freedom
Quotations
Quotations on the topic of ‘freedom’ from all listed authors (click on the ‘click to view listing’ links to view each quote in full).
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“Freedom would be not to choose between black and white but to abjure such prescribed choices.” -Theodor Adorno
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“Punk has always been about doing things your own way. What it represents for me is ultimate freedom and a sense of individuality.” -Billie Joe Armstrong
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“For us democracy is a question of human dignity. And human dignity is political freedom.” -Olof Palme
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“The United Nations is designed to make possible lasting freedom and independence for all its members.” -Harry S. Truman
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“Justice is never given it is exacted and the struggle must be continuous for freedom is never a final fact, but a continuing evolving process to higher and higher levels of human, social, economic, political and religious relationship.” -A. Philip Randolph
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“Power in defense of freedom is greater than power in behalf of tyranny and oppression.” -Malcolm X
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“No protracted war can fail to endanger the freedom of a democratic country.” -Alexis de Tocqueville
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“As soon as laws are necessary for men, they are no longer fit for freedom.” -Pythagoras
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“One of the interesting things here is that the people who should be shaping the future are politicians. But the political framework itself is so dead and closed that people look to other sources, like artists, because art and music allow people a certain freedom.” -Thom Yorke
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“Freedom is a right ultimately defended by the sacrifice of America’s servicemen and women.” -Arnold Schwarzenegger
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“We have convinced over one billion members of the Islamic faith that we are prejudiced against their religion, that we would deny them freedom of religion, that we want suppress their culture and invade their governments.” -Theodore C. Sorensen
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“137 years later, Memorial Day remains one of America’s most cherished patriotic observances. The spirit of this day has not changed – it remains a day to honor those who died defending our freedom and democracy.” -Doc Hastings
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“To become self-aware, people must be allowed to hear a plurality of opinions and then make up their own minds. They must be allowed to say, write and publish whatever they want. Freedom of expression is the most basic, but fundamental, right. Without it, human beings are reduced to automatons.” -Ma Jian
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“There are days when solitude is a heady wine that intoxicates you with freedom, others when it is a bitter tonic, and still others when it is a poison that makes you beat your head against the wall.” -Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
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“I had crossed the line. I was free but there was no one to welcome me to the land of freedom. I was a stranger in a strange land.” -Harriet Tubman
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“A Buddha is someone who finds freedom in good fortune and bad.” -Bodhidharma
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“My desire to curtail undue freedom of speech extends only to such public areas as restaurants, airports, streets, hotel lobbies, parks, and department stores. Verbal exchanges between consenting adults in private are as of little interest to me as they probably are to them.” -Fran Lebowitz
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“We seek peace, knowing that peace is the climate of freedom.” -Dwight D. Eisenhower
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“I stand for freedom of expression, doing what you believe in, and going after your dreams.” -Madonna Ciccone
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“A filmmaker has almost the same freedom as a novelist has when he buys himself some paper.” -Stanley Kubrick
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“We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.” -Edward R. Murrow
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“Americans admire a people who can scratch a desert and produce a garden. The Israelis have shown qualities that Americans identify with: guts, patriotism, idealism, a passion for freedom. I have seen it. I know. I believe that.” -Richard M. Nixon
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“I begin to feel like most Americans don’t understand the First Amendment, don’t understand the idea of freedom of speech, and don’t understand that it’s the responsibility of the citizen to speak out.” -Roger Ebert
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“The secret to happiness is freedom… And the secret to freedom is courage.” -Thucydides
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“Liberals, it has been said, are generous with other peoples’ money, except when it comes to questions of national survival when they prefer to be generous with other people’s freedom and security.” -William F. Buckley, Jr.
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“The intense happiness of our union is derived in a high degree from the perfect freedom with which we each follow and declare our own impressions.” -George Eliot
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“I come bearing an olive branch in one hand, and the freedom fighter’s gun in the other. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand.” -Yasser Arafat
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“Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?” -Kurt Vonnegut
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“Personal identity seems like it’s just such an American archetype, from Holly Golightly re-inventing herself in ‘Breakfast At Tiffany’s’ to Jay Gatsby in ‘The Great Gatsby.’ It seems like the sort of archetypal American issue. If you’re given the freedom to be anything, or be anyone, what do you do with it?” -Chuck Palahniuk
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“Satisfaction consists in freedom from pain, which is the positive element of life.” -Arthur Schopenhauer
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“A just laicism allows religious freedom. The state does not impose religion but rather gives space to religions with a responsibility toward civil society, and therefore it allows these religions to be factors in building up society.” -Joseph Ratzinger
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“Freedom is a possession of inestimable value.” -Marcus Tullius Cicero
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“History suggests that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom. Clearly it is not a sufficient condition.” -Milton Friedman
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“Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time.” -Bertrand Russell
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“Freedom means the right of people to assemble, organize, and debate openly.” -Hillary Clinton
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“The family is the test of freedom because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself.” -Gilbert K. Chesterton
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“If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought, not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.” -Oliver Wendell Holmes
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“How often I have found that we grow to maturity not by doing what we like, but by doing what we should. How true it is that not every ‘should’ is a compulsion, and not every ‘like’ is a high morality and true freedom.” -Karl Rahner
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“Just living is not enough. One must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower.” -Hans Christian Andersen
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“Freedom – to walk free and own no superior.” -Walt Whitman
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“History has taught us over and over again that freedom is not free. When push comes to shove, the ultimate protectors of freedom and liberty are the brave men and women in our armed forces. Throughout our history, they’ve answered the call in bravery and sacrifice.” -Tim Pawlenty
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“The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom. For in all the states of created beings capable of law, where there is no law, there is no freedom.” -John Locke
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“Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.” -George Orwell
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“Analysis does not set out to make pathological reactions impossible, but to give the patient’s ego freedom to decide one way or another.” -Sigmund Freud
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“Pervading nationalism imposes its dominion on man today in many different forms and with an aggressiveness that spares no one. The challenge that is already with us is the temptation to accept as true freedom what in reality is only a new form of slavery.” -Pope John Paul II
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“We gain freedom when we have paid the full price.” -Rabindranath Tagore
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“Shall I tell you what the real evil is? To cringe to the things that are called evils, to surrender to them our freedom, in defiance of which we ought to face any suffering.” -Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“Freedom is the most contagious virus known to man.” -Hubert H. Humphrey
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“Freedom from the desire for an answer is essential to the understanding of a problem.” -Jiddu Krishnamurti
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“I know but one freedom, and that is the freedom of the mind.” -Antoine de Saint-Exupery
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“Freedom is not something that one people can bestow on another as a gift. Thy claim it as their own and none can keep it from them.” -Kwame Nkrumah
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“Fear is not in the habit of speaking truth when perfect sincerity is expected, perfect freedom must be allowed nor has anyone who is apt to be angry when he hears the truth any cause to wonder that he does not hear it.” -Tacitus
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“When people talk of the freedom of writing, speaking or thinking I cannot choose but laugh. No such thing ever existed. No such thing now exists but I hope it will exist. But it must be hundreds of years after you and I shall write and speak no more.” -John Adams
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“Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.” -Frederick Douglass
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“No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.” -James Madison
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“Back a hundred years ago, especially around Woodrow Wilson, what happened in this country is we took freedom and we chopped it into pieces.” -Ron Paul
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“I don’t want to transform America. I want to restore to America the economic values of freedom and opportunity and limited government that has made us the powerhouse of the world.” -Mitt Romney
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“The worst enemy of life, freedom and the common decencies is total anarchy their second worst enemy is total efficiency.” -Aldous Huxley
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“The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant.” -Maximilien Robespierre
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“There can be no real freedom without the freedom to fail.” -Erich Fromm
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“Freedom in art, freedom in society, this is the double goal towards which all consistent and logical minds must strive.” -Victor Hugo
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“The more decisions that you are forced to make alone, the more you are aware of your freedom to choose.” -Thornton Wilder
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“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.” -Soren Kierkegaard
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“There are necessary evils. Money is an important thing in terms of representing freedom in our world. And now I have a daughter to think about. It’s really the first time I’ve thought about the future and what it could be.” -Johnny Depp
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“To say that any people are not fit for freedom, is to make poverty their choice, and to say they had rather be loaded with taxes than not.” -Thomas Paine
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“Ultimately, America’s answer to the intolerant man is diversity, the very diversity which our heritage of religious freedom has inspired.” -Robert Kennedy
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“Posterity: you will never know how much it has cost my generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it.” -John Quincy Adams
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“Freedom has cost too much blood and agony to be relinquished at the cheap price of rhetoric.” -Thomas Sowell
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“He only earns his freedom and his life Who takes them every day by storm.” -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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“If we wish to free ourselves from enslavement, we must choose freedom and the responsibility this entails.” -Leo Buscaglia
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“I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom.” -Simone de Beauvoir
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“The fight for freedom must go on until it is won until our country is free and happy and peaceful as part of the community of man, we cannot rest.” -Oliver Tambo
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“Necessity is blind until it becomes conscious. Freedom is the consciousness of necessity.” -Karl Marx
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“Freedom isn’t free. It shouldn’t be a bragging point that ‘Oh, I don’t get involved in politics,’ as if that makes someone cleaner. No, that makes you derelict of duty in a republic. Liars and panderers in government would have a much harder time of it if so many people didn’t insist on their right…
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“A big part of financial freedom is having your heart and mind free from worry about the what-ifs of life.” -Suze Orman
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“Our single most important challenge is therefore to help establish a social order in which the freedom of the individual will truly mean the freedom of the individual.” -Nelson Mandela
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“You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don’t ever count on having both at once.” -Robert A. Heinlein
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“Men are never really willing to die except for the sake of freedom: therefore they do not believe in dying completely.” -Albert Camus
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“I live in America. I have the right to write whatever I want. And it’s equaled by another right just as powerful: the right not to read it. Freedom of speech includes the freedom to offend people.” -Brad Thor
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“The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil constitution, are worth defending against all hazards: And it is our duty to defend them against all attacks.” -Samuel Adams
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“I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom.” -Bob Dylan
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“Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been effort stored up in the past.” -Theodore Roosevelt
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“Books were my pass to personal freedom. I learned to read at age three, and soon discovered there was a whole world to conquer that went beyond our farm in Mississippi.” -Oprah Winfrey
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“The revelation of thought takes men out of servitude into freedom.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson
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“The only certain freedom’s in departure.” -Robert Frost
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“A free America… means just this: individual freedom for all, rich or poor, or else this system of government we call democracy is only an expedient to enslave man to the machine and make him like it.” -Frank Lloyd Wright
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“Every human has four endowments- self awareness, conscience, independent will and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom… The power to choose, to respond, to change.” -Stephen Covey
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“It is cruel, you know, that music should be so beautiful. It has the beauty of loneliness of pain: of strength and freedom. The beauty of disappointment and never-satisfied love. The cruel beauty of nature and everlasting beauty of monotony.” -Benjamin Britten
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“Freedom means you are unobstructed in living your life as you choose. Anything less is a form of slavery.” -Wayne Dyer
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“Well, if crime fighters fight crime and fire fighters fight fire, what do freedom fighters fight? They never mention that part to us, do they?” -George Carlin
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“I think my first album opened a lot of doors for me to push the freedom of speech to the limit.” -Eminem
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“Nothing has been purchased more dearly than the little bit of reason and sense of freedom which now constitutes our pride.” -Friedrich Nietzsche
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“The framers of our Constitution meant we were to have freedom of religion, not freedom from religion.” -Billy Graham
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“Violent means will give violent freedom. That would be a menace to the world and to India herself.” -Mahatma Gandhi
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“True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.” -Franklin D. Roosevelt
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“I’m interested in anything about revolt, disorder, chaos, especially activity that appears to have no meaning. It seems to me to be the road toward freedom.” -Jim Morrison
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“We cannot expect that all nations will adopt like systems, for conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.” -John F. Kennedy
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“China has to go along with world trends. That’s democracy, liberty, individual freedom. China sooner or later has to go that way. It cannot go backward.” -Dalai Lama
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“Punk is musical freedom. It’s saying, doing and playing what you want. In Webster’s terms, ‘nirvana’ means freedom from pain, suffering and the external world, and that’s pretty close to my definition of Punk Rock.” -Kurt Cobain
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“Education is the key to unlock the golden door of freedom.” -George Washington Carver
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“I am involved in a freedom ride protesting the loss of the minority rights belonging to the few remaining earthbound stars. All we demanded was our right to twinkle.” -Marilyn Monroe
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“The sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality.” -Martin Luther King, Jr.
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“If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.” -George Washington
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“All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.” -Winston Churchill
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“Our greatest happiness does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed us, but is always the result of a good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits.” -Thomas Jefferson
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“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” -Viktor E. Frankl
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“In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free – honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.” -Abraham Lincoln
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“Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry is own weight, this is a frightening prospect.” -Eleanor Roosevelt
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“It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.” -Mark Twain
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“Today I choose life. Every morning when I wake up I can choose joy, happiness, negativity, pain… To feel the freedom that comes from being able to continue to make mistakes and choices – today I choose to feel life, not to deny my humanity but embrace it.” -Kevyn Aucoin
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“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.” -Ronald Reagan
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“Freedom is the recognition of necessity.” -Friedrich Engels
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“There is no such thing as a little freedom. Either you are all free, or you are not free.” -Walter Cronkite
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“The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedoms.” -William O. Douglas
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“When we lose the right to be different, we lose the privilege to be free.” -Charles Evans Hughes
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“Freedom is contagious. That’s why despots fear it so much.” -Bill Owens
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“Free speech carries with it some freedom to listen.” -Warren E. Burger
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“Freedom is never easily won, but once established, freedom lasts, spreads and chokes out tyranny.” -Trent Lott
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“Freedom of the press is not an end in itself but a means to the end of achieving a free society.” -Felix Frankfurter
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“Coercion, after all, merely captures man. Freedom captivates him.” -Robert McNamara
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“Freedom is the right to one’s dignity as a man.” -Archibald MacLeish
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“Human beings crave freedom at their core.” -John Ensign
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“The link between my experience as an entrepreneur and that of a politician is all in one word: freedom.” -Silvio Berlusconi
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“We should favor innovation and freedom over regulation.” -George Allen
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“The very idea of freedom incites fear in the hearts of terrorists across the world.” -Elizabeth Dole
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“Freedom is the only law which genius knows.” -James Russell Lowell
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“You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man’s freedom.” -Clarence Darrow
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“We are driven by five genetic needs: survival, love and belonging, power, freedom, and fun.” -William Glasser
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“Freedom rings where opinions clash.” -Adlai E. Stevenson
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“As human beings, we are endowed with freedom of choice, and we cannot shuffle off our responsibility upon the shoulders of God or nature. We must shoulder it ourselves. It is our responsibility.” -Arnold J. Toynbee
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“In America, through pressure of conformity, there is freedom of choice, but nothing to choose from.” -Peter Ustinov
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“I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy – but that could change.” -Dan Quayle
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“Enslave the liberty of but one human being and the liberties of the world are put in peril.” -William Lloyd Garrison
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“I believe in freedom of speech, but I believe we should also have the right to comment on freedom of speech.” -Stockwell Day
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“You cannot parcel out freedom in pieces because freedom is all or nothing.” -Tertullian
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“We’re giving our freedoms away. The American experiment was about freedom. Freedom to be stupid, freedom to fail, freedom to succeed.” -Glenn Beck
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“‘Freedom from fear’ could be said to sum up the whole philosophy of human rights.” -Dag Hammarskjold
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“Heresy is another word for freedom of thought.” -Graham Greene
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“We must be willing to pay a price for freedom.” -H. L. Mencken
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“Perfect freedom is as necessary to the health and vigor of commerce as it is to the health and vigor of citizenship.” -Patrick Henry
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“Real freedom is having nothing. I was freer when I didn’t have a cent.” -Mike Tyson
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“I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.” -Nikos Kazantzakis
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“As long as men are free to ask what they must, free to say what they think, free to think what they will, freedom can never be lost and science can never regress.” -Marcel Proust
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“Freedom is the sure possession of those alone who have the courage to defend it.” -Pericles
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“There are two freedoms – the false, where a man is free to do what he likes the true, where he is free to do what he ought.” -Charles Kingsley
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“None who have always been free can understand the terrible fascinating power of the hope of freedom to those who are not free.” -Pearl S. Buck
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“All theory is against freedom of the will all experience for it.” -Samuel Johnson
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“May we think of freedom, not as the right to do as we please, but as the opportunity to do what is right.” -Peter Marshall
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“Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.” -Jean-Paul Sartre
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“The truth is I love being alive. And I love feeling free. So if I can’t have those things then I feel like a caged animal and I’d rather not be in a cage. I’d rather be dead. And it’s real simple. And I think it’s not that uncommon.” -Angelina Jolie
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