Famous Quotes & Sayings

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The water-lily, in the midst of waters, opens its leaves and expands its petals, at the first pattering of the shower, and rejoices in the rain-drops with a quicker sympathy than the packed shrubs in the sandy desert.

Salman Rushdie

The novel does not seek to establish a privileged language but it insists upon the freedom to portray and analyze the struggle between the different contestants for such privileges.

Salman Rushdie

Both John F. Kennedy and Nelson Mandela use the same three-word phrase which in my mind says it all, which is, 'Freedom is Indivisible,' you can't slice it up, otherwise it ceases to be freedom. You can dislike Charlie Hedbo. ... But the fact that you dislike them has nothing to do with their right to speak.

Salman Rushdie

Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.

William Cowper

He is the freeman whom the truth makes free, And all are slaves besides.

William Cowper

No, Freedom has a thousand charms to show That slaves, howe'er contented, never know.

Wayne LaPierre

Freedom is never an achieved state; like electricity, we've got to keep generating it or the lights go out.

Ursula K. Le Guin

Nobody who says, ‘I told you so’ has ever been, or will ever be, a hero.

Ursula K. Le Guin

Alone, no one wins freedom.

Walter Lippmann

Most men, after a little freedom, have preferred authority with the consoling assurances and the economy of effort it brings.

Walter Lippmann

Private property was the original source of freedom. It still is its main bulwark.

Walter Lippmann

A useful definition of liberty is obtained only by seeking the principle of liberty in the main business of human life, that is to say, in the process by which men educate their responses and learn to control their environment.

Walter Lippmann

This is one of the paradoxes of the democratic movement - that it loves a crowd and fears the individuals who compose it - that the religion of humanity should have no faith in human beings.

Walter Lippmann

We must abandon the notion that the people govern. Instead, we must adopt the theory that, by their occasional mobilisations as a majority, people support or oppose the individuals who actually govern.

Voltaire

Liberty, then, about which so many volumes have been written is, when accurately defined, only the power of acting.

Voltaire

The true character of liberty is independence, maintained by force.

Voltaire

History is the lie commonly agreed upon.

Voltaire

Will is wish, and liberty is power.

William Ralph Inge

The enemies of freedom do not argue; they shout and they shoot.

William C. Bryant

Here the free spirit of mankind, at length, Throws its last fetters off; and who shall place A limit to the giant's unchained strength, Or curb his swiftness in the forward race?

Wilhelm von Humboldt

Freedom is but the possibility of a various and indefinite activity; while government, or the exercise of dominion, is a single, yet real activity. The longing for freedom, therefore, is at first only too frequently suggested by the deep-felt consciousness of its absence.

Wilhelm Reich

Man's right to know, to learn, to inquire, to make bona fide errors, to investigate human emotions must, by all means, be safe, if the word "freedom" should ever be more than an empty political slogan.

Wilhelm Reich

The cry for freedom is a sign of suppression. It will not cease to ring as long as man feels himself captive. As diverse as the cries for freedom may be, basically they all express one and the same thing: The intolerability of the rigidity of the organism and of the machine-like institutions which create a sharp conflict with the natural feelings for life. Not until there is a social order in which all cries for freedom subside will man have overcome his biological and social crippling, will he have attained genuine freedom.

Walter Winchell

Too many people expect wonders from democracy, when the most wonderful thing of all is just having it.

Yevgeny Zamyatin

The only means of ridding man of crime is ridding him of freedom.

Yevgeny Zamyatin

I've read and heard a lot of unbelievable stuff about those times when people lived in freedom -- that is, in disorganized wildness.

Winston Churchill

Where there is a great deal of free speech there is always a certain amount of foolish speech.

Winston Churchill

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.

Winston Churchill

We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.

Winston Churchill

If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may be even a worse fate, you may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.

William J. Brennan

We do not consecrate the flag by punishing its desecration, for in doing so, we dilute the freedom this cherished emblem represents.

William J. Brennan

We hold that the Constitution does not forbid the states minor intrusions into an individual's body under stringently limited conditions.

William J. Brennan

The Framers of the Bill of Rights did not purport to 'create' rights. Rather, they designed the Bill of Rights to prohibit our Government from infringing rights and liberties presumed to be preexisting.