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.

A poet can survive everything but a misprint.

Someone asked me, if I were stranded on a desert island what book would I bring… ‚How to Build a Boat.‘

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.

Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.

We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free – honorable alike in that we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.

We are not actually equal – humanity – if we are not allowed to freely love one another.

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.

He does not seem to me to be a free man who does not sometimes do nothing.

Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized; nor should any organization be formed to lead or to coerce people along any particular path. If you first understand that, then you will see how impossible it is to organize a belief.

Our public life withers when only the most extreme voices get attention. Most of all, democracy breaks down when the average person feels their voice doesn’t matter; that the system is rigged in favor of the rich or the powerful or some narrow interest.

Reading and writing, like everything else, improve with practice. And, of course, if there are no young readers and writers, there will shortly be no older ones. Literacy will be dead, and democracy – which many believe goes hand in hand with it – will be dead as well.

All of us are in the same place, each with our own rooms, and we were allowed to do whatever we wanted. Which is totally different than college, where they manage your schedule for you. In the NBA, you’re on your own.

I wish I could say to all those people who consider themselves anarchists or radicals: Please join the nonviolent movement. This is how Gandhi freed India. If Gandhi freed India, we can certainly free the United States from our racism, misogyny, and bigotry.

The best road to progress is freedom’s road.

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

The terrorists are fighting freedom with all their cunning and cruelty because freedom is their greatest fear – and they should be afraid, because freedom is on the march.

America is a friend to the people of Iraq. Our demands are directed only at the regime that enslaves them and threatens us. When these demands are met, the first and greatest benefit will come to Iraqi men, women and children.

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.

No human being, however great, or powerful, was ever so free as a fish.

The government is us; we are the government, you and I.

Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.

I just know that I’m a fan of all different kinds of genres. You’re supposed to be free doing music, and that’s how I feel.

We’ve become, now, an oligarchy instead of a democracy. I think that’s been the worst damage to the basic moral and ethical standards to the American political system that I’ve ever seen in my life.

Happiness is just another of the tricks that our genetic system plays on us to carry out its only role, which is the survival of the species.

I probably wouldn’t have made it this far if I were a refugee.

I sent American troops to Iraq to make its people free, not to make them American. Iraqis will write their own history and find their own way.

We know what works. Freedom Works. We know what’s right. Freedom is right.

You’ve got to vote, vote, vote, vote. That’s it; that’s the way we move forward. That’s how we make progress for ourselves and for our country.

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

Optimism comes less easily today, not because democracy is less vigorous, but because democracy’s enemies have refined their instruments of repression.

You can chain me, you can torture me, you can even destroy this body, but you will never imprison my mind.

I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom.

Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.

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

It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.

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

If we are not free, no one will respect us.

They say cats have nine lives. I’ve had 12 already and I don’t know how many more I’ll have.

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

It is with your aid, as the people, that I think we shall be able to preserve – not the country, for the country will preserve itself, but the institutions of the country – those institutions which have made us free, intelligent and happy – the most free, the most intelligent, and the happiest people on the globe.

Tyranny naturally arises out of democracy.

What prevails in every corner of this globalized world is the real struggle of our species for its own survival.

We are a nation founded as a rebuke to tyranny. A nation of revolutionaries who refused sovereign reign from afar. Hear me – we’re a nation that says give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. A nation built on our differences, guided by the belief that we’re all created equal.

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!‘

The momentum of freedom in our world is unmistakable – and it is not carried forward by our power alone. We can trust in that greater power Who guides the unfolding of the years. And in all that is to come, we can know that His purposes are just and true.

Men’s actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the victim and slave of his action.

There’s not an American in this country free until every one of us is free.

We all live in a house on fire, no fire department to call; no way out, just the upstairs window to look out of while the fire burns the house down with us trapped, locked in it.

Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.

I’m not one icon. I’m every icon. I’m an icon that is made out of all the colors on the palette at every time. I have no restrictions. No restrictions.

In a democracy the poor will have more power than the rich, because there are more of them, and the will of the majority is supreme.

If civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships – the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together, in the same world at peace.

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

There’s a lot of fuss on the Left about election irregularities, like, you know, the voting machines were tampered with, they didn’t count the votes right, and so on. That’s all accurate and of some importance, but of far more importance is the fact that elections just don’t take place, not in any meaningful sense of the term ‚election.‘

I confess I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing.

I’d like to be the last person alive in the world! Yes, I’d like to know what happens.

I find only freedom in the realms of eccentricity.

Statistics show that of those who contract the habit of eating, very few survive.