Quotes about freedom

I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will

You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man.

Englishmen never will be slaves: they are free to do whatever the Government and public opinion allows them to do.

HABIT, n. A shackle for the free.

LIBERTY, n. One of Imagination’s most precious possessions.

MUGWUMP, n. In politics one afflicted with self-respect and addicted to the vice of independence. A term of contempt.

RITUALISM, n. A Dutch Garden of God where He may walk in rectilinear freedom, keeping off the grass.

Pride has a larger part than goodness in our remonstrances with those who commit faults, and we reprove them not so much to correct as to persuade them that we ourselves are free from faults.

If we take the liberty to dwell on their faults we cannot long preserve the feelings we should hold towards our friends and benefactors.

The same pride which makes us blame faults from which we believe ourselves free causes us to despise the good qualities we have not.

Fettered HEART, FREE SPIRIT—When one firmly fetters one’s heart and keeps it prisoner, one can allow one’s spirit many liberties: I said this once before But people do not believe it when I say so, unless they know it already.

The pia fraus is still more repugnant to the taste (the “piety”) of the free spirit (the “pious man of knowledge”) than the impia fraus. Hence the profound lack of judgment, in comparison with the Church, characteristic of the type “free spirit”—as ITS non-freedom.

It is as certain as it is strange that truth and error come from one and the same source. Thus it is that we are often not at liberty to do violence to error, because at the same time we do violence to truth.

All men, as they attain freedom, give play to their errors. The strong do too much, and the weak too little.

A man has only to declare himself free to feel at the same moment that he is limited. Should he venture to declare himself limited, he feels himself free.

Yorick Sterne was the finest spirit that ever worked. To read him is to attain a fine feeling of freedom; his humour is inimitable, and it is not every kind of humour that frees the soul.

They prefer a personal attachment to a public service, and reward it better. They are vain and weak enough to look upon it as a free-will offering to their merit, and not as a burnt sacrifice to their power.

It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.