Sourced and curated.

And I hope we have once again reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There's a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts.

Ronald Reagan

1989 Farewell Address · 1989

★ 1.1

Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.

John Milton

Areopagitica · 1644

★ 1.2

The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the Republican model of Government, are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally staked, on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.

George Washington

First Inaugural Address of George Washington · 1789

★ 1.3

Speech

You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.

Malcolm X

1965

★ 1.3

Interview · TV program

You will never be free until we are free.

Desmond Tutu

1999

★ 1.3

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

Those who won our independence believed that the final end of the State was to make men free to develop their faculties; and that in its government the deliberative forces should prevail over the arbitrary. They valued liberty both as an end and as a means. They believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty.

Democracy in America · 1835

★ 1.3

Supreme Court opinion · Legal opinion · Legal writing

Louis Brandeis

Whitney v. California · 1927

★ 1.8

Freedom is an indivisible word. If we want to enjoy it, and fight for it, we must be prepared to extend it to everyone, whether they are rich or poor, whether they agree with us or not, no matter what their race or the color of their skin.

Wendell Willkie

1943

★ 1.8

Essay · Philosophical literature · Political literature

Those who have ever valued liberty for its own sake believed that to be free to choose, and not to be chosen for, is an inalienable ingredient in what makes human beings human.

Isaiah Berlin

Four Essays on Liberty · 1969

★ 1.8

Essay

The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves.

William Hazlitt

1819

★ 1.9

Political literature · Economic literature

The system of private property is the most important guaranty of freedom, not only for those who own property, but scarcely less for those who do not.

Friedrich Hayek

The Road to Serfdom · 1944

★ 1.9

Autobiography and memoir

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms-to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

Viktor Frankl

Man's Search for Meaning · 1946

★ 1.9

Economic literature

Freedom in economic arrangements is itself a component of freedom broadly understood, so economic freedom is an end in itself...economic freedom is also an indispensable means toward the achievement of political freedom.

Milton Friedman

1962

★ 1.9

Magazine

I'm interested in anything about revolt, disorder, chaos, especially activity that appears to have no meaning. It seems to me to be the road toward freedom.

Jim Morrison

1968

★ 1.9

The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedients, and by parts.

Historical literature · Political literature

1777

★ 1.9

Freedom alone substitutes from time to time for the love of material comfort more powerful and more lofty passions; it alone supplies ambition with greater objectives than the acquisition of riches, and creates the light that makes it possible to see and to judge the vices and virtues of mankind.

Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.

The Ancien Regime and the Revolution · 1856

★ 1.9

Lecture

Lord Acton

The History of Freedom in Antiquity · 1877

★ 1.9

Essay · Political literature

A man is either free or he is not. There cannot be any apprenticeship for freedom.

Amiri Baraka

1962

★ 1.9

Interview

One of the meanings of human existence, the source of human freedom, is never to accept anything as definitive, untouchable, obvious, or immobile.

Michel Foucault

1980

★ 1.9

Newspaper

Discipline allows creative freedom. No discipline equals no freedom.

Jeanette Winterson

2010

★ 1.9

Scripture · Religious literature

Let my people go.

God

Exodus 10:3 · 1405 BC

★ 2.0

Philosophical literature

If men were born free, they would, so long as they remained free, form no conception of good and evil.

Baruch Spinoza

1677

★ 2.0

Liberty, too, must be limited in order to be possessed.

1777

★ 2.0

The advancement & diffusion of Knowledge, which is the only Guardian of true liberty.

James Madison

1825

★ 2.0

Essay · Political literature

Every law is contrary to liberty.

Jeremy Bentham

1832

★ 2.0

We were proclaiming ourselves political hypocrites before the world, by thus fostering Human Slavery and proclaiming ourselves, at the same time, the sole friends of Human Freedom.

1854

★ 2.0

This government was instituted to secure the blessings of freedom, and…slavery is an unqualified evil to the negro, to the white man, to the soil, and to the State.

1858

★ 2.0

This is a world of compensations; 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.

1859

★ 2.0

So long as the State exists, there can be no freedom. When there is freedom there will be no State.

Vladimir Lenin

State and Revolution · 1917

★ 2.0

Film · Political (film) · Comedy drama (film) · Political · Comedy drama

Liberty's too precious a thing to be buried in books, Miss Saunders. Men should hold it up in front of them every single day of their lives and say: I'm free to think and to speak. My ancestors couldn't, I can, and my children will. Boys ought to grow up remembering that.

Jefferson Smith

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington · 1939

★ 2.0

Essay

Money is the necessity that frees us from necessity.

W.H. Auden

1973

★ 2.0

Since the turn of the century, the number of democracies in the world has grown fourfold. Human freedom is on the march, and nowhere more so than in our own hemisphere. Freedom is one of the deepest and noblest aspirations of the human spirit. People, worldwide, hunger for the right of self-determination, for those inalienable rights that make for human dignity and progress.

Ronald Reagan

Second Inaugural Address of Ronald Reagan · 1985

★ 2.0

Our greatest strength is the power of our ideas, which are still new in many lands. Across the world we see them embraced, and we rejoice. Our hopes, our hearts, our hands are with those on every continent who are building democracy and freedom. Their cause is America's cause.

Bill Clinton

First Inaugural Address of Bill Clinton · 1993

★ 2.0

We go forward with complete confidence in the eventual triumph of freedom...because freedom is the permanent hope of mankind, the hunger in dark places, the longing of the soul.

George W. Bush

Second Inaugural Address of George W. Bush · 2005

★ 2.0

Biography · Historical literature

How strongly does this bear out the truth of Plato's maxim, that he who wishes to be really rich ought to lessen his desires rather than increase his property, because if a man places no bounds to his covetousness, he never will be free from want and misery.

Plutarch

Plutarch's Lives

★ 2.0

In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger.

John F. Kennedy

Inaugural Address of John F. Kennedy · 1961

★ 2.1

Real freedom is freedom from fear, and unless you can live from fear, you cannot live a dignified human life.

Aung San Suu Kyi

★ 2.1

Essay · Philosophical literature · Political literature

The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way.

John Stuart Mill

On Liberty · 1859

★ 2.2

Essay · Philosophical literature · Political literature

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

John Stuart Mill

On Liberty · 1859

★ 2.3

We know what works: Freedom works. We know what's right: Freedom is right. We know how to secure a more just and prosperous life for man on Earth: through free markets, free speech, free elections, and the exercise of free will unhampered by the state.

George H.W. Bush

Inaugural Address of George H. W. Bush · 1989

★ 2.8

Treatise · Political literature

Liberty is a right of doing whatever the laws permits.

Montesquieu

The Spirit of the Laws · 1748

★ 2.9

Poem

Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage; Minds innocent and quiet take That for an hermitage. If I have freedom in my love, And in my soul am free; Angels alone, that soar above, Enjoy such liberty.

Richard Lovelace

To Althea, From Prison · 1649

★ 3.5

Philosophical literature

Perfect freedom is reserved for the man who lives by his own work and in that work does what he wants to do.

R.G. Collingwood

1924

★ 3.5

I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!

Barry Goldwater

1964 Republican convention speech · 1964

★ 3.5

Novel · Political literature

You only have power over people as long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything he's no longer in your power-he's free again.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

In the First Circle · 1968

★ 3.5

Press conference

Freedom's untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things. They're also free to live their lives and do wonderful things. And that's what's going to happen here.

Donald Rumsfeld

2003

★ 3.5

Where Slavery is, there Liberty cannot be; and where Liberty is, there Slavery cannot be.

Charles Sumner

1864

★ 3.5

Supreme Court opinion · Legal opinion · Legal writing

Of that freedom one may say that it is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom.

Benjamin Cardozo

Palko v. Connecticut · 1937

★ 3.5

Speech

Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it.

Learned Hand

1944

★ 3.5

Freedom is not something that one people can bestow on another as a gift. They claim it as their own and none can keep it from them.

Kwame Nkrumah

1953

★ 3.5

Interview

The life of white men is slavery. They are prisoners in towns or farms. The life my people want is a life of freedom. I have seen nothing that a white man has, houses or railways or clothing or food, that is as good as the right to move in the open country, and live in our own fashion.

Sitting Bull

★ 3.5

Scripture · Religious literature

Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

Jesus

John 8:32 · 90

★ 3.6

Play · Tragedy (play)

I am as free as nature first made man, Ere the base laws of servitude began, When wild in woods the noble savage ran.

John Dryden

1670

★ 3.6

Dissertation · Newspaper · Political literature

The jaws of power are always opened to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible to destroy, the freedom of thinking, speaking and writing.

John Adams

1765

★ 3.6

Dissertation · Newspaper · Political literature

Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right... and a desire to know-but besides this they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded, and envied kind of knowledge. I mean of the characters and conduct of their rulers.

John Adams

1765

★ 3.6

I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.

James Madison

1788

★ 3.6

Whatever each man can separately do, without trespassing upon others, he has a right to do for himself; and he has a right to a fair portion of all which society, with all its combinations of skill and force, can do in his favor.

O liberty! O liberty! What crimes are committed in thy name!

Reflections on the Revolution in France · 1790

★ 3.6

Historical literature

Alphonse de Lamartine

1793

★ 3.6

Poem

But what is Freedom? Rightly understood, A universal licence to be good.

Hartley Coleridge

1833

★ 3.6

Historical literature · Political literature

Despots themselves do not deny that freedom is excellent; only they desire it for themselves alone, and they maintain that everyone else is altogether unworthy of it.

Man, being condemned to be free carries the weight of the whole world on his shoulders; he is responsible for the world and himself as a way of being.

The Ancien Regime and the Revolution · 1856

★ 3.6

Essay · Philosophical literature

Jean-Paul Sartre

Being and Nothingness · 1943

★ 3.6

Speech · Philosophical literature · Political literature

Liberty is liberty, not equality or fairness or justice or culture, or human happiness or a quiet conscience.

Isaiah Berlin

Two Concepts of Liberty · 1958

★ 3.6

Economic literature

History suggests only that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom. Clearly it is not a sufficient condition.

Milton Friedman

Capitalism and Freedom · 1962

★ 3.6

Sermon

Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought.

Pope John Paul II

1995

★ 3.6

Film · Superhero (film) · Superhero

Freedom is life's great lie. Once you accept that, in your heart, you will know peace.

Loki

The Avengers · 2012

★ 3.6

Poem

Not bound to swear allegiance to any master, wherever the wind takes me I travel as a visitor.

Horace

Epistles · 20 BC

★ 3.7

Pamphlet · Political literature

None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license.

John Milton

The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates · 1649

★ 3.7

Pamphlet · Political literature

No man who knows aught, can be so stupid to deny that all men naturally were born free.

John Milton

1649

★ 3.7

Among a people generally corrupt liberty cannot long exist.

1777

★ 3.7

In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free—honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last, best hope of earth.

A man's worst difficulties begin when he is able to do as he likes.

1862

★ 3.7

Speech

T.H. Huxley

1876

★ 3.7

Film · Epic (film) · Historical drama (film) · Epic · Historical drama

All men lose when they die and all men die. But a slave and a free man lose different things.

Spartacus

Spartacus · 1960

★ 3.7

Film · Teen (film) · Drama (film) · Teen · Drama

But only in their dreams can men be truly free. 'Twas always thus, and always thus will be.

John Keating

Dead Poets Society · 1989

★ 3.7

Scripture · Religious literature

Leave all things behind, and come unto me for thy salvation. I will make thee free from this bondage of sins. Fear no more.

Bhagavad Gita

200 BC

★ 3.8

Providence has not created mankind entirely independent or entirely free. It is true that around every man a fatal circle is traced, beyond which he cannot pass; but within the wide verge of that circle he is powerful and free.

I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will.

Democracy in America · 1840

★ 3.8

Novel · Coming of age story

Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre: An Autobiography · 1847

★ 3.8

Essay · Feminist literature

There is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.

Virginia Woolf

A Room of One's Own · 1929

★ 3.8