Quotes on Freedom

And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about.

If we wish to free ourselves from enslavement, we must choose freedom and the responsibility this entails.

A man is either free or he is not. There cannot be any apprenticeship for freedom.

Where the world ceases to be the scene of our personal hopes and wishes, where we face it as free beings admiring, asking and observing, there we enter the realm of Art and Science.

Our country, if it does justice to itself, will be the workshop of liberty to the civilized world.

Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.

Hanging one scoundrel, it appears, does not deter the next. Well, what of it? The first one is at least disposed of.

The cosmos is a gigantic flywheel making 10,000 revolutions per minute. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it.

Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable.

Enlightenment is ego's ultimate disappointment.

Woe to that nation whose literature is disturbed by the intervention of power. Because that is not just a violation against "freedom of print," it is the closing down of the heart of the nation, a slashing to pieces of its memory.

Will is wish, and liberty is power.

We fight not to enslave, but to set a country free, and to make room upon the earth for honest men to live in.

A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.

Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone might be looking.

I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.

Keep fighting for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don't forget to have fun doin' it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce.

The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.

A sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all serious daring starts from within.

When you release the wrongdoer from the wrong, you cut a malignant tumor out of your inner life. You set a prisoner free, but you discover that the real prisoner was yourself.

Perhaps I am naive, but I believe that at this point in history, the greatest danger to our freedom and way of life comes from the reasonable fear of omniscient State powers kept in check by nothing more than policy documents.