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

No oppression is so heavy or lasting as that which is inflicted by the perversion and exorbitance of legal authority.

All I’m for is the liberty of the individual.

Tyrants seldom want pretexts.

The path we have chosen for the present is full of hazards, as all paths are. The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender, or submission.

The intense happiness of our union is derived in a high degree from the perfect freedom with which we each follow and declare our own impressions.

Without freedom of thought, there can be no such thing as wisdom – and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech.

The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave.

To the press alone, chequered as it is with abuses, the world is indebted for all the triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression.

Part of the core information that I’ve been purveying is that identity politics is a sick game. You don’t play racial, ethnic, and gender identity games. The Left plays them on behalf of the oppressed, let’s say, and the Right tends to play them on behalf of nationalism and ethnic pride. I think they’re equally dangerous.

The revolution has always been in the hands of the young. The young always inherit the revolution.

To enjoy freedom we have to control ourselves.

I can relax with bums because I am a bum. I don’t like laws, morals, religions, rules. I don’t like to be shaped by society.

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

You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid.

My children came out as individuals in their own right. They were not my products. They had their own characters and were very strong-minded. I gave them a lot of freedom when they were still very young. The one thing they got from me is morals. They would never betray anyone. They are really good people.

Freedom is not enough.

I have seen how leaders rule by intimidation. Leaders who demonize and dehumanize entire groups of people often do so because they have nothing else to offer. And I have seen how places that stifle the voices and dismiss the potential of their citizens are diminished: how they are less vital, less hopeful, less free.

If society fits you comfortably enough, you call it freedom.

Fidel Castro, whatever people may think of him, is a hero in Latin America, primarily because he stood up to the United States.

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.

I have never been able to renounce the light, the pleasure of being, and the freedom in which I grew up.

Shall I tell you what the real evil is? To cringe to the things that are called evils, to surrender to them our freedom, in defiance of which we ought to face any suffering.

A people free to choose will always choose peace.

A consistent anarchist must oppose private ownership of the means of production, and the wage-slavery which is a component of this system, as incompatible with the principle that labor must be freely undertaken and under the control of the producer.

Money won’t create success, the freedom to make it will.

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

We humans for millions of years were nomadic. We associated freedom and well-being with the ability to move into open spaces, to find places more suited to hunting.

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

People have more freedom to bring more of their personal qualities into the role they play once they have established themselves and their competence is no longer in question. But this is always within limits.

Too many Christians live their lives like slaves – to the devil – because they believe his lies more than they trust God.

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

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

Freedom is the right to live as we wish.

We will always remember. We will always be proud. We will always be prepared, so we will always be free.

People have been fed this diet of pabulum, rights, and impulsive freedom. There’s just an absolute starvation for the other side of the story.

Only free men can negotiate. A prisoner cannot enter into contracts.

Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.

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.

There will be no prison which can hold our movement down.

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.

We gain the strength of the temptation we resist.

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.

The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it… I can resist everything but temptation.

Freedom without limits is just a word.

I can do whatever I want.

Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.

Human beings may well be unable to break free of the dictatorship of greed that spreads like a miasma over the world, but no longer will we be an inarticulate and ignorant humanity, confused by our enslavement to superior cruelty and weaponry.

People crushed by laws, have no hope but to evade power. If the laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to the law; and those who have most to hope and nothing to lose will always be dangerous.

The time is near at hand which must determine whether Americans are to be free men or slaves.

The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.

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

In the literal sense, there has been no relevant evolution since the trek from Africa. But there has been substantial progress towards higher standards of rights, justice and freedom – along with all too many illustrations of how remote is the goal of a decent society.

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been effort stored up in the past.

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

For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well-organized and armed militia is their best security.

Every family should have the right to spend their money, after tax, as they wish, and not as the government dictates. Let us extend choice, extend the will to choose and the chance to choose.

Innovation can only occur where you can breathe free.

Our whole life is set up in the path of least resistance. We don’t want to suffer. We don’t want to feel discomfort. So the whole time, we’re living our lives in a very comfortable area. There’s no growth in that.

No trace of slavery ought to mix with the studies of the freeborn man. No study, pursued under compulsion, remains rooted in the memory.