Meditations on freedom
“Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.” Kris Kristofferson.
While I like this quotation, the ones below are, I think, more challenging and thought provoking. Happy Independence Day. And remember, “Freedom means never having to say you’re Tory.” R. Ward. [Apologies to Erich Segal.]
“Pervading nationalism imposes its dominion on man today in many different forms and with an aggressiveness that spares no one.... The challenge that is already with us is the temptation to accept as true freedom what in reality is only a new form of slavery.” Pope John Paul II.
“Every time we turn our heads the other way when we see the law flouted—when we tolerate what we know to be wrong—when we close our eyes and ears to the corrupt because we are too busy, or too frightened—when we fail to speak up and speak out—we strike a blow against freedom and decency and justice.” Robert F. Kennedy.
“Liberty is always unfinished business.” ACLU.
“Life and liberty can be as much endangered from illegal methods used to convict those thought to be criminals as from the actual criminals themselves.” Earl Warren.
“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” Benjamin Franklin.
“The proclamation and repetition of first principles is a constant feature of life in our democracy. Active adherence to these principles, however, has always been considered un-American. We recipients of the boon of liberty have always been ready, when faced with discomfort, to discard any and all first principles of liberty, and, further, to indict those who do not freely join with us in happily arrogating those principles.” David Mamet.
“People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.” Soren Kierkegaard.
“If the cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail.... Because the goal of America is freedom, abused and scorned tho’ we may be, our destiny is tied up with America’s destiny.” Martin Luther King.
“Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you’re a man, you take it.” Malcolm X.
“In the truest sense, freedom cannot be bestowed; it must be achieved.” Franklin D. Roosevelt.
“Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” Martin Luther King.
“You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.” Malcolm X.
“Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.” George Bernard Shaw.
“I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.” Thomas Jefferson.
“The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves.” William Hazlitt.
“The minute you follow other people is the minute you lose your freedom.” Krishnamurti.
“The higher your station, the less your liberty.” Gaius Sallustius Crispus.
“A basic ingredient in the attainment of freedom: adversity that brings awareness.” Anthony de Mello.
“We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty, in a feather-bed.” Thomas Jefferson.
“Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently.” Rosa Luxemburg.
“Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.” George Orwell.
“Freedom of speech is of no use to a man who has nothing to say and freedom of worship is of no use to a man who has lost his God.” Franklin D. Roosevelt.
“How is freedom measured, in individuals as in nations? By the resistance which has to be overcome, by the effort it costs to stay aloft.” Fredrich Nietzsche.
“Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.” John F. Kennedy.
“When it is announced that a respected and beloved leader has died for our freedom in the course of the battle, do not grieve, do not lose hope! Observe that anyone who dies for his country is a fortunate man, but death takes what it wants, indiscriminately, in peace-time as well as in war. It is better to die with freedom than without it.” Haile Selassie.
“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it.” Thomas Paine.
“History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.” Dwight D. Eisenhower.
“It is not an era of repose. We have used up all our inherited freedom. If we would save our lives, we must fight for them.” Henry David Thoreau.
“All gentle cant and philosophizing to the contrary notwithstanding, no people in this world ever did achieve their freedom by goody-goody talk and moral suasion: it being immutable law that all revolutions that will succeed, must begin in blood.” Mark Twain.
“Men are freest when they are most unconscious of freedom. The shout is a rattling of chains, always was.” D.H. Lawrence.
“Salvation for a race, nation, or class must come from within. Freedom is never granted; it is won. Justice is never given; it is exacted. Freedom and justice must be struggled for by the oppressed of all lands and races, and the struggle must be continuous, for freedom is never a final fact, but a continuing evolving process to higher and higher levels of human, social, economic, political and religious relationships.” Asa Philip Randolph.
“I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America.” Alexis de Tocqueville.
“This is a world of compensations; and 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.” Abraham Lincoln.
“[L]iberty is the one thing no man can have unless he grants it to others.” Ruth Benedict.
“It behoves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others; or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.” Thomas Jefferson.
“Freedom-loving people around the world must say ... I am a refugee in a crowded boat foundering off the coast of Vietnam. I am Laotian, a Cambodian, a Cuban, and a Miskito Indian in Nicaragua.” Ronald Reagan.
“Freedom derives from a multiplicity of sects, which pervade America, and which is the best and only security for religious liberty in any society. For where there is such a variety of sects, there cannot be a majority of any one sect to oppress and persecute the rest.” James Madison.
“Many politicians of our time are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story who resolved not to go into the water until he had learnt to swim. If men are to wait for liberty till they become wise and good in slavery, they may indeed wait forever.” Thomas Babington Macaulay.
“[A] society in which there is widespread economic insecurity can turn freedom into a barren and vapid right for the millions of people.” Eleanor Roosevelt.
“When liberty comes with hands dabbled in blood it is hard to shake hands with her.” Oscar Wilde.
“Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it.” Learned Hand.
“The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the minds of other men and women; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which weighs their interests alongside its own without bias; the spirit of liberty remembers that not even a sparrow falls to earth unheeded; the spirit of liberty is the spirit of Him who, near two thousand years ago, taught mankind that lesson it has never learned, but has never quite forgotten; that there may be a kingdom where the least shall be heard and considered side by side with the greatest.” Learned Hand.
“Discipline must come through liberty.... We do not consider an individual disciplined only when he has been rendered as artificially silent as a mute and as immovable as a paralytic. He is an individual annihilated, not disciplined.” Maria Montessori.
“So-called Western Civilization, as practised in half of Europe, some of Asia and a few parts of North America, is better than anything else available. Western civilization not only provides a bit of life, a pinch of liberty and the occasional pursuance of happiness, it’s also the only thing that’s ever tried to. Our civilization is the first in history to show even the slightest concern for average, undistinguished, none-too-commendable people like us.” P.J. O'Rourke.
(Originally published on Minor Wisdom (July 4, 2005).)