This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Freedom is a very great reality. But it means, above all things, freedom from lies." - D. H. Lawrence, fully David Herbert "D.H." Lawrence
"What is pornography to one man is the laughter of genius to another... Men are freest when they are most unconscious of freedom... The world fears a new experience more than it fears anything. Because a new experience displaces so many old experiences... the world doesn't fear a new idea. It can pigeonhole any idea. It can't pigeon-hole a new experience." - D. H. Lawrence, fully David Herbert "D.H." Lawrence
"While the state exists there is no freedom; when there is freedom there will be no state." - Nikolai Lenin, aka Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, born Vladimir llyich Ulyanov
"This is a world of compensation; and he who would be no slave must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and, under a just God, cannot long retain it." - Abraham Lincoln
"Every man is born with a double right. First, a right of freedom to his person, which no other man has a owner over, but the free disposal of it lies in himself. Secondly, a right before any other man, to inherit, with his brethren, his father’s goods." - John Locke
"Freedom from absolute, arbitrary power is so necessary to, and closely joined with, a man’s preservation, that he cannot part with it but by what forfeits his preservation and life together. For a man, not having the power of his own life, cannot by contract or his own consent enslave himself to any one, nor put himself under the absolute, arbitrary power of another to take away his life when he pleases. Nobody can give more power than he has himself, and he that cannot take away his own life cannot give another power over it." - John Locke
"That's part of American greatness, is discrimination. Yes, sir. Inequality, I think, breeds freedom and gives man opportunity." - Lester Maddox, fully Lester Garfield Maddox
"The suppression of civil liberties is to many less a matter for horror than the curtailment of the freedom to profit." - Marya Mannes
"Freedom of investigation is a fundamental natural right, for man’s very nature is to seek the truth." - Jacques Maritain
"The fundamental rights, like the right to existence and life; the right to personal freedom or to conduct one’s own life as master of oneself and of one’s acts, responsible for them before God and the law of the community; the right to the pursuit of the perfection of moral and rational human life; the right to keep one’s body whole; the right to private ownership of material goods, which is a safeguard of the liberties of the individual; the right to marry according to one’s choice and to raise a family which will be assured of the liberties due it; the right of association, the respect for human dignity in each individual, whether or not he represents an economic value for society - all these rights are rooted in the vocation of the person (a spiritual and free agent) to the order of absolute values and to a destiny superior to time." - Jacques Maritain
"The bourgeoisie has played a most revolutionary role in history... It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms has set up that single, unconscionable freedom - Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation." - Karl Marx (1818-1883) German Philosopher, Socialist and Friedrich Engels
"There is no freedom for the weak." - George Meredith
"A superficial freedom to wander aimlessly here or there, to taste this or that, to make a choice of distractions (in Pascal’s sense) is simply a sham. It claims to be a freedom of “choice” when it has evaded the basic task of discovering who it is that chooses." - Thomas Merton
"It is uncertain where death awaits us; let us await it everywhere. Premeditation of death is premeditation of freedom. He who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave. Knowing how to die frees us from all subjection and constraint. There is nothing evil in life for the man who has thoroughly grasped the fact that to be deprived of life is not an evil." - Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
"We do not know where death awaits us: so let us wait for it everywhere. To practice death is to practice freedom. A man who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave." - Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
"Without a Sabbath, no worship; without worship, no religion; and without religion, no permanent freedom." - Charles Forbes Montalembert, fully Charles Forbes René de Montalembert, aka Charles le Comte de Montalembert
"One-pointed involvement; by disregard for immediate results; by spontaneity, freedom, and effortless mastery; and by a sense that the self is somehow larger and more complex, or conversely, that it disappears into something beyond itself." - Michael Murphy
"Creativity can replace conformity as the primary mode of social being. We can cling to that which is passing, or has already passed, or we can remain accessible to - even surrender to - the creative process, without insisting that we know in advance the ultimate outcome for us, our institutions, or our planet. To accept this challenge is to cherish freedom, to embrace life, and to find meaning." - Stephan Nachmanovitch
"Has anyone at the end of the nineteenth century a distinct conception of what poets of strong ages call inspiration? If not, I will describe it. If one had the slightest residue of superstition left in one, one would hardly be able to set aside the idea that one is merely incarnation, merely mouthpiece, merely medium of overwhelming forces. The concept of revelation , in the sense that something suddenly, with unspeakable certainty and subtlety, becomes visible, audible, something that shakes and overturns one to the depths, simply describes the fact. One hears, one does not seek; one takes, one does not ask who gives; a thought flashes up like lightning, with necessity, unfalteringly formed - I have never had any choice... Everything is in the highest degree involuntary but takes place as in a tempest of a feeling of freedom, of absoluteness, of power, of divinity... The involuntary nature of image, of metaphor is the most remarkable thing of all; one no longer has any idea what is image, what metaphor, everything presents itself as the readiest, the truest, the simplest means of expression." - Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
"People demand freedom only when they have no power." - Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
"The Christian faith is a sacrifice: a sacrifice of all freedom, all pride, all self-confidence of the spirit; at the same time, enslavement and self-mockery, self-mutilation." - Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
"As long as men are free to ask what they must, free to say what they think, free to think what they will, freedom can never be lost, and science can never regress." - Robert Oppenheimer, fully Julius Robert Oppenheimer
"These are the times that try men's souls. The Summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country, but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like Hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheaply we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its things; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial article as freedom should not be highly rated." - Thomas Paine
"There can be no Friendship where there is no Freedom. Friendship loves a free Air, and will not be penned up in streight and narrow Enclosures. It will speak freely, and act so too; and take nothing ill where no ill is meant; nay, where it is, ’twill easily forgive, and forget too, upon small Acknowledgments." - William Penn
"He who is held in bondage by his senses can never enjoy even a dream of freedom. It is only by complete escape from them that we arrive at a state of freedom from fear." - Philo, aka Philo of Alexandria, Philo Judaeus, Philo Judaeus of Alexandria, Yedidia, "Philon", and Philo the Jew NULL
"An acknowledged love sanctifies every little freedom; and little freedoms beget great ones." - Samuel Richardson
"The money which a man possesses is the instrument of freedom; that which we eagerly pursue is the instrument of slavery." - Jean-Jacques Rousseau
"Liberation is freedom from confusion." - Shantananda Saraswathi, fully Swami Shantananda Saraswathi, born Chandrashekar
"Nature is for us nothing but existence in all its freedom; it is the constitution of things taken in themselves; it is existence itself according to its proper and immutable laws." - Friedrich Schiller, fully Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
"Privacy is absolutely essential to maintaining a free society. The idea that is at the foundation of the notion of privacy is that the citizen is not the tool or the instrument of government - but the reverse... If you have no privacy, it will tend to follow that you have no political freedom, no religious freedom, no freedom of families to make their own decisions [regarding having children]. All these freedoms tend to reinforce on another." - Benno C. Schmidt, Jr.
"Peace is not merely a vacuum left by the ending of wars. It is the creation of two eternal principles, justice and freedom." - James T. Shotwell
"One of the principal ingredients in the happiness of childhood is freedom from suspicion - why may it not be combined with a more extensive intercourse with mankind? A disposition to dwell on the bright side of character is like gold to its possessor; but to imagine more evil than meets the eye, betrays affinity for it." - Lydia Sigourney, fully Lydia Huntley Sigourney, née Lydia Howard Huntley
"I know of nothing more opposite to revolutionary attitudes than commercial ones. Commerce is naturally adverse to all the violent passions; it loves to temporize, takes delight in compromise, and studiously avoids irritation. It is patient, insinuating, flexible, and never has recourse to extreme measures until obliged by the most absolute necessity. Commerce renders men independent of one another, gives them a lofty notion of their personal importance, leads them to seek to conduct their own affairs, and teaches how to conduct them well; it therefore prepares men for freedom, but preserves them from revolutions." - Alexis de Tocqueville, fully Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville
"Drinking of wine brings poverty, shame, quarrels; leads to calumnious talk, unchastity, murder, and the loss of freedom, of honor, of understanding." - Tosafot or Tosafos NULL
"What is freedom if not the possibility of change?" - Abraham J. Twerski, fully Abraham Joshua Twerski
"If man's religion is of any importance, it is not just a garment of expression of unity with and security in the professed beliefs of a special group. It is rather an attitude of respect for himself, his God, his fellowman, which underwrites all his activity, which is allowed freedom of expression within the limitations of that respect." - Grace Helen Yerbury, fully Grace Helen Davies Yerbury
"I knew that the complete mystic “way” includes both intellectual belief and practical activity; the latter consists in getting rid of the obstacles in the self and in stripping off its base characteristics and vicious morals, so that the heart may attain to freedom from what is not God and to constant recollection of Him." - Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali