Favorite Inspiring Quotes - Freedom, Democracy
The Freedom is the ultimate responsibility
“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”
(“Niemand ist mehr Sklave, als der sich für frei hält, ohne es zu sein.")
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Elective Affinities)
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
― Benjamin Franklin (Memoirs of the life & writings of Benjamin Franklin)
“Freedom, Sancho, is one of the most precious gifts that heaven has bestowed upon men. No treasures that the earth holds buried or the sea conceals can compare with it. For freedom, as for honour, life may and should be ventured. And the opposite is also true - captivity is the worst evil that can befall men...”
― Miguel de Cervantes (Don Quijote de la Mancha)
“If you want total security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking... is freedom.”
― Dwight D. Eisenhower
“If you want freedom, you should giveup security and you should embrase adventure and risk.”
― Anonymous
“Freedom is a road seldom traveled by the multitude.”
― Frederick Douglass
“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”
― Thomas Jefferson
“Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.”
― Rosa Luxemburg
“Better to die on one's feet than to live on one's knees.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre
“Love the freedom more than your life!”
― Anonymous
“Better to die fighting for freedom then be a prisoner all the days of your life.”
― Bob Marley
“The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.”
― G.K. Chesterton
“Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.”
― Isaac Asimov (Foundation)
“The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me.”
― Ayn Rand
“I prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“Even a second of freedom is worth more than a lifetime of bondage.”
― James Frey (A Million Little Pieces)
“Life without liberty is like a body without spirit.”
― Kahlil Gibran (The Vision: Reflections on the Way of the Soul)
“Now that she had nothing to lose, she was free.”
― Paulo Coelho (Eleven Minutes)
“The things you own end up owning you. It's only after you lose everything that you're free... to do anything.”
― Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
“He who has overcome his fears will truly be free.”
― Aristotle
“I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.”
― Robert A. Heinlein
“I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom.”
― Bob Dylan
“Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.”
― Sigmund Freud (Civilization and Its Discontents)
“Responsibility is the price of freedom.”
― Elbert Hubbard
“Freedom is the privilege of exercising responsibility.”
― John Spencer Yantiss
“Freedom and responsibility is the same thing.”
― Alfonso Cuaron
“Some tourists think Amsterdam is a city of sin, but in truth it is a city of freedom. And in freedom, most people find sin.”
― John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
“Forgetfulness is a form of freedom.”
― Kahlil Gibran
“The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive.”
― John Green (Looking for Alaska)
“An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind.”
― Mahatma Gandhi
“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”
― Mahatma Gandhi (All Men are Brothers: Autobiographical Reflections)
“Those who choose to be servants know the most about being free.”
― Janette Oke
“You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once.”
― Robert A. Heinlein
“The human race is a monotonous affair. Most people spend the greatest part of their time working in order to live, and what little freedom remains so fills them with fear that they seek out any and every means to be rid of it.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (The Sorrows of Young Werther)
“I tell my students, 'When you get these jobs that you have been so brilliantly trained for, just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else. This is not just a grab-bag candy game.”
― Toni Morrison
“Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: Freedom for slave owners.”
― Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
“The American people are free to do exactly what they are told.”
― Ward Churchill
“Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.”
― Mahatma Gandhi
“None but ourselves can free our minds.”
― Bob Marley
“War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.”
― George Orwell (1984)
“There was beauty in the idea of freedom, but it was an illusion. Every human heart was chained by love.”
― Cassandra Clare Lady Midnight)
“Democracy is not freedom. Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to eat for lunch. Freedom comes from the recognition of certain rights which may not be taken, not even by a 99% vote.”
― Marvin Simkin
“Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.”
― H. L. Mencken
"The third class brain is happy only when it thinks with majority. The second class brain is happy when it thinks with the minority. First class brain is happy when it thinks."
― Ian Fleming
“The skill of the politician consists in guessing what people can be brought to think advantageous to themselves; the skill of the experts consists in calculating what really is advantageous, provided people can be brought to think so. (The proviso is essential, because measures which arouse serious resentment are seldom advantageous, whatever merits they may have otherwise.) The power of the politician, in a democracy, depends upon his adopting the opinions which seem right to the average man. It is useless to urge that politicians ought to be high-minded enough to advocate what enlightened opinion considers good, because if they do they are swept aside for others.”
― Bertrand Russell, Sceptical Essays
“Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.”
― C. S. Lewis
“Democracy - method provoking people to do what the rulers want, living the impression in people, that people do what they want.”
― Bertrand Russell
Politics it supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.
― Ronald Reagan
On Democracy in America | Howard Zinn
On Democracy in America | Noam Chomsky