
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.
Set yourself free for your own sake; gather and save your time, which till lately has been forced from you, or filched away, or has merely slipped from your hands.
I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.
The Soul selects her own Society – / Then – shuts the Door –
There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, / There is a rapture on the lonely shore, / There is society where none intrudes, / By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:
For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— / I took the one less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference.
We must reserve a backshop, wholly our own and entirely free, wherein to settle our true liberty, our principal solitude and retreat.
What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high; / Where knowledge is free;
You may write me down in history / With your bitter, twisted lies,