Quotes about Freedom

Here is what sings unrestricted faith.

America means above all toleration, catholicity, welcome, freedom--a concern for Europe, for Asia, for Africa, along with its concern for America. It is something quite peculiar, hardly to be stated--evades you as the air--yet is a fact everywhere preciously present.

O while I live to be the ruler of life, not a slave, To meet life as a powerful conqueror... And nothing exterior to me will ever take command of me.

seems to me that everything in the light and air ought to be happy; Whoever is not in his coffin and the dark grave, let him know he has enough.

O harsh surrounding cloud that will not free my soul.

There is nothing stereotyped about God's dealings with His children. Therefore, we must not by our prejudices and preconceptions make watertight compartments for the working out His Spirit, either in our own lives or in the lives of others. We must leave God free to work as He wills and to leave what evidence He pleases of the work He does.

We still (sometimes) remember that we cannot be free if our minds and voices are controlled by someone else. But we have neglected to understand that we cannot be free if our food and its sources are controlled by someone else. The condition of the passive consumer of food is not a democratic condition. One reason to eat responsibly is to live free. (pg. 323, The Pleasures of Eating)

No man will ever be whole and dignified and free except in the knowledge that the men around him are whole and dignified and free, and that the world itself is free of contempt and misuse.

They say God made man, but Sam Colt made them equal.

Maybe only an orphan can understand this, but we had been cut free from our anchor and the blow was crushing. We didn't know who we were, and more importantly, we didn't know whose we were -- forever proving that identity precedes purpose. You can't know who you are until you've settled whose you are. [Bones, to Murphy Shepherd, about himself and his brother Frank]

Hate is a powerful weapon. But it is powerless when it comes to cutting chains off the human heart.

Some are wrestling with painful words spoken over them by someone they love or walking around in chains of their own making.