Society, Justice & Peace: Freedom Quotes

Similar topics:Equality Human Rights Justice Peace War

"A mere forty years ago, beach volleyball was just beginning. No bureaucrat would have invented it, and that's what freedom is all about"

Newt Gingrich, Politician

"I mean, we are facing so many very, very important issues and those are the issues that you heard talked about last night from the Republican convention, and that you'll hear my husband talk about. And those are the really important issues facing our country right now"

Laura Bush, First Lady

"Would you allow a people to come from somewhere else and occupy a part of the United States, and set up an independent state, and, after 50 years, you would not be able to stay on this land?"

Hassan Nasrallah, Revolutionary

"There is also poetry written to be shouted in a square in front of an enthusiastic crowd. This occurs especially in countries where authoritarian regimes are in power"

Eugenio Montale, Poet

"Despite its enormous power and wealth, China's ruling elite remains absolutely petrified that the free flow of information will undermine its political legitimacy, particularly among China's younger generation"

Tom Lantos, Diplomat

"Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons"

Garrett Hardin, Environmentalist

"If you want to sing out, sing out, and if you want to be free, be free, 'cause there's a million ways to be, you know that there are"

Cat Stevens, Musician

"I've returned to being an amateur without any ties or strings attached, which gives me a freedom I never had before"

Cat Stevens, Musician

"But poets were not considered dangerous and they were advised to exercise self-censorship. At most, poets were requested not to write at all. I took advantage of this negative liberty"

Eugenio Montale, Poet

"The difference between Liberty and liberties is as great as God and gods"

Ludwig Borne, Writer

"America has been another name for opportunity"

Frederick Jackson Turner, Historian

"Up to our own day, American history has been in a large degree the history of the colonization of the Great West. The existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward, explain American development"

Frederick Jackson Turner, Historian

"We will not allow the boot to be placed on our desks"

Maria Corina Machado, Politician

"What is yours is yours - your property, your home, and your country - and we will not allow them to take it from us"

Maria Corina Machado, Politician

"I know what you're going to say! 'They are men, and men should be free.' A free man is dangerous to himself and everyone else. Freedom should be left to those who can put it to good use"

Dave Sim, Cartoonist

"There are men - now in power in this country - who do not respect dissent, who cannot cope with turmoil, and who believe that the people of America are ready to support repression as long as it is done with a quiet voice and a business suit"

John Lindsay, Politician

"I do not want the voice of the people shut out"

Huey Long, Politician

"I suspect that no community will become humane and caring by restricting what its members can say"

Derek Bok, Lawyer

"The love of their country is with them only a mode of flattering its master; as soon as they think that master can no longer hear, they speak of everything with a frankness which is the more startling because those who listen to it become responsible"

Marquis De Custine, Author

"Liberty without virtue would be no blessing to us"

Benjamin Rush, Scientist

"Independent media can go to where the silence is and break the sound barrier, doing what the corporate networks refuse to do"

Amy Goodman, Journalist

"The proposition that Muslims are welcome in Britain if, and only if, they stop behaving like Muslims is a doctrine which is incompatible with the principles that guide a free society"

Roy Hattersley, Statesman

"There aren't traditions of freedom in a place like Iraq. They're going to have to come to grips with a concept that they hadn't been allowed to conceive before"

Malcolm Wallop, Politician

"The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities"

John Acton, Historian

"We have to recognize that the freedom of the individual has to be protected not only from the power of the state, but even more so from economic and societal power"

Gustav Heinemann, Politician

"I can say now: all the combatants who participated in the fight for freedom in South America came to Algeria; it's from there that all those who fought left. We trained them, we arranged for the weapons to reach them, we created networks"

Ahmed Ben Bella, Politician

"Once you give up rights, they're not going to give them back"

Aaron McGruder, Artist

"You know, I left the country when Reagan got in; I went to France. And when George Bush Jr. got in, my instincts told me it was time to go - I'd felt that we had grown above that, you know?"

Tommy Chong, Actor

"It is absolutely essential that the oppressed participate in the revolutionary process with an increasingly critical awareness of their role as subjects of the transformation"

Paulo Freire, Educator

"This is a government takeover of our healthcare system. It is the government basically running the entire healthcare system, turning large insurers into de facto public utilities, depriving people of choice, depriving people of options, raising people's prices, raising taxes when we need new jobs"

Paul Ryan, Politician

"The burning of an author's books, imprisonment for opinion's sake, has always been the tribute that an ignorant age pays to the genius of its time"

Joseph Lewis, Writer

"The worst evil is - and that's the product of censorship - is the self-censorship, because that twists spines, that destroys my character because I have to think something else and say something else, I have to always control myself"

Milos Forman, Director

"The First Amendment has the same role in my life as a citizen and a writer, as the sun has in our ecosystem"

Michael Chabon, Author

"Our officers and men behaved like men who are determined to be free"

Anthony Wayne, Soldier

"After I became a citizen, I felt freer to say what I thought about this country, both negative and positive. I think I had been, consciously and subconsciously, biting my tongue in the past"

Robert MacNeil, Journalist

"His very chains helped to deceive him about the harshness of his service"

Bruno Bauer, Theologian

"I think if people value democracy, they had damn well better get out and exercise their right to vote while their vote still means something"

Bob Weir, Musician

"The ultimate end is a nation that lies under the concept of the Declaration of Indepen dence. The Declaration of Independence is such an extraordinary statement - it was designed by people skeptical of government, local or national, but in particular national"

Malcolm Wallop, Politician

"Tobacco companies are legally operating entities in Australia. If the Government thinks that they should not make donations to political parties, well, then they should ban them operating as legally structured entities in Australia"

Julie Bishop, Politician

"I want to make an extremely strong appeal to those who abstained. Vote. It takes five minutes and then it's for five years"

Laurent Fabius, Statesman

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