As you watch the sky light up red, white and blue this Fourth of July, take a moment to reflect on the deeper meaning behind the holiday. We encourage you to treasure liberty and remain in awe of America’s beauty with the help of these 45 quotes about freedom. Discover bold statements and timeless truths shared by historical figures like Martin Luther King Jr., George Washington, and Eleanor Roosevelt.
Quotes About Freedom To Inspire Boldness
- “Freedom lies in being bold.” —Robert Frost
- “Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err and even to sin.” —Mahatma Gandhi
- “From every mountainside, let freedom ring.” —Martin Luther King Jr.
- “The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.” —Aung San Suu Kyi
- “May freedom be seen, not as the right to do as we please, but as the opportunity to please to do what is right.” —Peter Marshall
- “You call that freedom?” “To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing.” —Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead
- “Is freedom anything else than the right to live as we wish? Nothing else.” —Epictetus
- “It also is an occasion for remembering that in the truest sense freedom cannot be bestowed, it must be achieved; and that there must be constant vigilance if it is to be maintained.” —Franklin D. Roosevelt
- “Freedom is the open window through which pours the sunlight of the human spirit and of human dignity.” —Herbert Hoover
- “For everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labour in freedom.” —Albert Einstein
- “Life without liberty is like a body without spirit.” —Kahlil Gibran, The Vision
- “Better to die fighting for freedom then be a prisoner all the days of your life.” —Bob Marley
- “The best road to progress is freedom’s road.” —John F. Kennedy
- “Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” —Martin Luther King, Jr.
- “Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.” —George Washington
- “Brute force, no matter how strongly applied, can never subdue the basic human desire for freedom.” —Dalai Lama
- “Independence is a heady draft, and if you drink it in your youth, it can have the same effect on the brain as young wine does. It does not matter that its taste is not always appealing. It is addictive and with each drink you want more.” —Maya Angelou, Mom & Me & Mom
- “If you assume that there is an instinct for freedom, there are opportunities to change things, there’s a chance you may contribute to making a better world. The choice is yours.” —Noam Chomsky
- “The secret to happiness is freedom… And the secret to freedom is courage.” —Thucydides
- “All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.” ―Winston Churchill
- “Necessity is blind until it becomes conscious. Freedom is the consciousness of necessity.” —Karl Marx
- “Freedom is the emancipation from the arbitrary rule of other men.” —Mortimer Adler
- “Freedom is the oxygen of the soul.” —Moshe Dayan
Related: How to Find Freedom from Toxic Hustle Culture
Quotes About America And Liberty
- “Dreams are the foundation of America.” —Lupita Nyong’o
- “America is another name for opportunity.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “This, then, is the state of the Union: Free and restless, growing and full of hope. So it was in the beginning. So it shall always be, while God is willing, and we are strong enough to keep the faith.” —Lyndon B. Johnson
- “I am an American; free born and free bred, where I acknowledge no man as my superior, except for his own worth, or as my inferior, except for his own demerit.” —Theodore Roosevelt
- “I believe in America because we have great dreams, and because we have the opportunity to make those dreams come true.” —Wendell Willkie
- “The essence of America—that which really unites us—is not ethnicity, or nationality or religion—it is an idea—and what an idea it is: that you can come from humble circumstances and do great things. That it doesn’t matter where you came from but where you are going.” —Condoleezza Rice
- “Those who won our independence believed that the final end of the state was to make men free to develop their faculties, and that in its government the deliberative forces should prevail over the arbitrary. They valued liberty both as an end and as a means. They believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty.” —Louis D. Brandeis
- “True patriotism springs from a belief in the dignity of the individual, freedom and equality not only for Americans but for all people on earth.” —Eleanor Roosevelt
- “The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.” —Coco Chanel
Related: An Immigrant’s Take on Today’s American Dream
Quotes About What Freedom Means
- “The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.” —Albert Camus
- “I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will, which I now exert to leave you.” —Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
- “We, the people, recognize that we have responsibilities as well as rights; that our destinies are bound together; that a freedom which only asks ‘what’s in it for me?’ a freedom without a commitment to others, a freedom without love or charity or duty or patriotism, is unworthy of our founding ideals, and those who died in their defense.” —Barack Obama
- “We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it; our freedom must be buttressed by a homogeny equally and unchallengeably free, no matter what color they are, so that all the other inimical forces everywhere—systems political or religious or racial or national—will not just respect us because we practice freedom, they will fear us because we do.” —William Faulkner
- “A hero is someone who understands the responsibility that comes with his freedom.” —Bob Dylan
- “Freedom means the opportunity to be what we never thought we would be.” —Daniel J. Boorstin
- “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, Long Walk to Freedom
- “None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.” —Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- “Freedom is the will to be responsible to ourselves.” —Friedrich Nietzsche
- “No one outside ourselves can rule us inwardly. When we know this, we become free.” —Buddha
- “When we lose the right to be different, we lose the privilege to be free.” —Charles Evans Hughes
- “The more freedom we enjoy, the greater the responsibility we bear, toward others as well as ourselves.” —Oscar Arias Sanchez
- “Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.” —Henry David Thoreau
This article was updated July 2024. Photo by EB Adventure Photography/Shutterstock.com
