Freedom in general may be defined as the absence of obstacles to the realization of desires.

I heard a definition once: Happiness is health and a short memory! I wish I’d invented it, because it is very true.

Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love.

I felt extremely uncomfortable as the focal point, in the spotlight. I really like the behind the scenes role, because all my freedom is there.

Both in thought and in feeling, even though time be real, to realise the unimportance of time is the gate of wisdom.

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.

Nobody can tell me where I can and can’t go.

Only the educated are free.

The only certain freedom’s in departure.

Within the soul of America is freedom of mind and spirit in man. Here alone are the open windows through which pours the sunlight of the human spirit. Here alone is human dignity not a dream but an accomplishment. Perhaps it is not perfect, but it is more full in realization here than any other place in the world.

I lived in a dictatorship in Brazil, and I was arrested three times. I felt in my flesh what it is to live under such a regime and experience deprivation of freedom.

Cassius Clay is a name that white people gave to my slave master. Now that I am free, that I don’t belong anymore to anyone, that I’m not a slave anymore, I gave back their white name, and I chose a beautiful African one.

Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both.

Reality has a way of intruding. Reality eventually intrudes on everything.

All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin. And therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words ‚Ich bin ein Berliner!‘

No one is free, even the birds are chained to the sky.

The Israelites‘ slavery in Egypt is the equivalent of our slavery to sin. God sent Moses to deliver them from bondage, and He sent Jesus Christ to set us free.

Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.

The tyrant has fallen, and Iraq is free.

Fearlessness is not only possible, it is the ultimate joy. When you touch nonfear, you are free.

You don’t have to turn on the TV set. You don’t have to work on the Internet. It’s up to you.

No man lives without jostling and being jostled; in all ways he has to elbow himself through the world, giving and receiving offence.

For in the end, freedom is a personal and lonely battle; and one faces down fears of today so that those of tomorrow might be engaged.

If you’re going to be crazy, you have to get paid for it or else you’re going to be locked up.

I remain convinced that obstinate addiction to ordinary language in our private thoughts is one of the main obstacles to progress in philosophy.

In South Africa, we could not have achieved our freedom and just peace without the help of people around the world, who through the use of non-violent means, such as boycotts and divestment, encouraged their governments and other corporate actors to reverse decades-long support for the Apartheid regime.

When we tackle obstacles, we find hidden reserves of courage and resilience we did not know we had. And it is only when we are faced with failure do we realise that these resources were always there within us. We only need to find them and move on with our lives.

If you’re a surfer, you just want to surf. You don’t know if anyone’s going to see you, and you don’t really care if they see you. You just live for that feeling.

Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.

Learned Institutions ought to be favorite objects with every free people. They throw that light over the public mind which is the best security against crafty and dangerous encroachments on the public liberty.

Men are so simple and yield so readily to the desires of the moment that he who will trick will always find another who will suffer to be tricked.

Women have to be extremely careful about choosing something that they consider an act of defiance that can really be used to further their enslavement.

You have to give others the opportunity to love who you love. If they don’t accept it, it’s their loss.

I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.

A new breeze is blowing, and a world refreshed by freedom seems reborn; for in man’s heart, if not in fact, the day of the dictator is over. The totalitarian era is passing, its old ideas blown away like leaves from an ancient, lifeless tree.

That we must all die, we always knew; I wish I had remembered it sooner.

Our desires always disappoint us; for though we meet with something that gives us satisfaction, yet it never thoroughly answers our expectation.

We all want to be famous people, and the moment we want to be something we are no longer free.

The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.

Liberty is the right to do what I like; license, the right to do what you like.

Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better.

Necessity is blind until it becomes conscious. Freedom is the consciousness of necessity.

Liberty doesn’t work as well in practice as it does in speeches.

It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.

It is better for you to be free of fear lying upon a pallet, than to have a golden couch and a rich table and be full of trouble.

You can’t put democracy and freedom back into a box.

I groan daily under a body of sin and corruption. Oh for the time when I shall drop this flesh, and be free from sin!

I believe that God has planted in every heart the desire to live in freedom.

Man is not free unless government is limited.

Just as discipline and freedom are opposing forces that must be balanced, leadership requires finding the equilibrium in the dichotomy of many seemingly contradictory qualities between one extreme and another.

What then is freedom? The power to live as one wishes.

I’m a free spirit.

It is a great shock at the age of five or six to find that in a world of Gary Coopers you are the Indian.

There’s something about death that is comforting. The thought that you could die tomorrow frees you to appreciate your life now.

I believe this government cannot endure permanently, half slave and half free.

It isn’t the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it’s the pebble in your shoe.

Money, it turned out, was exactly like sex, you thought of nothing else if you didn’t have it and thought of other things if you did.

Above all, we must realize that no arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today’s world do not have.

You have freedom when you’re easy in your harness.

When you’re young, you look at television and think, there’s a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that’s not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want.

You don’t have to be like everybody else or do things like everybody else. God created you to be a unique individual, and He wants you to be free to be who He made you to be.