Top 100 Freedom Individual Quotes
#1. Not so long ago people believed in ideologies, systems, and institutions to save all societies. Today, they have given up such hopes and have returned to relying on the individual, on individual freedom, individual initiative, individual creativity.
Dalai Lama
#2. Without peace, there is no freedom, individual or national. War and hostilities are a form of slavery.
Klas Pontus Arnoldson
#3. Traditionalists like me believe the USA has become strong because of its core values, the freedom, individual responsibility and institutions like traditional marriage, which foster common goals.
Bill O'Reilly
#4. And we can celebrate when we have a government that has earned back the trust of the people it serves ... when we have a government that honors our Constitution and stands up for the values that have made America, America: economic freedom, individual liberty, and personal responsibility.
John Boehner
#5. These new technologies are not yet inevitable. But if they blossom fully into being, freedom may irrevocably perish. This is a fight not only for the meaning of our individual lives, but for the meaning of our life together.
Bill McKibben
#6. Our goals can only be achieved with a society that respects and equally protects the rights of every human being, old and young, rich and poor, regardless of gender, color, race, or creed. We must reject the initiation of violence by individuals or government as morally repugnant.
Ron Paul
#7. The traditional Jeffersonian principle of religious freedom was so broadly democratic that it included the right to have no religion at all - it gave to the individual the right to worship any God he chose or no god.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
#8. Freedom and Liberty cannot exist without Individual Responsibilty. Failure to exercise Individual Responsibilty forfeits your right to self-governance and delivers it to Government which, through force, will set the parameters of your life.
Brian Wilson
#9. The key to freedom is accepting my own autonomy as an individual, and respecting the autonomy of other individuals, with all of what that means - whatever that means.
Benjamin Ward Richardson
#10. As people grow up and they want more freedom, it's on an individual basis, children want to have more freedom, you've got to allow that, so how do you balance it. I would say let it evolve, move as quickly or slowly as people would like to move.
Goh Chok Tong
#11. Capitalism is not a form of government. Capitalism is a symptom of freedom. It is the result of individual rights, which include property rights.
A.E. Samaan
#12. Second, this law has become a special symbol of our Nation's most important purpose: to fulfill the individual - his freedom, his happiness, his promise.
Lyndon B. Johnson
#13. I should like to be remembered as the man who raised a voice against ... placing limitations on the freedom of the individual.
Dennis Chavez
#14. Poverty alleviation occurs when the power of Christ's resurrection reconciles our key relationships through the transformation of both individual lives and local, national, and international systems.
Brian Fikkert
#15. Freedom, morality, and the human dignity of the individual consists precisely in this; that he does good not because he is forced to do so, but because he freely conceives it, wants it, and loves it.
Mikhail Bakunin
#16. The more laws that governments pass, the less individual freedom there is. Any student of history will tell you that. Totalitarian countries ban pretty much everything.
Bill O'Reilly
#17. Freedom is valued in a culture that wants to encourage dissent and to stimulate originality and independence. It belongs to a society which is open to change, and which esteems the agent of change, the individual, above its own peace of mind.
Jacob Bronowski
#18. The individual who no longer has a rigid mind has found freedom. Life can be so easy. Refuse to let go and you are a person drowning; the more you struggle, the faster you sink.
George Ohsawa
#19. The freedom to own and carry the weapon of your choice is a natural, fundamental, and inalienable human, individual, civil, and Constitutional right - subject neither to the democratic process nor to arguments grounded in social utility.
L. Neil Smith
#20. If a Tory does not believe that private property is one of the main bulwarks of individual freedom, then he had better become a socialist and have done with it.
Margaret Thatcher
#21. There is no meaningful "yes" unless the individual could also have said "no.
Rollo May
#22. I think it is very important for any U.S. administration to be clear that America stands on the side of freedom and democracy and respect for individual rights.
Stephen Hadley
#23. If freedom led to wider inequality, I would prefer that to a world in which I got artificial equality at the expense of freedom. My objective, my god ... is freedom of individuals to pursue their own values.
Milton Friedman
#24. The more developed a nation is, the more complete is the independence of the individual, and the safer the individual from encroachments by another.
Dmitry Pisarev
#25. Our single most important challenge is therefore to help establish a social order in which the freedom of the individual will truly mean the freedom of the individual.
Nelson Mandela
#26. I believe, basically, that individual freedom is very important.
Peter Thiel
#27. I have served one idea, marched under one banner - war against all imposed authority - against every kind of deprivation of freedom, in the name of the absolute independence of the individual.
Alexander Herzen
#28. The freedom and human capacities of individuals must be developed to their maximum but individual powers must be linked to democracy in the sense that social betterment must be the necessary consequence of individual flourishing.
Henry Giroux
#29. Christianity brought something new and revolutionary: freedom and unconditional dignity for each individual, regardless of his religion, culture or nationality. But the East and the West have parted ways since the Crusades.
Walter Kasper
#30. It is impossible for us to make any real advance until we take to heart this great truth, that without freedom of choice, without freedom of action, there are not such things as true moral qualities; there can only be submissive wearing of the cords that others have tied round our hands.
Auberon Herbert
#31. The greatest enemy of individual freedom is the individual himself.
Saul D. Alinsky
#32. The true patriot scrutinizes the actions of his own government with unceasing vigilance. And when his government violates the morality and rightness associated with principles of individual freedom and private property, he immediately rises in opposition to his government.
Jacob G. Hornberger
#33. Enlightenment values of individual freedom are manifested best in individual acts of criticism and defiance.
Pankaj Mishra
#34. Over one's mind and over one's body the individual is sovereign.
John Stuart Mill
#35. I venture on assuring you that I regard the design formed by you and your friends with sincere interest, and in particular wish well to all the efforts you may make on behalf of individual freedom and independence as opposed to what is termed Collectivism .
William E. Gladstone
#36. True freedom is where an individual's thoughts and actions are in alignment with that which is true, correct, and of honor - no matter the personal price.
Bryant H. McGill
#37. Any nation or government that deprives an individual of freedom is in that moment committing an act of moral and spiritual murder. Any individual who is not concerned about his freedom commits an act of moral and spiritual suicide.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#38. We believe firmly that Communism internally and externally can and must be fought without resort to the Communist tactics of the suppression of all individual freedom.
Emanuel Celler
#39. Goodness is not in the backyard of the individual nor in the open field of the collective; goodness flowers only in freedom from both.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
#40. The liberty of the individual is a necessary postulate of human progress.
Ernest Renan
#41. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom.
Ronald Reagan
#42. The only way that has ever been discovered to have a lot of people cooperate together voluntarily is through the free market. And that's why it's so essential to preserving individual freedom.
Milton Friedman
#43. There is no justification for taking away individuals' freedom in the guise of public safety.
Thomas Jefferson
#44. Do not be deluded by the abstract word Freedom. Whose freedom? Not the freedom of one individual in relation to another, but freedom of Capital to crush the worker.
Karl Marx
#45. Freedom, liberty, individual rights, that idea of dealing with other people in a matter that is not initiating force against them, is critical to me.
Jimmy Wales
#46. We must face the fact that the preservation of individual freedom is incompatible with a full satisfaction of our views of distributive justice.
Friedrich August Von Hayek
#47. We live in a world shaped by the ambiguous legacy of the Enlightenment ... [it] enlarged the scope of human freedom, prepared our minds for the scientific method, made man the measure of all things, and placed individual consent front and center on the political stage.
James Q. Wilson
#49. If happiness truly consisted in physical ease and freedom from care, then the happiest individual would not be either a man or a woman; it would be, I think, an American cow.
William Lyon Phelps
#50. Monetary freedom (gold: sound money), like all other economic freedoms, clears the way for energy, intellect and virtue ... Political control weakens individual self-reliance and energy, causes want and poverty and, in the end, breeds tyranny and oppression.
Hans F. Sennholz
#51. I am certain, however, that nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice.
Friedrich Hayek
#52. I believe in trying to get a balance between individual freedom on the one hand and social responsibility on the other.
Chris Patten
#53. Regarding "thou mayest":
And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected.
John Steinbeck
#54. Creativity is the fragrance of individual freedom.
Osho
#55. Democracy without respect for individual rights sucks. It's just ganging up against the weird kid, and I'm always the weird kid.
Penn Jillette
#56. The term "Socialism" becomes a common label for the various theories of attack upon the principle of property, the various policies of communal control at the expense of the family and individual freedom.
Hilaire Belloc
#58. As far as prayer is concerned it is my freedom, it is my individual concern with God. If I am answerable, I am answerable to God, not to you. I am not praying to you, I am praying to God, and if I am praying wrongly, it is a matter to be settled between me and God. Who are you?
Osho
#59. A society that robs an individual of the product of his effort, or enslaves him, or attempts to limit the freedom of his mind, or compels him to act against his own rational judgment ... is not, strictly speaking, a society, but a mob held together by institutionalized gang-rule.
Ayn Rand
#60. Organizing among agency workers is structurally impossible, and the enforced atomization of the agency worker is rephrased as 'individual choice', 'your freedom'.
Nina Power
#61. A free America ... means just this: individual freedom for all, rich or poor, or else this system of government we call democracy is only an expedient to enslave man to the machine and make him like it.
Frank Lloyd Wright
#62. Can we get control of an individual to the point where he will do our bidding against his will and even against fundamental laws of nature such as self preservation? (CIA Document, Project ARTICHOKE, MORI ID 144686, 1952)
As cited by Dr Ellen P. Lacter, p57
Orit Badouk Epstein
#63. Only a small part of scientific progress has resulted from planned search for specific objectives. A much more important part has been made possible by the freedom of the individual to follow his own curiosity.
Irving Langmuir
#64. For individual freedom can come about only, can be conceived only, if there is some sense of security to life.
Russell Shorto
#65. There are those that want freedom from individual responsibility, and then there are those that want individual liberty. "Freedom" and "liberty" no longer mean what they used to. A desire for dependence has been made fashionably desirable.
A.E. Samaan
#66. Freedom is not an individual effort.
Yours comes only when you grant others theirs
Sergio Aragones
#67. I believe the role that people like myself have played in the transformation of public opinion has been by persistently presenting a different point of view, a point of view which stresses the importance of private markets, of individual freedom, and the distorting effect of governmental policy.
Milton Friedman
#68. We Libertarians believe in "Limited Government" precisely because we believe in unlimited liberty. Reduce one, and you decrease the other.
A.E. Samaan
#69. Words like 'freedom', 'justice' and 'democracy' are not common concepts; on the contrary, they are rare. People are not born knowing what these are. It takes enormous, and above all, individual effort to arrive at the respect for other people that these words imply.
James A. Baldwin
#70. We ought to be free to meet and mingle,
to rise by our individual worth, without any consideration of caste or color; and they who deny us this right are false to their own professed principals of human equality.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
#71. It is solely by risking life that freedom is obtained; ... the individual who has not staked his or her life may, no doubt, be recognized as a Person; but he or she has not attained the truth of this recognition as an independent self-consciousness.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
#72. What we call the freedom of the individual is not just the luxury of one intellectual to write what he likes to write but his being a voice which can speak for those who are silent.
Stephen Spender
#73. Just as the right to speak and the right to refrain from speaking are complementary components of a broader concept of individual freedom, so also the individual's freedom to choose his own creed is the counterpart of his right to refrain from accepting the creed established by the majority.
John Paul Stevens
#74. True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
#75. Art doesn't exist if you just do what you're told. It only exists as an exercise of individual taste and freedom.
Jane Smiley
#76. Those of us who lived under communism for most of our lives were looking toward the Western world because of its values, emphasis on democracy, individual liberties and freedom, and economic prosperity.
Vaclav Klaus
#77. Arbitrary rule has its basis, not in the strength of the state or the chief, but in the moral weakness of the individual, who submits almost without resistance to the domineering power.
Friedrich Ratzel
#78. Why is freedom such a hard sell? That's the question. In this country, why has the idea of individual liberty and responsibility become such a hard sell? That's something I never thought would happen here.
Rush Limbaugh
#79. Tyranny destroys or strengthens the individual; freedom enervates him, until he becomes no more than a puppet. Man has more chances of saving himself by hell than by paradise.
Emile M. Cioran
#80. Most gun control arguments miss the point. If all control boils fundamentally to force, how can one resist aggression without equal force? How can a truly "free" state exist if the individual citizen is enslaved to the forceful will of individual or organized aggressors? It cannot.
Tiffany Madison
#81. In a democracy, the individual enjoys not only the ultimate power but carries the ultimate responsibility.
Norman Cousins
#82. I love man as my fellow; but his scepter, real, or usurped, extends not to me, unless the reason of an individual demands my homage; and even then the submission is to reason, and not to man.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#83. And some of us believe in freedom of the individual over the tyranny of the common good.
Kameron Hurley
#84. The love of individual freedom has stood in the way of the appreciation of social obligations.
Goparaju Ramachandra Rao
#85. Each individual man and each individual country, according to the principles of natural reason, is free from bondage. Consequently, if there is some threat that might infringe upon a country's freedom, then that country should not hesitate even to take up arms against all the countries of the world.
Fukuzawa Yukichi
#86. Hence, the statement that the cost of living is different in different localities only means that the same individual cannot secure the same degree of satisfaction from the same stock of goods in different places.
Ludwig Von Mises
#87. If one examines the American idea of freedom, the individual, free enterprise, their Constitution, their political and economic structures as well as their mode of exploiting their natural resources, all these are shrouded in the idea of justice.
Ndabaningi Sithole
#88. We are a nation of immigrants, a quilt of many colors, and we've managed over more than two centuries to create a way of life that allows for a reasonable degree of upward mobility, that prizes individual liberty, promotes freedom of religion and genuinely values equal rights for all citizens.
Jay Parini
#89. What is society but an individual? [ ... ] The ocean is not society; it is individuals. This was how I managed to gain a modicum of freedom from my terror at the illusion of the ocean called the world.
Osamu Dazai
#91. The only freedom supposed to be left to the masses is that of grazing on the ration of simulacra the system distributes to each individual.
Michel De Certeau
#92. The story of man is the history, first, of the acceptance and imposition of restraints necessary to permit communal life; and second, of the emancipation of the individual within that system of necessary restraints.
Abe Fortas
#93. We have to recognize that the freedom of the individual has to be protected not only from the power of the state, but even more so from economic and societal power.
Gustav Heinemann
#94. The illusion that freedom is the prerogative of one's own particular race is fairly widespread. Dr Gerard was wiser. He knew that no race, no country and no individual could be described as free. But he also knew that there were different degrees of bondage.
Agatha Christie
#95. I regard the principle of conscription of life as a flat contradiction of all our cherished ideals of individual freedom, democratic liberty and Christian teaching.
Roger Nash Baldwin
#96. In a competitive world of limited resources, total freedom of individual action is intolerable
Garrett Hardin
#97. I would like to appeal to all those in whose hands the future of mankind lies, to use their power not to destroy or kill, nor to create suffering in a grasping search for selfish objectives, but to help alleviate the plight of the needy; to aim at justice and freedom for the individual.
Poul Hartling
#98. How could the USA champion individual freedom in the world generally while denying it to an important minority in its own country.
Dean Acheson
#99. Communism is a monopolistic system, economically and politically. The system suppresses individual initiative, and the 21st century is all about individualism and freedom. The development of technology supported these directions.
Lech Walesa
#100. If what is best in mankind, and what its progress depends on, manifests itself primarily in the individual and only secondarily in the mass, then our objectives should be to maintain such freedom as allows the individual to think and speak for himself.
Louis J. Halle
