Quotes About Individual Freedom

#1. 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

#2. 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

#3. I believe, basically, that individual freedom is very important.

Peter Thiel

#4. The greatest enemy of individual freedom is the individual himself.

Saul D. Alinsky

#5. 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

#6. Enlightenment values of individual freedom are manifested best in individual acts of criticism and defiance.

Pankaj Mishra

#7. 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

#8. 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

#9. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom.

Ronald Reagan

#10. 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

#11. 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

#12. 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

#13. I believe in trying to get a balance between individual freedom on the one hand and social responsibility on the other.

Chris Patten

#14. Creativity is the fragrance of individual freedom.

Osho

#15. 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

#16. 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

#17. For individual freedom can come about only, can be conceived only, if there is some sense of security to life.

Russell Shorto

#18. 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

#19. 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

#20. 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

#21. 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

#22. 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

#23. The love of individual freedom has stood in the way of the appreciation of social obligations.

Goparaju Ramachandra Rao

#24. 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

#25. How could the USA champion individual freedom in the world generally while denying it to an important minority in its own country.

Dean Acheson

#26. Economic activity, especially the activity of a market economy, cannot be conducted in an institutional, juridical or political vacuum. On the contrary, it presupposes sure guarantees of individual freedom and private property, as well as a stable currency and efficient public services.

Pope John Paul II

#27. Individual freedom is a Jewish idea, but it's one of the functions of Christianity to make this idea universal.

Michael Novak

#28. The ability to go anywhere in our imagination is a pure expression of individual freedom. It is a creative force that can help us transcend reality.

Esther Perel

#29. Liberty (individual freedom) is the prize, responsibility the price.

Dick Randolph

#30. There are some basic tenets that ninety-nine percent of all Wiccans follow, but at its core the faith is all about individual freedom. Wiccans believe that as long as you aren't hurting anyone else by doing it, you should be free to act and worship in whatever way you'd like.

Jim Butcher

#31. It is the individual man in his individual freedom who can mature with his warm spirit the unripe world.

Christopher Fry

#32. Utopians ... consider individual freedom as the stumbling block on which the grandiose idea of mankind's totalization may flounder.

Thomas Steven Molnar

#33. James Madison made clear in Federalist 51 that that this elaborate structure - today often derided as " gridlock " - was created to protect individual freedom against oppression by the majority or by powerful interest groups who exploit government power for their own purposes.

Anonymous

#34. In short, individual freedom of speech leads to a stronger society. But knowing that principle is not enough. You have to know how to put it to use on the Net.

Mike Godwin

#35. We need a free economy not only for the renewed material prosperity it will bring, but because it is indispensable to individual freedom, human dignity and to a more just, more honest society.

Margaret Thatcher

#36. Democracy is in conflict with individual freedom.

Bruno Leoni

#37. When the complexity of social patterning is reduced, so is individual freedom.

L.E. Modesitt Jr.

#38. And when the time is right, I hope that African Americans will again look to the party of emancipation, civil liberty, and individual freedom.

Rand Paul

#39. The more restricted a method, the lesser the opportunity for one's individual freedom of expression.

Bruce Lee

#40. The president who is most slandered as Hitler will probably prove to be the most zealous advocate of democratic government abroad, the staunchest friend of beleaguered Israel, and the greatest promoter of global individual freedom in our recent memory.

Victor Davis Hanson

#41. Well, I'm a libertarian conservative, so I believe in limited government/maximum individual freedom.

John Bolton

#42. China has to go along with world trends. That's democracy, liberty, individual freedom. China sooner or later has to go that way. It cannot go backward.

Dalai Lama

#43. Enron and 9/11 marked the end of an era of individual freedom and the beginning of personal responsibility.

Jeffrey R. Immelt

#44. President Obama wants to increase the size of government and raise taxes, while I support less government and more individual freedom.

Ralph Hall

#45. 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, universal brotherhood and good will, and a constant and earnest striving toward the principles and ideals on which this country was founded.

Eleanor Roosevelt

#46. The communitarians may say you've been enjoying too much individual freedom, and that you must give up some of that for the benefit of the community. But they really mean that they want more power over your life - to force you to subsidize, obey and conform to their choices.

Harry Browne

#47. As human beings, we are always torn between individual freedom and the ability of choose our actions, and the need for at least enough social structure so that anarchy, chaos, and warlordery - or the war of all against all - can be avoided.

Margaret Atwood

#48. There are many things in America worth conserving. But I am one of those conservatives who believes the most important of those things is liberty. Without liberty, without individual freedom, what is left to conserve isn't worth all that much.

Lyn Nofziger

#49. I really didn't know much about the Libertarians. I knew they were for less government and more individual freedom. I liked that.

Howard Stern

#50. I represent what I think is a traditional Republican ... a limited government, fiscal responsibility, strong national defense, individual freedom and liberty.

Olympia Snowe

#51. If we want to resist the powers that threaten to suppress intellectual and individual freedom, we must be clear what is at stake," he said. "Without such freedom there would have been no Shakespeare, no Goethe, no Newton, no Faraday, no Pasteur, no Lister." Freedom was a foundation for creativity.

Walter Isaacson

#52. No society can possibly be built on a denial of individual freedom.

Mahatma Gandhi

#53. Ever since the French Revolution, people throughout the world have gradually come to see both equality and individual freedom as fundamental values. Yet the two values contradict each other. Equality can be ensured only by curtailing the freedoms of those who are better off.

Yuval Noah Harari

#54. Individual freedom and individual equality cannot co-exist. I dare say no one since Thomas Jefferson has really believed it.

Katharine Fullerton Gerould

#55. Now, with the glamour of the past upon them we are inclined to look back on old world festivities with regret and consider present day dances as a poor substitute for the old. From an artistic point of view, they maybe, but in individual freedom and independence of spirit they mark a stage upward.

Flora Thompson

#56. I developed the concept of the Happy Warrior as a rallying cry for those of us who want to restore America to its great foundational principles: individual freedom, personal responsibility, fiscal restraint, and economic liberty.

Monica Crowley

#57. There can be no real individual freedom in the presence of economic insecurity.

Chester Bowles

#58. I believe the highest aspiration of man should be individual freedom and the development of the individual.

Ronald Reagan

#59. Throughout the world, our insistence on individual freedom and opportunity has been at the bottom of what people think when they hear the very word 'American.'

Jim Webb

#60. For a writer, personal freedom is not so important. It is not individual freedom that guarantees the greatness of literature; otherwise, writers in democratic countries would be superior to all others. Some of the greatest writers wrote under dictatorship - Shakespeare, Cervantes.

Ismail Kadare

#61. Creation is too grand, complex, and mysterious to be captured in a narrow creed. That is why we cherish individual freedom of belief.

William F. Schulz

#62. We are exceptional not because of who we are but because of what we do and how we put the ideals of human dignity, individual freedom, and liberty under law into action.

Jon Meacham

#63. Not surprisingly, nondemocratic regimes by their nature are built around the restriction of individual freedom.

Patrick H. O'Neil

#64. While an equality of rights under a limited government is possible and an essential condition of individual freedom, a claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers.

Friedrich Hayek

#65. Most of the major ills of the world have been caused by well-meaning people who ignored the principle of individual freedom, except as applied to themselves, and who were obsessed with fanatical zeal to improve the lot of mankind.

Henry Grady Weaver

#66. There is no free society without silence, without the internal and external spaces of solitude in which the individual freedom can develop.

Herbert Marcuse

#67. When we say that the persistence of competition is ensured by fate, we mean that individual freedom is so guaranteed. The one thing to which fate binds us is liberty.

John Bates Clark

#68. Democracy is not an easy form of government, because it is never final; it is a living, changing organism, with a continuous shifting and adjusting of balance between individual freedom and general order.

Ilka Chase

#69. Not every defeat of authority is a gain for individual freedom, nor every judicial rescue of a convict a victory for liberty.

Robert H. Jackson

#70. For Americans, the car is the American way. Jay Gatsby roars through capitalism, individual freedom, and the good life. For China, the train is the metaphor. Everyone's on board, there's no chance to steer, and it's clickety-clack to collectivism's dreams.

Mei Fong

#71. Ask me not, 'Are you rightwing,' but ask me 'Are you a committed believer in individual freedom, the values of the enlightenment?' Then, yeah, if being rightwing means believing Adam Smith was right, both in the 'Wealth of Nations' and the 'Theory of Moral Sentiments,' then I'm rightwing.

Niall Ferguson

#72. When we speak of peace, we should not mean just the absence of war. True peace rests on the pillars of individual freedom, human rights, national self-determination, and respect for the rule of law.

Ronald Reagan

#73. We must introduce a new balance in the relationship between the individual and the government
a balance that favors greater individual freedom and self-reliance.

Gerald R. Ford

#74. Freedom is our most precious commodity and if we are not eternally vigilant, government will take it all away. Individual freedom demands individual responsibility.

Lyn Nofziger

#75. 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

#76. 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

#77. 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

#78. 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

#79. 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

#80. 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

#81. 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

#82. 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

#83. I should like to be remembered as the man who raised a voice against ... placing limitations on the freedom of the individual.

Dennis Chavez

#84. 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

#85. 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

#86. 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

#87. 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

#88. 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

#89. There is no meaningful "yes" unless the individual could also have said "no.

Rollo May

#90. 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

#91. 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

#92. 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

#93. 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

#94. 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

#95. 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

#96. 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

#97. 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

#98. Over one's mind and over one's body the individual is sovereign.

John Stuart Mill

#99. 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

#100. 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.