Quotes on Freedom

Democracy feeds on argument, on the discussion as to the right way forward. This is the reason why respecting the opinion of others belongs to democracy.

The human race has entered a stage where we are all dependent on each other. No other country or nation should be regarded in total separation from another, let alone pitted against another.

Democracy and violence can ill go together.

Democracy is not a state in which people act like sheep.

Whenever you have truth it must be given with love, or the message and the messenger will be rejected.

There is no reason to believe that there is one law for families and another for nations.

Nonviolence is not a weapon of the weak. It is a weapon of the strongest and bravest.

In the long run the ideas of the majority, however detrimental they may be, will carry on. The future of mankind depends on the ability of the elite to influence public opinion in the right direction.

Despots and democratic majorities are drunk with power.

It is wrong to ask who will rule. The ability to vote a bad government out of office is enough. That is democracy.

Anarchy is the sure consequence of tyranny; for no power that is not limited by laws can ever be protected by them.

Life in freedom is not easy, and democracy is not perfect.

The well being of democracies regardless of their type and status is dependent on one small technical detail: The right to vote. Everything else is secondary.

Our democracy is but a name. We vote? What does that mean? It means that we choose between two bodies of real, though not avowed, autocrats. We choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

The argument that capital punishment degrades the state is moonshine, for if that were true then it would degrade the state to send men to war... The state, in truth, is degraded in its very nature: a few butcheries cannot do it any further damage.

It is the fundamental theory of all the more recent American law...that the average citizen is half-witted, and hence not to be trusted to either his own devices or his own thoughts.

Tyrants are always assassinated too late. That is their great excuse.

Democracy does not create strong ties between people. But it does make living together easier.

We must not allow ourselves to become like the system we oppose. We cannot afford to use methods of which we will be ashamed when we look back, when we say, '...we shouldn't have done that.' We must remember, my friends, that we have been given a wonderful cause. The cause of freedom! And you and I must be those who will walk with heads held high. We will say, 'We used methods that can stand the harsh scrutiny of history.'

Freedom is not a gift of heaven, you have to fight for it every day

Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere. Our support goes to those who struggle to gain those rights or keep them.