Quotes about freedom

Freely we serve,

Because we freely love, as in our will

To love or not; in this we stand or fall.

In discourse more sweet;

For eloquence the soul, song charms the sense.

Others apart sat on a hill retired,

In thoughts more elevate, and reasoned high

Of Providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate,

Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute,

And found no end, in wand'ring mazes lost.

I made him just and right,

Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall.

The principles of a free constitution are irrecoverably lost, when the legislative power is nominated by the executive.

A warlike nation like the Germans, without either cities, letters, arts, or money, found some compensation for this savage state in the enjoyment of liberty. Their poverty secured their freedom, since our desires and our possessions are the strongest fetters of despotism.

Loving someone is a loss of freedom -- but one doesn't think of it as loss because one gains so much else.

The effect of liberty to individuals is, that they may do what they please: we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations.

Pregnancy seemed like a tremendous abdication of control. Something growing inside you which would eventually usurp your life.

But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.

I do not say that there are no stronger men than these; but will any one say that there are any men stronger than those men of old who were dominated by their philosophy and steeped in their religion? Whether bondage be better than freedom may be discussed. But that their bondage came to more than our freedom it will be difficult for any one to deny.

It was, in brief, that conservatives ideals were bad, not because they were conservative, but because they were ideals. Every ideal prevented men from judging justly the particular case; every moral generalization oppressed the individual; the golden rule was there was no golden rule. And the objection to this is simply that it pretends to free men, but really restrains them from doing the only thing that men want to do. What is the good of telling a community that it has every liberty except the liberty to make laws? The liberty to make laws is what constitutes a free people. And what is the good of telling a man (or a philosopher) that he has every liberty except the liberty to make generalizations. Making generalizations is what makes him a man. In short, when Mr.Shaw forbids men to have strict moral ideals, he is acting like one who should forbid them to have children. The saying that "the golden rule is that there is no golden rule," can, indeed, be simply answered by being turned round. That there is no golden rule is itself a golden rule, or rather it is much worth than a golden rule; It is an Iron Rule; a fetter on the first movement of a man.

When the old Liberals removed the gags from all the heresies, their idea was that religious and philosophical discoveries might thus be made. Their view was that cosmic truth was so important that every one ought to bear independent testimony. The modern idea is that cosmic truth is so unimportant that it cannot matter what any one says. The former freed inquiry as men loose a noble hound; the latter frees inquiry as men fling back into the sea a fish unfit for eating. Never has there been so little discussion about the nature of men as now, when, for the first time, any one can discuss it. The old restriction meant that only the orthodox were allowed to discuss religion. Modern liberty means that nobody is allowed to discuss it. Good taste, the last and vilest of human superstitions, has succeeded in silencing us where all the rest have failed.