Freedom, liberty, patriotism — all abstract terms with different meanings for everyone, simply based on their programming and life experiences. These freedom and liberty quotes come from a diverse collection of people and they are reminders that one person’s idea of freedom can be another’s prison.

The color of the text has absolutely nothing to do with political parties.

Freedom and Liberty Quotes

You have freedom when you’re easy in your harness.  – Robert Frost

My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.  – Adlai Stevenson

Here is my advice as we begin the century that will lead to 2081.  First, guard the freedom of ideas at all costs.  Be alert that dictators have always played on the natural human tendency to blame others and to oversimplify.  And don’t regard yourself as a guardian of freedom unless you respect and preserve the rights of people you disagree with to free, public, unhampered expression.  – Gerard K. O’Neill, 2081

We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home. – Edward R. Murrow

The average man does not want to be free. He simply wants to be safe. – H.L. Mencken

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it. – Thomas Jefferson

We are free, truly free, when we don’t need to rent our arms to anybody in order to be able to lift a piece of bread to our mouths.  – Ricardo Flores Magon

The wave of the future is not the conquest of the world by a single dogmatic creed, but the liberation of the diverse energies of free nations and free men. – John F. Kennedy

The trouble with free election is, you never know who is going to win. – Leonid Brezhnev

There are two freedoms – the false, where a man is free to do what he likes; the true, where he is free to do what he ought.  – Charles Kingsley

Men in authority will always think that criticism of their policies is dangerous. They will always equate their policies with patriotism, and find criticism subversive. – Henry Steele Commager

They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security. – Benjamin Franklin

When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross. – Sinclair Lewis

If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too. – Somerset Maugham

I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually. – James Baldwin

So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men. – Voltaire

The love of one’s country is a splendid thing. But why should love stop at the border? – Pablo Casals

When a whole nation is roaring Patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and the purity of its heart. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us. – William O. Douglas

History has shown us that ‘evil’ can be much more successful when it can color its deeds with patriotism, duty, and honor.” – Ben Mauldin

I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.” –  Thomas Jefferson

What light is to the eyes – what air is to the lungs – what love is to the heart, liberty is to the soul of man.”  – Robert Green Ingersoll

We Americans have no commission from God to police the world. – Benjamin Harrison

Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth. – Albert Einstein

No legal tender law is ever needed to make men take good money; its only use is to make them take bad money. – Stephen T. Byington

“Preventive war is like committing suicide out of fear of death.” – Otto von Bismarck

The only way to make sure people you agree with can speak is to support the rights of people you don’t agree with. – Eleanor Holmes Norton

Freedom is the emancipation from the arbitrary rule of other men. – Mortimer Adler

Those who begin by burning books will end by burning people. – – Heinrich Heine