Philosophy on freedom

“To find yourself, think for yourself.”

“He who has overcome his fears will truly be free.”

“No man is free who is not master of himself.”

“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe.”

“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.”

“Care about what other people think and you will always be their prisoner.”

“Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.”

“The free man thinks of nothing less than of death, and his wisdom is a meditation not on death but on life.”

“He alone is free who lives with free consent under the entire guidance of reason.”

“Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”

“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

“Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.”

“Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.”

“The absurd does not liberate; it binds. It does not authorize all actions. Everything is permitted does not mean that nothing is forbidden.”

“Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time.”

“I don't like the spirit of socialism – I think freedom is the basis of everything.”

“No man is liberated from fear who dare not see his place in the world as it is; no man can achieve the greatness of which he is capable until he has allowed himself to see his own littleness.”

“By liberty, then, we can only mean a power of acting or not acting, according to the determinations of the will.”

“Hypothetical liberty is allowed to everyone who is not a prisoner and in chains”

“The greater the difficulty, the more glory in surmounting it. Skilful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempests.”

“You become what you give your attention to.”

“Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.”

“Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison... the only house in a slave State in which a free man can abide with honor.”

“Freedom is the alone unoriginated birthright of man, and belongs to him by force of his humanity; and is independence on the will and co-action of every other in so far as this consists with every other person’s freedom.”

“The supreme enjoyment is in satisfaction with oneself ; it is in order to deserve this satisfaction that we are placed on earth and endowed with freedom.”

“Imagination is not an empirical or superadded power of consciousness, it is the whole of consciousness as it realizes its freedom.”

“Every age has its own poetry; in every age the circumstances of history choose a nation, a race, a class to take up the torch by creating situations that can be expressed or transcended only through poetry.”

“Fascism is not defined by the number of its victims, but by the way it kills them.”

“I hate victims who respect their executioners.”

“I exist. It is soft, so soft, so slow. And light: it seems as though it suspends in the air. It moves.”

“For an occurrence to become an adventure, it is necessary and sufficient for one to recount it.”

“I exist, that is all, and I find it nauseating.”

“To eat is to appropriate by destruction.”

“It is certain that we cannot escape anguish, for we are anguish.”

“Be quiet! Anyone can spit in my face, and call me a criminal and a prostitute. But no one has the right to judge my remorse.”

“Admit it, it is your youth that you regret, more even than your crime; it is my youth you hate, even more than my innocence.”

“Yes, I am so free. And what a superb absence is my soul.”

“Commoners are weightless. But he was a royal bon vivant who, no matter what, always weighed 125 kilos. I would be very surprised if he didn't have a few pounds left.”

“I have no need for good souls: an accomplice is what I wanted.”

“All men are liable to error; and most men are, in many points, by passion or interest, under temptation to it.”

“The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom. For in all the states of created beings, capable of laws, where there is no law there is no freedom.”

“Government has no other end than the preservation of property.”

“Men being, as has been said, by nature, all free, equal and independent, no one can be put out of this estate, and subjected to the political power of another, without his own consent.”

“The reservedness and distance that fathers keep, often deprive their sons of that refuge which would be of more advantage to them than an hundred rebukes or chidings.”

“A bureaucracy always tends to become a pedantocracy.”

“Landlords... grow richer, as it were in their sleep, without working, risking, or economizing.”

“There is no such thing as slow freedom. Freedom is like a birth. Till we are fully free we are slaves.”

“Under democracy individual liberty of opinion and action is jealously guarded.”

“I wish to write such rhymes as shall not suggest a restraint, but contrariwise the wildest freedom.”

“The word liberty in the mouth of Mr. Webster sounds like the word love in the mouth of a courtesan.”

“Socrates was ennobled by the hemlock draught. Wrench from Cato's hand his sword, the vindicator of liberty, and you deprive him of the greatest share of his glory.”

“Very often the things that cost nothing cost us the most heavily; I can show you many objects the quest and acquisition of which have wrested freedom from our hands.”

“How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.”

“If this is the best of possible worlds, what then are the others?”

“Our labour preserves us from three great evils -- weariness, vice, and want.”

“Religion may be purified. This great work was begun two hundred years ago: but men can only bear light to come in upon them by degrees.”

“I am too intelligent, too demanding, and too resourceful for anyone to be able to take charge of me entirely.”

“I do not wish women to have power over men, but over themselves.”

“Where there is power, there is resistance.”

“Flow with whatever is happening and let your mind be free.”