Freedom

for it means pushing back a boundary-line and adding to one’s liberty.

Conquering any difficulty always gives one a secret joy, for it means pushing back a boundary-line and adding to one’s liberty.

So hopeless is the world without, The world within I doubly prize; Thy world, where guile and hate and doubt And cold suspicion never rise; Where thou and I and Liberty Have undisputed sovereignty.

 

Joy, thou spark from Heav’n immortal, Daughter of Elysium! Drunk with fire, toward Heaven advancing Goddess, to thy shrine we come. Thy sweet magic brings together What stern Custom spreads afar; All men become brothers Where thy happy wing-beats are. 1

 

Therefore if you insist upon fighting to protect me, or “our” country, let it be understood, soberly and rationally between us, that you are fighting to gratify a sex instinct which I cannotshare; to procure benefits which I have notshared and probably will not share; but not togratify my instincts, or to protect myself or my country. For . . . in fact, as a woman, I have no country. As a woman I want no country. As awoman my country is the whole world.

In every human breast, God has implanted a principle, which we call love of freedom; it is impatient of oppression, and pants for deliverance; and by the leave of our modern Egyptians I will assert, that the same principle lives in us.

The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.

The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you.

I reckon I got to light out for the Territoryahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she’sgoing to adopt me and sivilize me and I can’tstand it. I been there before.

It was a close place. I took it up, and held itin my hand. I was trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: “All right, then, I’ll go to hell”—and tore it up.

We said there warn’t no home like a raft, afterall. Other places do seem so cramped up andsmothery, but a raft don’t. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft.

In countries where associations are free, secret societies are unknown. In America there are numerous factions, but no conspiracies.

There is no medium between servitudeand extreme licence; in order to enjoy theinestimable benefits which the liberty of the press ensures, it is necessary to submit to the inevitable evils which it engenders.

My soul an’t yours, Mas’r! You haven’t boughtit,—ye can’t buy it! It’s been bought and paid for, by one that is able to keep it.

We all profess the deepest regard for liberty; but no sooner does anyone claim to exercise it than we declare with horror that we are in favor of liberty but not of licence, and demand indignantly whether true freedom can ever mean freedom to do wrong, to preach sedition and immorality, to utter blasphemy. Yet this is exactly what liberty does mean.

Man cannot will unless he has first understood that he can count on nothing but himself: that he is alone, left alone on earth in the middle of his infinite responsibilities, with neither help nor succor, with no other goal but the one he will set for himself, with no other destiny but the one he will forge on this earth.

I like to walk about amidst the beautiful things that adorn the world; but private wealth I should decline, or any sort of personal possessions, because they would take away my liberty.

Intellectual freedom is essential to human society—freedom to obtain and distribute information, freedom for open-minded and unfearing debate, and freedom from pressure by officialdom and prejudices.

Freedom of thought is the only guarantee of the feasibility of a scientific democratic approach to politics, economy, and culture.

L’homme est né libre, et partout il est dans les fers .

Sixth, after the final destruction of the Nazi tyranny, they hope to see established a peace which will afford to all nations the means of dwelling in safety within their own boundaries, and which will afford assurance that all the men in all the lands may live out their lives in freedom from fear and want.

We all know that books burn—yet we have the greater knowledge that books can not be killed by fire. People die, but books never die. No man and no force can abolish memory. No man and no force can put thought in a concentration camp forever. No man and no force can take from the world the books that embody man’s eternal fight against tyranny of every kind. In this war, we know, books are weapons. And it is a part of your dedication always to make them weapons for man’s freedom.

In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. The first is freedom of speech and expression—everywhere in the world. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way—everywhere in the world. The third is freedom from want . . . everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear . . . anywhere in the world.

All of us in this country give lip service to the ideals set forth in the Bill of Rights and emphasized by every additional amendment, and yet when war is stirring in the world, many of us are ready to curtail our civil liberties. We do not stop to think that curtailing these liberties may in the end bring us a greater danger than the danger we are trying to avert.