It is often safer to be in chains than to be free.

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

To be free is to have achieved your life.

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

We will not be intimidated or pushed off the world stage by people who do not like what we stand for, and that is, freedom, democracy and the fight against disease, poverty and terrorism.

No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned… a man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company.

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

For all who love freedom and peace, the world without Saddam Hussein’s regime is a better and safer place.

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

We have real enemies in the world. These enemies must be found. They must be pursued and they must be defeated.

Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.

We fear that this moment will end, that we won’t get what we need, that we will lose what we love, or that we will not be safe. Often, our biggest fear is the knowledge that one day our bodies will cease functioning. So even when we are surrounded by all the conditions for happiness, our joy is not complete.

The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all.

Fidelity and allegiance sworn to the King is only such a fidelity and obedience as is due to him by the law of the land; for were that faith and allegiance more than what the law requires, we would swear ourselves slaves and the King absolute; whereas, by the law, we are free men, notwithstanding those oaths.

Which painting in the National Gallery would I save if there was a fire? The one nearest the door of course.

Only our individual faith in freedom can keep us free.

Hundreds of thousands of American servicemen and women are deployed across the world in the war on terror. By bringing hope to the oppressed, and delivering justice to the violent, they are making America more secure.

Ninety-nine percent of the men and women of the FBI… are just professionals. I don’t want Americans, if an FBI agent knocks on their door, to have to be worried about well, is he a Democrat or a Republican? He’s an FBI agent.

The more a person seeks security, the more that person gives up control over their life.

He who is brave is free.

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.

The more you seek security, the less of it you have. But the more you seek opportunity, the more likely it is that you will achieve the security that you desire.

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.

Seeking means: to have a goal; but finding means: to be free, to be receptive, to have no goal.

When even one American – who has done nothing wrong – is forced by fear to shut his mind and close his mouth – then all Americans are in peril.

The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave.

I used to bodyguard for some celebrities and other people, and when I wasn’t doing that, I used to work at a disco as a doorman or a bouncer.

Taste cannot be controlled by law.

He who would be no slave must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves and, under a just God, cannot long retain it.

I think we must get rid of slavery, or we must get rid of freedom.

We don’t hide our space program. We don’t keep secrets and cover things up. We do it all up front and in public. That’s the way freedom is, and we wouldn’t change it for a minute.

We pledge ourselves to liberate all our people from the continuing bondage of poverty, deprivation, suffering, gender and other discrimination.

For more than four decades, the Libyan people have been ruled by a tyrant – Moammar Gaddafi. He has denied his people freedom, exploited their wealth, murdered opponents at home and abroad, and terrorized innocent people around the world – including Americans who were killed by Libyan agents.

Fighting for one’s freedom, struggling towards being free, is like struggling to be a poet or a good Christian or a good Jew or a good Muslim or good Zen Buddhist. You work all day long and achieve some kind of level of success by nightfall, go to sleep and wake up the next morning with the job still to be done. So you start all over again.

It was very lucky for me as a writer that I studied the physical sciences rather than English. I wrote for my own amusement. There was no kindly English professor to tell me for my own good how awful my writing really was. And there was no professor with the power to order me what to read, either.

Freedom is a man’s natural power of doing what he pleases, so far as he is not prevented by force or law.

The world has today 546 nuclear plants generating electricity. Their experience is being continuously researched, and feedback should be provided to all. Nuclear scientists have to interact with the people of the nation, and academic institutions continuously update nuclear power generation technology and safety.

Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time.

If you’re too free, you’re like the way Hong Kong is now. It’s very chaotic.

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.

Without freedom, no art; art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others.

A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.

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 like to be remembered as a guy who had a set of priorities, and was willing to live by those priorities. In terms of accomplishments, my biggest accomplishment is that I kept the country safe amidst a real danger.

Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions.

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!

Our growing softness, our increasing lack of physical fitness, is a menace to our security.

It takes a great deal of character strength to apologize quickly out of one’s heart rather than out of pity. A person must possess himself and have a deep sense of security in fundamental principles and values in order to genuinely apologize.

In a world of complex threats, our security and leadership depends on all elements of our power – including strong and principled diplomacy.

We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed.

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

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

Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold.

I don’t think anybody in America ought to be scared.

Violent means will give violent freedom. That would be a menace to the world and to India herself.

Prejudice is a chain, it can hold you. If you prejudice, you can’t move, you keep prejudice for years. Never get nowhere with that.

If… many influential people have failed to understand, or have just forgotten, what we were up against in the Cold War and how we overcame it, they are not going to be capable of securing, let alone enlarging, the gains that liberty has made.

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

Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself.

I’ve used the prestige and influence of having been a president of the United States as effectively as possible. And secondly, I’ve still been able to carry out my commitments to peace and human rights and environmental quality and freedom and democracy and so forth.

I have the space and liberty to create.