Quotes about freedom
page 29

Arundhati Roy photo
Phillip Guston photo

“Everything is possible, everything except dogma, of any kind.... That's what it's about. Freedom. That's the only possession an artist has — freedom to do whatever you can imagine.”

Phillip Guston (1913–1980) American artist

1961 - 1980
Source: 'It's About Freedom' - as quoted as last lign in 'It's About Freedom, Philip Guston's Late Works in the Schirn'; Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt 11/6/2013 – 2/2/2014 http://db-artmag.com/en/78/on-view/its-about-freedom-philip-gustons-late-works-in-the-schirn/

Swami Vivekananda photo
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton photo
Ilana Mercer photo

“If for harming himself a man forfeits his freedom, then he was never free in the first place.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

“Addicted to that Rush,” http://www.ilanamercer.com/phprunner/public_article_list_view.php?editid1=488 WorldNetDaily.com, March 6, 2009.
2000s, 2009

John F. Kennedy photo
George W. Bush photo
Ilana Mercer photo

“Anti-discrimination law is inconsistent with freedom of association and the right of private property.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

“The right to discriminate is the essence of liberty,” https://jungefreiheit.de/kolumne/2015/das-recht-auf-diskriminierung-ist-die-essenz-der-freiheit/ Junge Freiheit, April 9, 2015.
2010s, 2015

Abd al-Karim Qasim photo

“We do not protect freedom in order to indulge error. We protect freedom in order to discover truth.”

Henry Steele Commager (1902–1998) American historian

Source: Freedom, Loyalty, Dissent (1954), p. 18

Eric Hoffer photo
John Gray photo
James A. Garfield photo
Hillary Clinton photo

“On their own, new technologies do not take sides in the struggle for freedom and progress, but the United States does. We stand for a single internet where all of humanity has equal access to knowledge and ideas. […] The internet can help bridge divides between people of different faiths. As the President said in Cairo, freedom of religion is central to the ability of people to live together. And as we look for ways to expand dialogue, the internet holds out such tremendous promise. […] We are also supporting the development of new tools that enable citizens to exercise their rights of free expression by circumventing politically motivated censorship. We are providing funds to groups around the world to make sure that those tools get to the people who need them in local languages, and with the training they need to access the internet safely. The United States has been assisting in these efforts for some time, with a focus on implementing these programs as efficiently and effectively as possible. Both the American people and nations that censor the internet should understand that our government is committed to helping promote internet freedom. We want to put these tools in the hands of people who will use them to advance democracy and human rights, to fight climate change and epidemics, to build global support for President Obama's goal of a world without nuclear weapons, to encourage sustainable economic development that lifts the people at the bottom up.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

"Remarks on Internet Freedom", The Newseum, Washington, DC, January 21, 2010 http://web.archive.org/web/20100123145341/http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2010/01/135519.htm
Secretary of State (2009–2013)

Nick Griffin photo
Newton Lee photo

“Dictatorship of the majority over the minority would be an encroachment on the rights of the individual and their prerogative to personal freedom.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Facebook Nation: Total Information Awareness (2nd Edition), 2014

Tony Benn photo

“Choice depends on the freedom to choose and if you are shackled with debt you don’t have the freedom to choose.”

Tony Benn (1925–2014) British Labour Party politician

Interview with Michael Moore in the movie Sicko (2007).
2000s

Jeane Kirkpatrick photo

“And now, the American people, proud of our country, proud of our freedom, proud of ourselves, will reject the San Francisco Democrats and send Ronald Reagan back to the White House.”

Jeane Kirkpatrick (1926–2006) American diplomat and Presidential advisor

1984 Republican National Convention in Dallas. Full transcript http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1996/conventions/san.diego/facts/GOP.speeches.past/84.kirkpatrick.shtml

Natan Sharansky photo
Toni Morrison photo
Salvador Dalí photo
Francis Parkman photo
Margaret Mead photo

“The semimetaphysical problems of the individual and society, of egoism and altruism, of freedom and determinism, either disappear or remain in the form of different phases in the organization of a consciousness that is fundamentally social.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Source: 1930s, Growing Up in New Guinea (1930), p. 696, as cited in Social Cognitive Psychology: History and Current Domains (1997), David F. Barone, James E. Maddux, Charles R. Snyder . p. 20

Rudolph Rummel photo
Robert F. Kennedy photo
Herman Wouk photo
Marcus Aurelius photo
Adi Da Samraj photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
James A. Garfield photo
Rudolph Rummel photo

“Democratic freedom is a method of nonviolence and an antidote to war.”

Rudolph Rummel (1932–2014) American academic

Source: The Blue Book of Freedom: Ending Famine, Poverty, Democide, and War (2007), p.16

Swami Vivekananda photo
Sam Harris photo
Dan Quayle photo

“I believe we are on an irreversible trend towards more freedom and democracy, but that could change.”

Dan Quayle (1947) American politician, lawyer

cited to the Wall Street Journal (26 May 1989)

Sam Harris photo
George W. Bush photo
Harry Schwarz photo
Angela Davis photo
David Brooks photo
Mike Huckabee photo
Joe Strummer photo
Edmund Burke photo

“Deny them this participation of freedom, and you break that sole bond, which originally made, and must still preserve the unity of the empire.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Second Speech on Conciliation with America (1775)

Arthur Jensen photo

“The study of race differences in intelligence is an acid test case for psychology. Can behavioral scientists research this subject with the same freedom, objectivity, thoroughness, and scientific integrity with which they go about investigating other psychological phenomena? In short, can psychology be scientific when it confronts an issue that is steeped in social ideologies? In my attempts at self- analysis this question seems to me to be one of the most basic motivating elements in my involvement with research on the nature of the observed psychological differences among racial groups. In a recent article (Jensen, 1985b) I stated:I make no apology for my choice of research topics. I think that my own nominal fields of expertise (educational and differential psychology) would be remiss if they shunned efforts to describe and understand more accurately one of the most perplexing and critical of current problems. Of all the myriad subjects being investigated in the behavioral and social sciences, it seems to me that one of the most easily justified is the black- white statistical disparity in cognitive abilities, with its far reaching educational, economic, and social consequences. Should we not apply the tools of our science to such socially important issues as best we can? The success of such efforts will demonstrate that psychology can actually behave as a science in dealing with socially sensitive issues, rather than merely rationalize popular prejudice and social ideology.”

Arthur Jensen (1923–2012) professor of educational psychology

p. 258
Source: Differential Psychology: Towards Consensus (1987), pp. 438-9

John F. Kennedy photo
Bill Frist photo
Alan Charles Kors photo

“If someone tells you you are too weak to live with freedom, they have turned you into a child”

Alan Charles Kors (1943) American academic

As quoted in "College" (2005), Bullshit!, HBO
2000s
Context: What universities are saying by these codes, special protections, and double standards — to women, to blacks, to Hispanics, to gay and lesbian students — is, "You are too weak to live with freedom. You are too weak to live with the First Amendment." If someone tells you you are too weak to live with freedom, they have turned you into a child.

John F. Kennedy photo

“For the unity of freedom has never relied on uniformity of opinion.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1963, Third State of the Union Address

Ai Weiwei photo
Alfred Rosenberg photo

“The gullible European has only too credulously listened to these temptations, sung to the lyrics of the sirens' song—freedom, justice, brotherhood. The fruits of this subversion are apparent today. They are so nakedly apparent that even the most unbiased person, a person who has no idea of the necessary historical relationships, must become aware that he has placed his confidence in crafty and glib leaders, who intended, not his good, but the destruction of all laboriously acquired civilization, all culture.”

Alfred Rosenberg (1893–1946) German architect and politician

"The Russian-Jewish Revolution", Auf Gut Deutsch magazine, February 1919. Quoted in Roderick Stackelberg, Sally A. Winkle, The Nazi Germany Sourcebook: An Anthology of Texts. Routledge, 2013 (p.50). Also in Barbara Miller Lane and Leila J. Rupp, Nazi Ideology Before 1933: A Documentation. University of Texas Press, 2014 (p.12).

Austin Bradford Hill photo
Harry Schwarz photo

“Laws alone is not enough to ensure that freedom is safeguarded. What is required is a sprit of freedom among the people concerned. There must be an atmosphere of respect, a feeling of belonging together, an atmosphere of harmony with fellow beings.”

Harry Schwarz (1924–2010) South African activist

Herald Times, (4 November 1979)
Parliament (1974-1991)
Source: http://www.samedia.uovs.ac.za/cgi-bin/getpdf?id=1552889

Colin Wilson photo
John Gray photo
Ai Weiwei photo

“Freedom of speech implies the world isn’t defined. It is meaningful when people are allowed to see the world their way.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

Ai Weiwei Twitter feed: @AiWW (8:16 p.m. December 22, 2011).
2010-, Twitter feeds, 2010-12

Kapil Sibal photo

“Freedom of expression doesn't mean tweeting through fake accounts. If the government has to be transparent, Twitterati should also reciprocate. This will help stop defamatory and criminal traffic on the Net. We should amend the law to force disclosure of identity.”

Kapil Sibal (1948) Indian lawyer and politician

On internet anonymity, as quoted in The govt does not understand social media nor does it know how to deal with it, says Kapil Sibal http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/it-minister-kapil-sibal-crackdowns-on-social-media-rth-campaign/1/247667.html, India Today (26 January 2013)

Clement Attlee photo
Antoni Tàpies photo
Ralph Vary Chamberlin photo
Thomas M. Disch photo
George W. Bush photo
John McCain photo
George W. Bush photo

“Good morning. This coming week I will be making the trip up Pennsylvania Avenue to address a joint session of Congress. We have some business to attend to called the budget of the United States. The federal budget is a document about the size of a big city phone book, and about as hard to read from cover to cover. The blueprint I submit this week contains many numbers, but there is one that probably counts more than any other – $5.6 trillion. That is the surplus the federal government expects to collect over the next 10 years; money left over after we have met our obligations to Social Security, Medicare, health care, education, defense and other priorities. The plan I submit will fund our highest national priorities. Education gets the biggest percentage increase of any department in our federal government. We won't just spend more money on schools and education, we will spend it responsibly. We'll give states more freedom to decide what works. And as we give more to our schools we're going to expect more in return by requiring states and local jurisdictions to test every year. How else can we know whether schools are teaching and children are learning? Social Security and Medicare will get every dollar they need to meet their commitments. And every dollar of Social Security and Medicare tax revenue will be reserved for Social Security and Medicare.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2001, Radio Address to the Nation (February 2001)

Ellsworth Kelly photo
John Lancaster Spalding photo
Calvin Coolidge photo

“It needs but very little consideration to reach the conclusion that all of these terms are relative, not absolute, in their application to the affairs of this earth. There is no absolute and complete sovereignty for a State, nor absolute and complete independence and freedom for an individual. It happened in 1861 that the States of the North and the South were so fully agreed among themselves that they were able to combine against each other. But supposing each State of the Union should undertake to make its own decisions upon all questions, and that all held divergent views. If such a condition were carried to its logical conclusion, each would come into conflict with all the others, and a condition would arise which could only result in mutual destruction. It is evident that this would be the antithesis of State sovereignty. Or suppose that each individual in the assertion of his own independence and freedom undertook to act in entire disregard of the rights of others. The end would be likewise mutual destruction, and no one would be independent and no one would be free. Yet these are conflicts which have gone on ever since the organization of society into government, and they are going on now. To my mind this was fundamental of the conflict which broke out in 1861.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Freedom and its Obligations (1924)

Mukesh Ambani photo
George Holmes Howison photo
Gloria Estefan photo
Alexis De Tocqueville photo
Johann Gottlieb Fichte photo

“Instinct is blind;—a consciousness without insight. Freedom, as the opposite of Instinct, is thus seeing, and clearly conscious of the grounds of its activity.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) German philosopher

Source: The Characteristics of the Present Age (1806), p. 7

Reese Palley photo

“It is difficult to wrench your world around to allow you freedom.”

Reese Palley (1922–2015)

"There Be No Dragons" 1996

Rudolph Rummel photo
Frank Klepacki photo
Paul Klee photo
William Collins photo

“By fairy hands their knell is rung;
By forms unseen their dirge is sung;
There Honour comes, a pilgrim gray,
To bless the turf that wraps their clay;
And Freedom shall awhile repair,
To dwell a weeping hermit there!”

William Collins (1721–1759) English poet, born 1721

Ode written in the year 1746. A variation of the first two lines is "By hands unseen the knell is rung; / By fairy forms their dirge is sung".

Heather Brooke photo
Richard Stallman photo

“The term "free software" has an ambiguity problem: an unintended meaning, "Software you can get for zero price," fits the term just as well as the intended meaning, "software which gives the user certain freedoms."”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

We address this problem by publishing a more precise definition of free software, but this is not a perfect solution; it cannot completely eliminate the problem. An unambiguously correct term would be better, if it didn't have other problems.
1990s, Why "Free Software" is better than "Open Source" (1998)

Nguyen Khanh photo
Emil Nolde photo

“Every true artist creates new values, new beauty... When you notice anarchy, recklessness, or licentiousness in works of contemporary art, when you notice crass coarseness and brutality, then occupy yourself long and painstakingly precisely with these works, and you will suddenly recognize how the seeming recklessness transforms itself into freedom, the coarseness into high refinements. Harmless pictures are seldom worth anything.”

Emil Nolde (1867–1956) German artist

Quote of Nolde's letter to Hans Fehr, 1905; published in 'Aus Leben und Werkstatt Emil Noldes', 'Das Kunstblatt' no. 7 (1919), p. 208; as cited in 'The Revival of Printmaking in Germany', I. K. Rigby; in German Expressionist Prints and Drawings - Essays Vol 1.; published by Museum Associates, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California & Prestel-Verlag, Germany, 1986, p. 40
Hans Fehr expressed in a letter to Nolde his concern about the 'recklessness' and 'licentiousness' of some prints by Nolde. Fehr published Nolde's response in 1919
1900 - 1920

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley photo

“One thing I will add: if I have ever found kindness, it has not been from Liberals; to disengage myself from them was the first act of my freedom.”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797–1851) English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer

Letter to Edward Trelawny (27 January 1837). Google Books https://books.google.com/books?id=ED9bAAAAMAAJ&dq=if%20i%20have%20ever%20found%20kindness%2C%20it%20has%20not%20been%20from%20the%20liberals&pg=PA283#v=onepage&q=if%20i%20have%20ever%20found%20kindness,%20it%20has%20not%20been%20from%20the%20liberals&f=false

Constantine the Great photo

“If a Jew has bought and circumcised a Christian slave or one belonging to any other religious community, he may under no circumstances keep the circumcised person in slavery; rather, whoever suffers such a thing shall obtain the privilege of freedom.”

Constantine the Great (274–337) Roman emperor

21 October 335 according to page 37 of Jews and Christians in the Holy Land: Palestine in the Fourth Century https://books.google.ca/books?id=BXuxAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA37 by Gunter Steinberger in 1999 (see also translation above)

Frances Kellor photo
James Clerk Maxwell photo

“He that would enjoy life and act with freedom must have the work of the day continually before his eyes. Not yesterday's work, lest he fall into despair; nor to-morrow's, lest he become a visionary—not that which ends with the day, which is a worldly work; nor yet that only which remains to eternity, for by it he cannot shape his actions.
Happy is the man who can recognise in the work of to-day a connected portion of the work of life and an embodiment of the work of Eternity. The foundations of his confidence are unchangeable, for he has been made a partaker of Infinity. He strenuously works out his daily enterprises because the present is given him for a possession.
Thus ought Man to be an impersonation of the divine process of nature, and to show forth the union of the infinite with the finite, not slighting his temporal existence, remembering that in it only is individual action possible; nor yet shutting out from his view that which is eternal, knowing that Time is a mystery which man cannot endure to contemplate until eternal Truth enlighten it.”

James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879) Scottish physicist

Paper communicated to Frederic Farrar (1854) Æt. 23, as quoted in Lewis Campbell, William Garnett, The Life of James Clerk Maxwell: With Selections from His Correspondence and Occasional Writings (1884) pp. 144-145, https://books.google.com/books?id=B7gEAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA144 and in Richard Glazebrook, James Clerk Maxwell and Modern Physics (1896) pp. 39-40. https://books.google.com/books?id=hbcEAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA39

Robert Sheckley photo

““It is the principle of Business, which is more fundamental than the law of gravity. Wherever you go in the galaxy, you can find a food business, a housebuilding business, a war business, a peace business, a governing business, and so forth. And, of course, a God business, which is called ‘religion,’ and which is a particularly reprehensible line of endeavor. I could talk for a year on the perverse and nasty notions that the religions sell, but I’m sure you’ve heard it all before. But I’ll just mention one matter, which seems to underlie everything the religions preach, and which seems to me almost exquisitely perverse.”
“What’s that?” Carmody asked.
“It’s the deep, fundamental bedrock of hypocrisy upon which religion is founded. Consider: no creature can be said to worship if it does not possess free will. Free will, however, is free. And just by virtue of being free, is intractable and incalculable, a truly Godlike gift, the faculty that makes a state of freedom possible. To exist in a state of freedom is a wild, strange thing, and was clearly intended as such. But what do the religions do with this? They say, ‘Very well, you possess free will; but now you must use your free will to enslave yourself to God and to us.’ The effrontery of it! God, who would not coerce a fly, is painted as a supreme slavemaster! In the face of this, any creature with spirit must rebel, must serve God entirely of his own will and volition, or must not serve him at all, thus remaining true to himself and to the faculties God has given him.”
“I think I see what you mean,” Carmody said.
“I’ve made it too complicated,” Maudsley said. “There’s a much simpler reason for avoiding religion.”
“What’s that?”
“Just consider its style—bombastic, hortatory, sickly-sweet, patronizing, artificial, inapropos, boring, filled with dreary images or peppy slogans—fit subject matter for senile old women and unweaned babies, but for no one else. I cannot believe that the God I met here would ever enter a church; he had too much taste and ferocity, too much anger and pride. I can’t believe it, and for me that ends the matter. Why should I go to a place that a God would not enter?””

Source: Dimension of Miracles (1968), Chapter 13 (pp. 88-89)

George H. W. Bush photo

“What is at stake is more than one small country [Kuwait], it is a big idea — a new world order where diverse nations are drawn together in common cause to achieve the universal aspirations of mankind: peace and security, freedom and the rule of law.”

George H. W. Bush (1924–2018) American politician, 41st President of the United States

Comment on a "new world order" (29 January 1991), as quoted in The Watchtower magazine, In Search of a New World Order (15 July 1991)

George W. Bush photo
André Maurois photo

“Conquest brings no lasting happiness unless the person conquered was possessed of free will. Only then can there be doubt and anxiety and those continual victories over habit and boredom which produce the keenest pleasures of all. The comely inmates of the harem are rarely loved, for they are prisoners. Inversely, the far too accessible ladies of present-day seaside resorts almost never inspire love, because they are emancipated. Where is love's victory when there is neither veil, modesty, nor self-respect to check its progress? Excessive freedom raises up the transparent walls of an invisible seraglio to surround these easily acquired ladies. Romantic love requires women, not that they should be inaccessible, but that their lives should be lived within the rather narrow limits of religion and convention. These conditions, admirably observed in the Middle-Ages, produced the courtly love of that time. The honoured mistress of the chateau remained within its walls while the knight set out for the Crusades and thought about his lady. In those days a man scarcely ever tried to arouse love in the object of his passion. He resigned himself to loving in silence, or at least without hope. Such frustrated passions are considered by some to be naive and unreal, but to certain sensitive souls this kind of remote admiration is extremely pleasurable, because, being quite subjective, it is better protected against deception and disillusion.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Loving

Simon Blackburn photo

“Perhaps to restore human freedom we should deny determinism?”

Simon Blackburn (1944) British academic philosopher

Source: Think (1999), Chapter Three, Free Will, p. 84

Ted Cruz photo
Fernand Léger photo