Philosopher Quotes on Freedom

“Nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul.”

Men seek retreats for themselves, houses in the country, sea-shores, and mountains; and thou too art wont to desire such things very much. But this is altogether a mark of the most common sort of men, for it is in thy power whenever thou shalt choose to retire into thyself. For nowhere either with more quiet or more freedom from trouble does a man retire than into his own soul.

“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”

VII, 11.

“From Apollonius , true liberty, and unvariable steadfastness, and not to regard anything at all, though never so little, but right and reason: and always..that it was possible for the same man to be both vehement and remiss: a man not subject to be vexed, and offended with the incapacity of his scholars and auditors in his lectures and expositions.”

I, 5

“Not to display anger or other emotions. To be free of passion and yet full of love. (Hays translation)”

I, 9

Attributed to Marcus Aurelius:

“You have power over your mind — not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”

“A country cannot subsist well without liberty , nor liberty without virtue .”

As quoted in A Dictionary of Thoughts: Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations from the Best Authors of the World, Both Ancient and Modern (1908) by Tryon Edwards , p. 301.

Attributed to Jean-Jacques Rousseau:

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

Attributed to Jean-Jacques Rousseau:

“I prefer liberty with danger to peace with slavery.”

Attributed to Jean-Jacques Rousseau:

“To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties.”

Attributed to Jean-Jacques Rousseau:

“Free people, remember this maxim: we may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is once lost.”

“Existence precedes essence.”

L'existence précède et commande l'essence.

“Man is condemned to be free.”

Existentialism Is a Humanism, 1946

“Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.”

p. 41

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

L’important n’est pas ce qu’on fait de nous mais ce que nous faisons nous-même de ce qu’on a fait de nous.

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

L'imagination ( Imagination: A Psychological Critique ) (1936)

Attributed to Mary Wollstonecraft:

“I do not wish them to have power over men; but over themselves.”

Attributed to Mary Wollstonecraft:

“Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, and there will be an end to blind obedience.”

Attributed to Mary Wollstonecraft:

“How can a being be generous who has nothing of its own? Or virtuous who is not free?”

Attributed to Mary Wollstonecraft:

“Genius will educate itself.”

Attributed to Mary Wollstonecraft:

“Make them free, and they will quickly become wise and virtuous.”

“One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.”

On ne naît pas femme: on le devient.

“I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom .”

The Blood of Others [ Le sang des autres ] (1946)

Attributed to Simone de Beauvoir:

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

Attributed to Simone de Beauvoir:

“On the day when it will be possible for woman to love not in her weakness but in her strength, not to escape herself but to find herself, not to abase herself but to assert herself, on that day love will become for her, as for man, a source of life.”

Attributed to Simone de Beauvoir:

“To will oneself free is also to will others free.”

“I don't feel that it is necessary to know exactly what I am.”

Truth, Power, Self : An Interview with Michel Foucault (25 October 1982)

“Maybe the target nowadays is not to discover what we are, but to refuse what we are.”

p. 785

“The soul is the prison of the body.”

[L]'âme, prison du corps.

Attributed to Michel Foucault:

“Where there is power, there is resistance.”

Attributed to Michel Foucault:

“Visibility is a trap.”

“We are nothing on earth if we are not in the first place the slaves of a cause, the cause of the peoples, the cause of justice and liberty .”

Letter to Roger Tayeb, December 1961, as cited in Peter Geismar, Fanon (1971), p. 185.

Attributed to Frantz Fanon:

“Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfill it, or betray it.”

Attributed to Frantz Fanon:

“Imperialism leaves behind germs of rot which we must clinically detect and remove from our land but from our minds as well.”

Attributed to Frantz Fanon:

“I am not a prisoner of history. I should not seek there for the meaning of my destiny.”

Attributed to Frantz Fanon:

“The colonized man finds his freedom in and through violence.”

“The slaves of developed industrial civilisation are sublimated slaves, but they are slaves.”

p. 32

“In conditions of private property … “life-activity” stands in the service of property instead of property standing the service of free life-activity.”

The Foundations of Historical Materialism," Studies in Critical Philosophy (1972), p. 32

Attributed to Herbert Marcuse:

“Free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves.”

Attributed to Herbert Marcuse:

“The most effective and enduring form of warfare against liberation is the implanting of material and intellectual needs that perpetuate obsolete forms of the struggle for existence.”

Attributed to Herbert Marcuse:

“Art breaks open a dimension inaccessible to other experience.”

“I should have loved freedom, I believe, at all times, but in the time in which we live I am ready to worship it.”

Book Four, Chapter VII.

“Despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot.”

Chapter XVII.

“Men sometimes submit to shame, to tyranny, to conquest, but they never long suffer anarchy. There is no people so barbarous that they escape this general law of humanity”

Second letter on Algeria (1837), Travels in Algeria p. 38

Attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville:

“Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith.”

Attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville:

“Nothing is more wonderful than the art of being free, but nothing is harder to learn how to use than freedom.”

“Man's main task in life is to give birth to himself.”

Ch. 4 "Problems of Humanistic Ethics

Attributed to Erich Fromm:

“To love means to commit oneself without guarantee.”

Attributed to Erich Fromm:

“The capacity to be alone is the capacity to love.”

Attributed to Erich Fromm:

“There is no meaning to life except the meaning man gives his life by the unfolding of his powers.”

Attributed to Erich Fromm:

“The danger of the past was that men became slaves; the danger of the future is that men may become robots.”

“Seek ye first the political kingdom, and all things shall be added unto you.”

The Autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah

“Africa must unite.”

Africa Must Unite

“Neo-colonialism is the worst form of imperialism.”

Introduction," xi

“We face neither East nor West; we face forward.”

Capitalism is too complicated a system for a newly independent nation. Hence the need for a socialistic society.

Attributed to Kwame Nkrumah:

“Independence is meaningless without economic and political emancipation.”

“The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.”

John Brown : A Biography (1909): "The Legacy of John Brown

“The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America, 1638-1870 (1897), ch. XII: The Essentials in the Struggle, paragraph 93: "The Moral Movement”

There is always a certain glamour about the idea of a nation rising up to crush an evil simply because it is wrong. Unfortunately, this can seldom be realized in real life; for the very existence of the evil usually argues a moral weakness in the very place where extraordinary moral strength is called for.

“To the Nations of the World , address to Pan-African conference, London (1900). These words are also found in The Souls of Black Folk (1903), ch. II: Of the Dawn of Freedom”

The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.

Attributed to W. E. B. Du Bois:

“Now is the accepted time, not tomorrow, not some more convenient season.”

Attributed to W. E. B. Du Bois:

“There is in this world no such force as the force of a man determined to rise.”

“Personal freedom is a magnificent thing; by it and by it alone can a nation achieve its true freedom. Man must respect and honor his freedom in himself no less than in his neighbor or in the people at large.”

Letter from Paris to His Friend in Moscow (March 1st, 1849), Imperial Russia, A Sourcebook 1700-1917

Attributed to Alexander Herzen:

“History has no libretto.”

Attributed to Alexander Herzen:

“The end of life is life itself, not a goal beyond it.”

Attributed to Alexander Herzen:

“Liberty is the right that consists in the absence of arbitrary power.”

Attributed to Alexander Herzen:

“We do not change Russia by joining the West; we change Russia by being honest with ourselves.”

“Violence and freedom are the two endpoints on the scale of power.”

Wikiquote

“Power is not opposed to freedom. It is precisely freedom that distinguishes power from violence or coercion.”

Wikiquote

“Rather, power is most powerful, most stable, where it creates a feeling of freedom and where it does not need to resort to violence.”

Wikiquote

Attributed to Byung-Chul Han:

“The achievement subject exploits itself; it is at once master and slave in one person.”

Attributed to Byung-Chul Han:

“Power that operates through freedom is the most efficient form of power.”

“There is no female mind; the brain is not an organ of sex.”

Ch. 8.

“The latest and highest form of Feminism has great promise for the world. It postulates womanhood free, strong, clean and conscious of its power and duty.”

Feminism" (1908), quoted in Susan Ware, Why They Marched: Untold Stories of the Women Who Fought for the Right to Vote . Harvard University Press , 2019.

“The stony-minded orthodox were right in fearing the first movement of new knowledge and free thought. It has gone on, and will go on, irresistibly, until some day we shall have no respect for an alleged "truth" which cannot stand the full blaze of knowledge, the full force of active thought.”

The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman , (1935).

Attributed to Charlotte Perkins Gilman:

“Until economic independence of women is achieved, no other equality can be lasting.”

Attributed to Charlotte Perkins Gilman:

“What we call women's nature is for the most part women's training under economic dependency.”

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

L'imagination ( Imagination: A Psychological Critique ) (1936)

“He was free, free in every way, free to behave like a fool or a machine, free to accept, free to refuse, free to equivocate; to marry, to give up the game, to drag this death weight about with him for years to come. He could do what he liked, no one had the right to advise him, there would be for him no Good or Evil unless he thought them into being.”

L'âge de raison ( The Age of Reason ) (1945)

Attributed to Jean Wahl:

“Hegel's spirit only lives where it is read against itself.”

Attributed to Jean Wahl:

“Existentialism is the discovery that thought belongs to a singular life.”

Attributed to Jean Wahl:

“Kierkegaard taught us that to philosophize is to choose.”

“God wants to exist and wants to be what he is, which means that he is free not only with regard to being in general, but above all with regard to his own being, in short, he is not bound either to his own existence or to his own essence.”

Wikiquote

“God himself, as absolute freedom and original will, contains, indeed is, the answer to the “fundamental question” [What is his name? (Ex. 3:13)], but he does not state it in explicit terms: he merely says “I am who I am, I am who I want to be”, which is a definitive statement. There is nothing more to say: it is an absolute act of will and freedom, by which God makes himself and declares himself master of his own being and of being in general.”

Wikiquote

“[Beauty] is always free and adherent: free because it does not adhere to conceptual knowledge, adherent because it adheres to an interpretation of nature.”

Wikiquote

Attributed to Luigi Pareyson:

“Each person is a unique interpretation of being.”

Attributed to Luigi Pareyson:

“Freedom is what makes the person more than nature.”

“The state calls its own violence law, that of the individual crime.”

The State’s behavior is violence, and it calls its violence “law”; that of the individual, “crime.

“I am owner of my might, and I am so when I know myself as unique.”

Dover 2005, p. 366

“Yes, so it is that knowledge itself must die in order to blossom forth again in death as will; the freedom of thought , belief , and conscience, these wonderful flowers of three centuries will sink back into the lap of mother earth so that a new freedom, the freedom will , will be nourished with its most noble juices.”

p. 19

“In the pedagogical as in certain other spheres freedom is not allowed to erupt, the power of the opposition is not allowed to put a word in edgewise: they want submissiveness . Only a formal and material training is being aimed at and only scholars come out of the menageries of the humanists, only "useful citizens" out of those of the realists, both of whom are indeed nothing but subservient people. Our good background of recalcitrancy [sic] gets strongly suppressed and with it the development of knowledge to free will. The result of school is then philistinism.”

p. 23

“If man puts his honor first in relying upon himself, knowing himself and applying himself, this in self-reliance, self-assertion, and freedom, he then strives to rid himself of the ignorance which makes a strange impenetrable object a barrier and a hindrance to his self-knowledge.”

p. 23

“If God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish him.”

Amoureux et jaloux de la liberté humaine, et la considérant comme la condition absolue de tout ce que nous adorons et respectons dans l'humanité, je retourne la phrase de Voltaire, et je dis : Si Dieu existait réellement, il faudrait le faire disparaître.

“The passion for destruction is also a creative passion.”

The Reaction in Germany" (1842) | Often paraphrased as, "The urge to destroy is also a creative urge" [ 1 ] [ 2 ]

“Freedom without socialism is privilege; socialism without freedom is slavery.”

As we are convinced that the real attainment of liberty, of justice, and of peace in the world will be impossible so long as the immense majority of the populations are dispossessed of property, deprived of education and condemned to political and social nonbeing and a de facto if not a de jure slavery, through their state of misery as well as their need to labor without rest or leisure, in produc

“What all other men are is of the greatest importance to me. However independent I may imagine myself to be, however far removed I may appear from mundane considerations by my social status, I am enslaved to the misery of the meanest member of society. The outcast is my daily menace. Whether I am Pope, Czar, Emperor, or even Prime Minister, I am always the creature of their circumstance, the conscious product of their ignorance, want and clamoring. They are in slavery, and I, the superior one, am enslaved in consequence.”

Solidarity in Liberty: The Workers' Path to Freedom (1867)

“Solidarity in Liberty: The Workers' Path to Freedom (1867)”

What all other men are is of the greatest importance to me. However independent I may imagine myself to be, however far removed I may appear from mundane considerations by my social status, I am enslaved to the misery of the meanest member of society. The outcast is my daily menace. Whether I am Pope, Czar, Emperor, or even Prime Minister, I am always the creature of their circumstance, the consci

“Secularism should be considered as mutual autonomy not only between political and religious thought, but between all human activities, which must be subordinate to one another in a relationship of hierarchical dependence, nor can they be subject to ends or interests that are foreign to them, but must autonomously carry out their own purposes and internal rules. This corresponds, in the relationships between activities, to freedom in the relationships between individuals.”

Wikiquote

Attributed to Nicola Abbagnano:

“Existence is possibility, not necessity.”

Attributed to Nicola Abbagnano:

“Positive existentialism finds the openness of being a ground for hope, not despair.”

Attributed to Nicola Abbagnano:

“What is possible for me defines what I am.”

Attributed to Nicola Abbagnano:

“Every existence projects itself toward what it is not yet.”

“Slavery and Freedom (1939), p. 145”

It is beyond dispute that the state exercises very great power over human life and it always shows a tendency to go beyond the limits laid down for it.

“There is absolute truth in anarchism and it is to be seen in its attitude to the sovereignty of the state and to every form of state absolutism . … The religious truth of anarchism consists in this, that power over man is bound up with sin and evil , that a state of perfection is a state where there is no power of man over man, that is to say, anarchy. The Kingdom of God is freedom and the absence of such power... the Kingdom of God is anarchy.”

Slavery and Freedom (1939), p. 147

“Slavery and Freedom (1939), p. 147”

There is absolute truth in anarchism and it is to be seen in its attitude to the sovereignty of the state and to every form of state absolutism . … The religious truth of anarchism consists in this, that power over man is bound up with sin and evil , that a state of perfection is a state where there is no power of man over man, that is to say, anarchy. The Kingdom of God is freedom and the absence

Attributed to Nikolai Berdyaev:

“Freedom precedes being.”

Attributed to Nikolai Berdyaev:

“Personality is created by God and is itself creative.”

“Science is an essentially anarchic enterprise.”

p. 9.

Attributed to Paul Feyerabend:

“The only principle that does not inhibit progress is: anything goes.”

Attributed to Paul Feyerabend:

“There is no idea, however ancient and absurd, that is not capable of improving our knowledge.”

Attributed to Paul Feyerabend:

“A clever individual will always know how to circumvent any rule.”

Attributed to Paul Feyerabend:

“Reason is one tradition among others; it has no claim to universal authority.”

“Property is theft.”

Property is robbery! That is the war-cry of '93! That is the signal of revolutions ! Reader, calm yourself: I am no agent of discord, no firebrand of sedition . I anticipate history by a few days; I disclose a truth whose development we may try in vain to arrest; I write the preamble of our future constitution . This proposition which seems to you blasphemous — property is robbery — would, if our

“Anarchy is order; government is civil war.”

As man seeks justice in equality , so society seeks order in anarchy .

“Money, money, always money — that is the essence of democracy . Democracy is more expensive than monarchy; it is incompatible with liberty.”

Solution Du Problême Social , quoted by Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn in The Menace of the Herd (1943), p. 328

“I stand ready to negotiate, but I want no part of laws: I acknowledge none; I protest against every order with which some authority may feel pleased on the basis of some alleged necessity to over-rule my free will. Laws: We know what they are, and what they are worth! They are spider webs for the rich and mighty, steel chains for the poor and weak, fishing nets in the hands of government .”

As quoted in "The Authority Principle" in No Gods, No Masters : An Anthology of Anarchism (1980) Daniel Guérin, as translated by Paul Sharkey (1998), p. 90

Attributed to Pierre-Joseph Proudhon:

“What is government? It is the perpetual state of war between the strong and the weak.”

“By the structure of society, I mean the institutional and ideological presuppositions that shape the routine practices, conflicts, and transactions in that society, and that are largely taken for granted, even to the point of being invisible, as if they were part of the nature of things. In a free society, this institutional and ideological framework does not present itself as an alien fate beyond the reach of the transformative will and imagination.”

p. 295

“In a free society, the individual has the educational equipment, as well as the economic and political occasion, to cross the frontier between the activities that take the framework for granted and those that bring it into question. He has been educated in a way that enables the mind as imagination to become ascendant over the mind as machine. He has learned to philosophize by acting, in the sense that he recognizes in every project the seed of some great or small reformation.”

p. 295

“The reader should understand that this book forms a small part of a larger intellectual program: a struggle against fate through thought, an effort to give new meaning and new life to projects of individual and social liberation that for the last two hundred years have shaken and aroused the whole world, a fight to imagine the forms that those projects can and should take if they are to have a future.”

p. 187

Attributed to Roberto Mangabeira Unger:

“We are bigger than the structures we build and inhabit; politics begins when we remember this.”

Attributed to Roberto Mangabeira Unger:

“Institutions are made by us, even when they seem most inevitable.”

“The aim of the ancients was the sharing of social power among the citizens of the same fatherland: this is what they called liberty. The aim of the moderns is the enjoyment of liberty in private pleasures, and they call “liberty” the guarantees accorded by institutions to these pleasures.”

The Liberty of Ancients Compared with that of Moderns " (1819)

“The Liberty of Ancients Compared with that of Moderns " (1819)”

The aim of the ancients was the sharing of social power among the citizens of the same fatherland: this is what they called liberty. The aim of the moderns is the enjoyment of liberty in private pleasures, and they call “liberty” the guarantees accorded by institutions to these pleasures.

Attributed to Benjamin Constant:

“The liberty of the ancients was the active sharing in collective sovereignty; the liberty of the moderns is the security of private enjoyments.”

Attributed to Benjamin Constant:

“Modern man can no longer be a citizen in the ancient sense.”

Attributed to Benjamin Constant:

“Government has no right except for the maintenance of order.”