Freedom

The only arms I allow myself to use, silence, exile, and cunning.

When the soul of a man is born in this country, there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets.

Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult.

Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.

You should never have your best trousers on when you go out to fight for freedom and truth.

Liberties … depend on the silence of the law.

Away; take heed:

I struck the board, and cried, ‘No more.

The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves.

This is Liberty-Hall, gentlemen.

The moment the slave resolves that he will no longer be a slave, his fetters fall. He frees himself and shows the way to others. Freedom and slavery are mental states.

If I would be a young man again and had to decide how to make my living, I would not try to become a scientist or scholar or teacher. I would rather choose to be a plumber or a peddler in the hope to find that modest degree of independence still available under present circumstances.

I am as free as nature first made man,

Take me to you, imprison me, for I

Slaves cannot breathe in England, if their lungs

Well, they are gone, and here must I remain,

Eternal spirit of the chainless mind!

Hereditary bondsmen! know ye not

Liberty’s in every blow!

The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.

Liberty too must be limited in order to be possessed.

He who binds to himself a joy

I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man’s.

Freedom is not something that anybody can be given; freedom is something people take and people are as free as they want to be.