It’s easy to take freedom for granted. We often think of it as an innate quality, something that we are born with and never have to question. But philosophers throughout history have given us a lot to think about when it comes to freedom. Here are some of their most thought-provoking quotes about this important topic.
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Philosopher Quotes About Freedom
1. I prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery. – Jean Jacques Rousseau
2. The good man is free, even if he is a slave. The evil man is a slave, even if he is a king. – Saint Augustine
3. Freedom is not procured by a full enjoyment of what is desired, but by controlling the desire. – Epictetus
4. People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use. – Søren Kierkegaard
5. The freedom of Mankind does not lie in the fact that can do what we want, but that we do not have to do that which we do not want. – Jean Jacques Rousseau
6. Freedom is the greatest fruit of self sufficiency. – Epicurus
7. The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free. – Baruch Spinoza
8. It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere. – Voltaire
9.Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you. – Jean-Paul Sartre
10. Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds! – Marcus Garvey
11. Necessity is blind until it becomes conscious. Freedom is the consciousness of necessity. – Karl Marx
12. When liberty destroys order, the hunger for order will destroy liberty. – Will Durant
13. If we don’t believe in free expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all. – Noam Chomsky
14. Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does. It is up to you to give [life] a meaning. – Jean-Paul Sartre
15. Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility. – Sigmund Freud
Other Great Quotes About Freedom
Freedom means you are unobstructed in living your life as you choose. Anything less is a form of slavery. – Wayne Dyer
You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man’s freedom. – Clarence Darrow
As long as men are free to ask what they must, free to say what they think, free to think what they will, freedom can never be lost and science can never regress. – Marcel Proust
As human beings, we are endowed with freedom of choice, and we cannot shuffle off our responsibility upon the shoulders of God or nature. We must shoulder it ourselves. It is our responsibility. – Arnold J. Toynbee
I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do. – Robert A. Heinlein
A man can be himself only so long as he is alone; and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom; for it is only when he is alone that he is really free. – Arthur Schopenhauer
Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth. – George Washington
Freedom is the open window through which pours the sunlight of the human spirit and human dignity. – Herbert Hoover
For everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labour in freedom. – Albert Einstein
For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others. – Nelson Mandela
Freedom, in any case, is only possible by constantly struggling for it. – Albert Einstein
In the truest sense, freedom cannot be bestowed; it must be achieved. – Franklin D. Roosevelt
If you’re not ready to die for it, put the word ‘freedom’ out of your vocabulary. – Malcolm X
