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.

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.

Your true traveller finds boredom rather agreeable than painful. It is the symbol of his liberty – his excessive freedom. He accepts his boredom, when it comes, not merely philosophically, but almost with pleasure.

The real power of the Buddha was that he had so much love. He saw people trapped in their notions of small separate self, feeling guilty or proud of that self, and he offered revolutionary teachings that resounded like a lion’s roar, like a great rising tide, helping people to wake up and break free from the prison of ignorance.

There is no easy walk to freedom anywhere, and many of us will have to pass through the valley of the shadow of death again and again before we reach the mountaintop of our desires.

If you look at our current technology level, something strange has to happen to civilisations, and I mean strange in a bad way. And it could be that there are a whole lot of dead, one-planet civilisations.

I want to go down in the history books with what I’ve achieved.

I don’t want to have lived in vain like most people. I want to be useful or bring enjoyment to all people, even those I’ve never met. I want to go on living even after my death!

Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err.

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

I’d read up on the history of our country and I’d become fascinated with the story of the Alamo. To me it represented the fight for freedom, not just in America, but in all countries.

I have done for my country, and for all mankind, all that I could do, and I now resign my soul, without fear, to my God – my daughter to my country.

For my name and memory I leave to men’s charitable speeches, and to foreign nations and the next ages.

When I die, and people realize that I will not be resurrected in three days, they will forget me. That is the way it should be.

White people just don’t want their slaves to be free. That’s the whole thing.

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

Sonny Liston is nothing. The man can’t talk. The man can’t fight. The man needs talking lessons. The man needs boxing lessons. And since he’s gonna fight me, he needs falling lessons.

The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes.

Slavery takes hold of few, but many take hold of slavery.

There is no more independence in politics than there is in jail.

I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy – but that could change.

For me, it’s about becoming a mogul, owning my own projects, and establishing myself as a funding producer. That’s what’s big to me. The movies and all that stuff are great, but the fact that I’m in a position to do what I want to do, however I want to do it and when I want to do it is bigger.

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.

Our generation in the west was lucky: we had readymade gateways. We had books, paper, teachers, schools and libraries. But many in the world lack these luxuries. How do you practice without such tryout venues?

I sometimes think that the price of liberty is not so much eternal vigilance as eternal dirt.

We will not waver; we will not tire; we will not falter, and we will not fail. Peace and Freedom will prevail.

America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres.

For me, being raised in a free America made all the difference.

For the sake of peace and justice, let us move toward a world in which all people are at last free to determine their own destiny.

Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.

The course of this conflict is not known, yet its outcome is certain. Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them.

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

I find only freedom in the realms of eccentricity.

Without culture, and the relative freedom it implies, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle. This is why any authentic creation is a gift to the future.

To live is to find out for yourself what is true, and you can do this only when there is freedom, when there is continuous revolution inwardly, within yourself.

Only the educated are free.

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 men were born free, they would, so long as they remained free, form no conception of good and evil.

The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.

I don’t know how much longer I’ll be around. I’ll probably be writing when the Lord says, ‚Maya, Maya Angelou, it’s time.‘

I can imagine in years to come that my papers and memorabilia, my journals and letters, will find themselves always in the company of people who care about many of the things I do.

Freedom means you are unobstructed in living your life as you choose. Anything less is a form of slavery.

All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.

One has children in the expectation of dying before them. In fact, you want to make damn sure you die before them, just as you plant a tree or build a house knowing, hoping that it will outlive you. That’s how the human species has done as well as it has.

If you want total security, go to prison. There you’re fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking… is freedom.

Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and under the rule of a just God, cannot long retain it.

We can continue to learn generation after generation and now is time to begin to learn how to love in a non-discriminatory way because we are intelligent enough, but we are not loving enough as a species.

Responsibility is the price of freedom.

Hiding places there are innumerable, escape is only one, but possibilities of escape, again, are as many as hiding places.

Art is to be free. Design is to fix.

No legacy is so rich as honesty.

There is nothing I love as much as a good fight.

The awareness that health is dependent upon habits that we control makes us the first generation in history that to a large extent determines its own destiny.

I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.

Rebellion is what you make of it. When you’ve been on a tour bus for two months straight, and then you get in your car and drive wherever you want, that can feel rebellious.

Facts, like people, want to be free – and when they’re free, liberty is usually around the corner.

Everybody loves you when you’re six foot in the ground.

In fact men will fight for a superstition quite as quickly as for a living truth – often more so, since a superstition is so intangible you cannot get at it to refute it, but truth is a point of view, and so is changeable.

A man can be himself only so long as he is alone, and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom, for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.

In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than just ideals to be valued – they may be essential to survival.

Most liberals think of civil liberties as their Achilles heel. It isn’t.