I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse, perhaps, to be locked in.

Lulled in the countless chambers of the brain, our thoughts are linked by many a hidden chain; awake but one, and in, what myriads rise!

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.

I always had a knack for improvisation. I can write down the notes I play, but never really had a proper academic musical background. I suppose I’m blessed and cursed by the fact I have that freedom.

I think people should be allowed to do anything they want. We haven’t tried that for a while. Maybe this time it’ll work.

It is only a man’s own fundamental thoughts that have truth and life in them. For it is these that he really and completely understands. To read the thoughts of others is like taking the remains of someone else’s meal, like putting on the discarded clothes of a stranger.

We are wiser than we know.

Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

The English think they are free. They are free only during the election of members of parliament.

Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.

There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we feel no one else has a right to blame us.

What a wee little part of a person’s life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself.

Everywhere that freedom stirs, let tyrants fear.

The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.

He who knows himself is enlightened.

The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.

I sometimes wonder whether all pleasures are not substitutes for joy.

Responsibility is the price of freedom.

I claim to be a simple individual liable to err like any other fellow mortal. I own, however, that I have humility enough to confess my errors and to retrace my steps.

If human beings were shown what they’re really like, they’d either kill one another as vermin, or hang themselves.

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.

What difference is there between us, save a restless dream that follows my soul but fears to come near you?

Darn the wheel of the world! Why must it continually turn over? Where is the reverse gear?

Fear is present when we forget that we are a part of God’s divine design. Learning to experience authentic love means abandoning ego’s insistence that you have much to fear and that you are in an unfriendly world. You can make the decision to be free from fear and doubt and return to the brilliant light of love that is always with you.

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

It is only to the individual that a soul is given.

I think that somehow, we learn who we really are and then live with that decision.

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.

Men are never really willing to die except for the sake of freedom: therefore they do not believe in dying completely.

Man’s enemies are not demons, but human beings like himself.

We must always think about things, and we must think about things as they are, not as they are said to be.

Sooner or later we’re all someone’s dog.

Although prepared for martyrdom, I preferred that it be postponed.

Even though I write about the human race, the further away from them, the better I feel. Two miles is great; two thousand miles is beautiful.

The walls, the bars, the guns and the guards can never encircle or hold down the idea of the people.

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

I have a strong feeling that I shall be glad when I am dead and done for – scrapped at last to make room for somebody better, cleverer, more perfect than myself.

No one has ever learned fully to know themselves.

Now I do whatever I want.

Do not keep saying to yourself, if you can possibly avoid it, ‚But how can it be like that?‘ because you will get ‚down the drain,‘ into a blind alley from which nobody has yet escaped. Nobody knows how it can be like that.

He who is brave is free.

You know that being an American is more than a matter of where your parents came from. It is a belief that all men are created free and equal and that everyone deserves an even break.

The best way to enhance freedom in other lands is to demonstrate here that our democratic system is worthy of emulation.

The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time.

I don’t have freedom in the United States to go into a public school and preach the Gospel, nor is a student free in a public school to pray, or a teacher free to read the Bible publicly to the students. At the same time, we have a great degree of freedom for which I am grateful.

Ladies and gentlemen, god bless America – land of the free, home of the brave.

In my case Pilgrim’s Progress consisted in my having to climb down a thousand ladders until I could reach out my hand to the little clod of earth that I am.

Being a full human being is difficult, frightening, and problematical.

Observe all men, thyself most.

How could man rejoice in victory and delight in the slaughter of men?

Only by joy and sorrow does a person know anything about themselves and their destiny. They learn what to do and what to avoid.

Adversity has ever been considered the state in which a man most easily becomes acquainted with himself.

If you’re losing your soul and you know it, then you’ve still got a soul left to lose.

It’s like the Wild West, the Internet. There are no rules.

Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable – a most sacred right – a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world.

Who would ever think that so much went on in the soul of a young girl?

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

Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.

We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.

‚Kiss Land‘ wasn’t about what people wanted to hear on the radio. It was the state of mind I was in – introverted, like David Cronenberg’s ‚Naked Lunch.‘ You didn’t know if you were hearing a chorus or a verse. It was just my thoughts.