Freedom Quotes

Each story provides a beginning, a middle and an end, the trick is, never seperate them through the chapters or you'll miss the meaning of the entire book.

~ Nikki Rowe

Each new step into his new human existence is frightening. It always means to give up a secure state, which was relatively known, for one which is new, which one has not yet mastered. Undoubtedly, if the infant could think at the moment of the severance of the umbilical cord, he would experience the fear of dying. A loving fate protects us from this first panic. But at any new step, at any new stage of our birth, we are afraid again. We are never free from two conflicting tendencies: one to emerge from the womb, from the animal form of existence into a more human existence, from bondage to freedom; another, to return to the womb, to nature, to certainty and security.

~ Erich Fromm

Fear is a prison where you are the jailer. Free yourself!

~ Bryant Mcgill

In many areas of life, freedom is not so much the absence of restrictions as finding the right ones, the liberating restrictions. Those that fit with the reality of our nature and the world produce greater power and scope for our abilities and a deeper joy and fulfillment. Experimentation, risk, and making mistakes bring growth only if, over time, they show us our limits as well as our abilities. If we only grow intellectually, vocationally, and physically through judicious constraints–why would it not also be true for spiritual and moral growth? Instead of insisting on freedom to create spiritual reality, shouldn’t we be seeking to discover it and disciplining ourselves to live according to it?

~ Timothy J. Keller

Freedom is the choice to be free than to be a slave.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

It’s as close to true freedom as I have come. Not freedom of, but freedom from; freedom from the debris of life that piles up and forces us to dig and dig for our original self, who we were once upon a time, innocent and wonderfully naïve, as authentically pure as a human can be.

~ Dan Groat

We are free to live the life we have imagined, not the life imagined for us.

~ Chris Matakas

When a man does not dwell in self, then things will of themselves reveal their forms to him. His movement is like that of water, his stillness like that of a mirror, his responses like those of an echo.

~ Zhuangzi

A truly free man is not free 'from' anything, nor free 'to' anything, he is just free. Free within himself.

~ Ilyas Kassam

What is the most important thing in your life?For me, it is my freedom of mind, my freedom to choose my own ways of self-construction or self-destruction.

~ Preeti Bhonsle

Before embarking on a voyage, first speak with the ancient sailors, listen to and understand the winds, then patiently make a boat and sail. Yet, even then, be open to other dreams, changes, circumstances. Throughout our lives, we limit ourselves to fixed goals, only to get on the local ferry and just travel the distance between two known points. Yet, we create an illusion of freedom and choice, accompanied by a sense of independence. Thus, we carefully study weather reports, ride on the port side on odd numbered days, starboard on holidays, have tea at fixed times, never speak with those who wear glasses, always smile at those who wear green and of course allow ourselves just the slight possibility of a dream about jumping ship and going off to our island one day. C'est la vie? Our predictably totalitarian lives are an insult to the human spirit.

~ Gündüz Vassaf

Practice appreciation for who you are and what you have… and allow your life to unfold in the most amazing way.

~ Millen Livis

The great mission of our day is not conquering the sea or space, disease or tyranny. The grand quest which calls to the hero in every one of us is to become fully alive--to stand up and claim our birthright, which is inner freedom, love and radiant purpose. By fulfilling this, we transform the world.

~ Jacob Nordby

If you live life on your own terms it shouldn’t feel like a jail cell.

~ Shannon L. Alder

When men reject reason, they have no means left for dealing with one another — except brute, physical force.

~ Ayn Rand

Home is in my hair, my lips, my arms, my thighs, my feet and my hands. I am my own home. And when I wake up crying in the morning, thinking of how lonely I am, I pinch my skin, tug at my hair, remind myself that I am alive. Remind myself to step outside and greet the morning. Remind myself that it’s all about forward motion. It’s all about change. It’s all about that elusive state. Freedom.

~ Diriye Osman

Trap yourself inside your own brain, switch off the light, block all the escape routes, then turn your back on everything you know to be reality and try and survive there. Try. Living. Nowhere.

~ Carla H. Krueger

Nearly two years of dates. Still no question. Her mother and father want to set a proper date. Still no question. Her friends keep asking, when, Natasha? When? But she still hasn’t been asked The Question. It’s enjoyable to be the one with all the secrets, but in her honest mind – the hidden part that’s always sleeping – the secrets he keeps about when and if give her a feeling inside she’s never really understood completely – a sensation she had as a child when she got to the end of a fairytale where never-ending love and happiness were all but expected and wondered whether there might be…. one last page.

~ Carla H. Krueger

He remembers how someone – he forgets who – once said in a sarcastic tone, “Isn’t she just Little Miss Sweetness and Light?” – and it was a statement that put him off proposing. It made him seriously reassess his options. He didn’t want to be with someone others saw as overly-moral because he has flaws, he has weaknesses. How would his mistakes compare to her virtuousness? She used to dislike the competitiveness at work, the way she claimed she could never really make friends with anyone because everything was always so fake and cut-throat and he used to berate her for it, used to tell her to accept it, to realise the truth about life and relationships – but she wouldn’t take it. She was always thinking too hard about everything, always questioning her motives. Surely, if he’d married her, she’d have started questioning his.

~ Carla H. Krueger

Time is not an enemy as such, but a missing person, sending cryptic postcards from the past.

~ Carla H. Krueger

Cut away the nonsense, the drama, the regret, the scars of the past, and make a decision to no longer let them govern your happiness and freedom.

~ Steve Maraboli

A human being can only take so much when their basic rights as a citizen of the earth are being denied to them – or sold at a high cost.

~ Suzy Kassem

Those who have suffered in the hands of others,know what it is to be free.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Miracles can only inhabit the reality of our awareness when we surrender our need for the familiar to our desire for the limitless.

~ Eric Micha'el Leventhal

If God loves the world, might that not be proved in my own love for it? I prayed to know in my heart His love for the world, and this was my most prideful, foolish, and dangerous prayer. It was my step into the abyss. As soon as I prayed it, I knew that I would die. I knew the old wrong and the death that lay in the world. Just as a good man would not coerce the love of his wife, God does not coerce the love of His human creatures, not for Himself or for the world or for one another. To allow that love to exist fully and freely, He must allow it not to exist at all. His love is suffering. It is our freedom and His sorrow. To love the world as much even as I could love it would be suffering also, for I would fail. And yet all the good I know is in this, that a man might so love this world that it would break his heart.

~ Wendell Berry

Though the wind was commanding the sand into even ridges, it couldn't control the sea.

~ Jennie Nash

The only way you will ever be free is when you decide you have had enough of living up to the standards other people force upon you through shame. Never wear their chains of judgment when they can’t break free of their own.

~ Shannon L. Alder

You shouldn't want to be like everyone else. Then you wouldn't be like you.

~ Cristina Henriquez

We are humanity, Kant says. Humanity needs us because we are it. Kant believes in duty and considers remaining alive a primary human duty. For him one is not permitted to “renounce his personality,” and while he states living as a duty, it also conveys a kind of freedom: we are not burdened with the obligation of judging whether our personality is worth maintaining, whether our life is worth living. Because living it is a duty, we are performing a good moral act just by persevering.

~ Jennifer Michael Hecht

Stairs to success are made of people.

~ Ljupka Cvetanova

No marketplace, free or otherwise, is good when it fails to consider the basic human state of needs at every stage of life.

~ Bryant Mcgill

The freedom to choose...means the freedom to make mistakes, to falter and fail, to come face-to-face with your own flaws and limitations and fears and secrets, to live with the terrible uncertainty that necessarily attends the construction of a self.

~ Caroline Knapp

Inherent in every living thing is an insatiable hunger, the innate desire to express life by freely and fully being “what” it was uniquely created to be. To personalize this, consider the possibility that there was a time when you were a “what” before you were a “who.” If you can wrap your mind around that possibility, then, the question to explore is, what were you before you became a who—and why did you become the who you uniquely are when there are so many other “who”s on the planet you might have been? While this may seem like a bit of a paradoxi- cal tongue twister, it is the quintessential question that requires exploration if you are to follow your true North Star back to your point of origin, where you’ll find your authentic self waiting to weave itself into the fabric of your human life today and every day.

~ Dennis Merritt Jones

African leaders must desire to liberates it’s people through intensive education (formal and informal). The African people deserve to be educated.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Saturated Arrogance...imprisoned musescried to be freeshe took away their quillsand saiddo not bother me...

~ Muse

I felt that I could swim for miles, out into the ocean: a desire for freedom, an impulse to move, tugged at me as though it were a thread fastened to my chest. It was an impulse I knew well, and I had learned that it was not the summons from a larger world I used to believe it to be. It was simply a desire to escape from what I had.

~ Rachel Cusk

When we free ourselves from desire, we will know serenity and freedom.

~ Guatama Buddha

What does freedom mean if we accept the fundamental premise that humans are social beings, raised in certain social and historical contexts and belonging to particular communities that shape their desires and understandings of the world?

~ Lila Abu-Lughod

Freedom looks beautiful and inspiring to those who desire & seek it, but Freedom looks like rebellion to those who have become complacent in hiding.

~ Sanjo Jendayi

All who are not lunatics are agreed about certain things. That it is better to be alive than dead, better to be adequately fed than starved, better to be free than a slave. Many people desire those things only for themselves and their friends; they are quite content that their enemies should suffer. These people can be refuted by science: mankind has become so much one family that we cannot insure our own prosperity except by insuring that of everyone else. If you wish to be happy yourself, you must resign yourself to seeing others also happy.

~ Bertrand Russell