Quotes about freedom

„Nobody is to be blamed for being born a slave; but a slave who not only eschews a striving for freedom but justifies and eulogies his slavery“

—  Vladimir Lenin Russian politician, led the October Revolution 1870 - 1924

The War and Russian Social-Democracy (September 1917), The Lenin Anthology
1910s
Context: Nobody is to be blamed for being born a slave; but a slave who not only eschews a striving for freedom but justifies and eulogies his slavery (e. g., calls the throttling of Poland and the Ukraine, etc., a "defense of the fatherland" of the Great Russians") - such a slave is a lickspittle and a boor, who arouses a legitimate feeling of indignation, contempt, and loathing.

„Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in the ancient Greek republics: freedom for the slave-owners.“

—  Vladimir Lenin, book The State and Revolution

Source: The State and Revolution (1917), Ch. 5.

„In capitalist society, providing it develops under the most favorable conditions, we have a more or less complete democracy in the democratic republic. But this democracy is always hemmed in by the narrow limits set by capitalist exploitation and consequently always remains, in effect, a democracy for the minority, only for the propertied classes, only for the rich. Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in the ancient Greek republics: freedom for the slaveowners. Owing to the conditions of capitalist exploitation, the modern wage slaves are so crushed by want and poverty that “they cannot be bothered with democracy,” “cannot be bothered with politics”; in the ordinary, peaceful course of events, the majority of the population is debarred from participation in public and political life. The“

—  Vladimir Lenin Russian politician, led the October Revolution 1870 - 1924

Source: The State and Revolution (1917), Ch. 5
Context: Democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich – that is the democracy of capitalist society. If we look more closely into the machinery of capitalist democracy, we see everywhere, in the "petty" – supposedly petty – details of the suffrage (residential qualifications, exclusion of women, etc.), in the technique of the representative institutions, in the actual obstacles to the right of assembly (public buildings are not for "paupers"!), in the purely capitalist organization of the daily press, etc., etc., – we see restriction after restriction upon democracy. These restrictions, exceptions, exclusions, obstacles for the poor seem slight, especially in the eyes of one who has never known want himself and has never been in close contact with the oppressed classes in their mass life (and nine out of 10, if not 99 out of 100, bourgeois publicists and politicians come under this category); but in their sum total these restrictions exclude and squeeze out the poor from politics, from active participation in democracy.

„All over the world, wherever there are capitalists, freedom of the press means freedom to buy up newspapers, to buy writers, to bribe, buy and fake “public opinion” for the benefit of the bourgeoisie.“

—  Vladimir Lenin Russian politician, led the October Revolution 1870 - 1924

Collected Works, Vol. 32, pp. 504–9.
Collected Works
Source: Revolution!: Sayings of Vladimir Lenin

„Long after Plato’s time the concept of the Ideas still represented the sphere of aloofness, independence, and in a certain sense even freedom, an objectivity that did not submit to ‘our’ interests.“

—  Max Horkheimer, book Eclipse of Reason

Source: Eclipse of Reason (1947), p. 46.

„Struck intensely tonight by the thought that we live in a great age. We can make music, food, pictures, art, & love with unbelievable unprecedented freedom. It's all there, there for the taking & the making, all the time.“

—  Tom Hiddleston English actor, producer and musical performer 1981

„In his sermons and books, Hinn has portrayed his childhood as that of a social outcast, handicapped by a severe stutter, who was nonetheless a stellar student. But when G. Richard Fisher and M. Kurt Goedelman, two journalists who write for Personal Freedom Outreach, looked into Hinn's youth, they found that both claims were untrue: nobody remembered Hinn stuttering, and he had dropped out of high school after the 11th grade.“

—  Benny Hinn American-Canadian evangelist 1952

About

„The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade for a role, you give up your ability to feel and in exchange put up a mask“

—  Jim Morrison lead singer of The Doors 1943 - 1971

„There is simply no room left for 'freedom from the tyranny of government' since city dwellers depend on it for food, power, water, transportation, protection, and welfare.“

—  William S. Burroughs, book Cities of the Red Night

Cities of the Red Night (1981)
Context: There is simply no room left for 'freedom from the tyranny of government' since city dwellers depend on it for food, power, water, transportation, protection, and welfare. Your right to live where you want, with companions of your choosing, under laws to which you agree, died in the eighteenth century with Captain Mission. Only a miracle or a disaster could restore it.

„The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.“

—  Aung San Suu Kyi State Counsellor of Myanmar and Leader of the National League for Democracy 1945

„When truth is no longer free, freedom is no longer real: the truths of the police are the truths of today.“

—  Jacques Prevért French poet, screenwriter 1900 - 1977

Attributed

„Freedom is not something that anybody can be given. Freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be“

—  James Baldwin (1924-1987) writer from the United States 1924 - 1987

„Our greatest freedom is the freedom to choose our attitude.“

—  Viktor E. Frankl Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist, and Holocaust survivor 1905 - 1997

„Your honor, it is over now. This has never been a case of trying to get free. I didn't ever want freedom. Frankly, I wanted death for myself. This was a case to tell the world that I did what I did not for reasons of hate, I hated no one. I know I was sick or evil, or both. Now I believe I was sick. The doctors have told me about my sickness and now I have some peace.“

—  Jeffrey Dahmer American serial killer, cannibal and necrophile 1960 - 1994

Closing statement after trial sentencing. video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnuSl8PNYqc

„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.“

—  Virginia Woolf, book A Room of One's Own

Variant: There is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.
Source: A Room of One's Own (1929), Ch. 4, p. 90

„Literature is open to everybody. I refuse to allow you, Beadle though you are, to turn me off the grass. 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.“

—  Virginia Woolf, book A Room of One's Own

Source: A Room of One's Own

„Who says: 'Here reigns freedom' is lying, because freedom doesn't reign.”“

—  Erich Fried Austrian writer 1921 - 1988

„They brought out LSD to control people, and what they did was give us freedom.“

—  John Lennon English singer and songwriter 1940 - 1980

Source: The Beatles Anthology (2000), p. 179
Context: We must always remember to thank the CIA and the Army for LSD, by the way. Everything is the opposite of what it is, isn't it? They brought out LSD to control people, and what they did was give us freedom. Sometimes it works in mysterious ways its wonders to perform. But it sure as hell performs them. If you look a the government report book on acid, the only ones who jumped out of windows because of it were the ones in the Army. I never knew anybody who jumped out of a window or killed themselves because of it.

„…in the 10 years after Hong Kong's return to Chinese rule … I'm not sure if it's good to have freedom or not… If you're too free, you're like the way Hong Kong is now. It's very chaotic. Taiwan is also chaotic… I'm gradually beginning to feel that we Chinese need to be controlled. If we're not being controlled, we'll just do what we want.“

—  Jackie Chan Hong Kong actor and martial artist 1954

Jackie Chan at the annual Boao Forum for Asia http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090421/ap_en_ot/as_hong_kong_people_jackie_chan (18 April 2009)