Freedom Struggles Quotes & Sayings

In our early struggles for liberty, religious freedom could not fail to become a primary object. — Thomas Jefferson

Since 1787 the principle of freedom of religion has been attacked but never overthrown. Keeping education in the United States free of sectarian influence has long been one of the primary struggles of believers in freedom of religion. — Joseph Leon Blau

If the self-discipline of the free cannot match the iron discipline of the mailed fist, in economic, political, scientific, and all the other kinds of struggles, as well as the military, then the peril to freedom will continue to rise. — John F. Kennedy

In my life I have had to work through problems of stigmatization and prejudice. When I discovered the power of the arts to express my pains and joys, it became clear to me that there would be no other way to work through the demons except to fully embrace the process of creation. The work was not personal therapy but had a connection to other peoples' realities. As I grow older and more mature, it becomes clearer to me that personal struggles and conflicts are connected with universal struggles and conflicts. It is this knowledge, ironically, that gives me the freedom to experiment in my work — Reza Abdoh

Religion regards civil liberty as a noble exercise of man's faculties, the world of politics being a sphere intended by the Creator for the free play of intelligence. Religion, being free and powerful within its own sphere and content with the position reserved for it, realized that its sway is all the better established because it relies only on its own powers and rules men's hearts without external support.
Freedom sees religion as the companion of its struggles and triumphs, the cradle of its infancy, and the divine source of its rights. Religion is considered as the guardian of mores, and mores are regarded as the guarantee of the laws and pledge for the maintenance of freedom itself. — Alexis De Tocqueville

It takes courage to become authentic. So many talk about the light but not enough speak the truth about the struggles it takes to get there and the tools to overcome it all. — Nikki Rowe

Jazz is really about the human experience. It's about the ability of human beings to take the worst of circumstances and struggles and turn it into something creative and constructive. That's something that's built into the fiber of every human being. And I think that's why people can respond to it. They feel the freedom in it. And the attributes of jazz are also admirable. It's about dialogue. It's about sharing. And teamwork. It's in the moment, and it's nonjudgmental. — Herbie Hancock

was Goldman's ideas that were dangerous: her ideal of a just and beautiful society inspired struggles for social change, and her uncompromising presence in public life exposed the hypocrisies of allegedly democratic governance. She had a unique ability to generate coalitions among liberal and radical groups, and among immigrants and native-born citizens, by articulating their common struggles for freedom of speech (including freedom to organize the workplace), right to a fair trial, availability of birth control, right to travel, and an overall spirit of individual freedom. Looking back at Goldman's time from within this gaze, the authorities look extreme, if not paranoid and even ridiculous, for their fervent efforts to silence her rather than simply accept her words as a protected form of speech in American society. — Kathy E. Ferguson

This kind of action is a prevalent error among oppressed peoples. It is based upon the false notion that there is only a limited and particular amount of freedom that must be divided up between us, with the largest and juiciest pieces of liberty going as spoils to the victor or the stronger. So instead of joining together to fight for more, we quarrel between ourselves for a larger slice of the one pie. Black women fight between ourselves over men, instead of pursuing and using who we are and our strengths for lasting change; Black women and men fight between ourselves over who has more of a right to freedom, instead of seeing each other's struggles as part of our own and vital to our common goals; Black and white women fight between ourselves over who is the more oppressed, instead of seeing those areas in which our causes are the same. (Of course, this last separation is worsened by the intransigent racism that white women too often fail to, or cannot, address in themselves.) — Audre Lorde

I wondered
not for the first time
whether one was ever justified in neglecting the welfare of one's own family in order to fight for the welfare of others. Can there be anything more important than looking after one's aging mother? Is politics merely a pretext for shirking one's responsibilities, an excuse for not being able to provide in the way one wanted? — Nelson Mandela

But I can't help but long for a real return to the Western. Westerns are true Americana. They tell of the struggles of our ancestors who came West seeking new homes, new ways of living, freedom and the promise of a bright future. The story of the West is inspiring and terrible, idealistic and bloody, sublime and atrocious. It embodies this country's best and worst characteristics. The good parts of the story inspire us. The bad parts warn us of what we have to do to make things better. Even though many Western films have only a slight connection to the true history of the West, I believe exposure to these motion pictures can stimulate kids to learn more about what their forefathers endured to make the United States one nation, from sea to shining sea. — Clayton Moore

The twin sister to autonomy and freedom is responsibility and accountability. You cannot have one with out the other. If someone is given an area of responsibility, not only must they be set free to do it, they must also be held accountable for what they do. Accountability clarifies freedom. In the teams and companies where you see boundary confusion, power struggles, control, over-reaching of one's line of responsibility, you will also see lapses in accountability as well. — Henry Cloud

We are in a strange kind of time, where the kind of liberation movements such as anti-apartheid movements and freedom struggles in India need to be reinvented. We need to retool them so that all the gains that our generation has made can be passed on to future generations. — Vandana Shiva

By creating a society in which all people, of all colors, were granted freedom and citizenship, the Haitian Revolution forever transformed the world. It was a central part of the destruction of slavery in the Americas, and therefore a crucial moment in the history of democracy, one that laid the foundation for the continuing struggles for human rights everywhere. In this sense we are all descendents of the Haitain Revolution, and responsible to these ancestors. — Laurent Dubois

Universities face a constant struggle to maintain their integrity, and their fundamental social role in a healthy society, in the face of external pressures. The problems are heightened with the expansion of private power in every domain, in the course of the state-corporate social engineering projects of the past several decades. . . . To defend their integrity and proper commitments is an honorable and difficult task in itself, but our sights should be set higher than that. Particularly in the societies that are more privileged, many choices are available, including fundamental institutional change, if that is the right way to proceed, and surely including scholarship that contributes to, and draws from, the never-ending popular struggles for freedom and justice. 5 Higher education is under attack not because it is failing, but because it is a potentially democratic public sphere. — Noam Chomsky

God's faithfulness is proved not by the elimination of hardships but by carrying us through them. Change is not the absence of struggles; change is the freedom to choose holiness in the midst of our struggles. I realized that the ultimate issue has to be that I yearn after God in total surrender and complete obedience. — Christopher Yuan

It is necessary to curb the power of government. This is the task of all constitutions, bills of rights and laws. This is the meaning of all struggles which men have fought for liberty. — Ludwig Von Mises

The movement of nonviolent non-co-operation has nothing in common with the historical struggles for freedom in the West. — Mahatma Gandhi

If I convince myself that this life has no other aspect than that of the absurd, if I feel that its whole equilibrium depends on that perpetual opposition between my conscious revolt and the darkness in which it struggles, if I admit that my freedom has no meaning except in relation to its limited fate, then I must say that what counts is not the best living but the most living. — Albert Camus

In Latin America in general, and Cuba in particular, poets have been the inspiration behind struggles for independence, struggles for freedom of all sorts. — Margarita Engle

Oil depletion and climate change will create an entirely new context in which political struggles will be played out. Within that context, it is not just freedom, democracy, and equality that are at stake, but the survival of billions of humans and of whole ecosystems. — Richard Heinberg

The deceiver loses when there is correct response from the deceived... — Bipan Chandra

Allen once recalled that even local blacks doubted the efficacy of an independent black church in Philadelphia, so fearful were they of a white backlash. But after segregated seating policies were instituted at white churches, Allen appeared to be a visionary, and many blacks soon joined his exodus from segregated Northern pews and galleries for independent black churches. For subsequent generations, Allen's act of defiance had all the meaning and power of Rosa Parks's sit-in during the mid-twentieth century. The comparison is not superficial. For while both events - Parks's sit-in and Allen's walkout of segregated pews - were courageous nonviolent acts in and of themselves, they also set the stage for new black freedom struggles. — Richard S. Newman

Time must be such a patient fellow to put up with the monotony of each moment. Each second ticking away with ungodly precision, reminding itself that it cannot escape its own perfection. And those wretched blue bells were like a pain in my side. I waited and waited for their ring and then I cursed them when they finally came and did not sing the number of rings that would signify the end to my struggles. Each second was like a weight being added to my shoulders, asking me why I had left comfort for starvation, certainty for uncertainty, security for freedom.
--From Of Mind Or Matter — Sreejit Poole

The peoples owe all political rights and privileges which we enjoy today in greater or lesser measure, not to the good will of their governments, but to their own strength. One need only study the history of the past three hundred years to understand by what relentless struggles every right has had to be wrested inch by inch from the despots. — Rudolf Rocker

One truth is that racism and oppression is deeply embedded in the American experiment. History has taught that each time blacks have made strides for freedom, there has been backlash, retrenchment, and new forms of subjugation that appear on the American landscape, thus the old oppression in a new guise. The new movement is part of a long historical sweep, and it has taken many lifetimes to get to this point in the struggle. Because of the tenacity of opposition to equality of race and economics in America, we cannot "throw the baby out with the bathwater" by looking upon past struggles and tradition with disdain. Past struggles — Frank A Thomas

I fall upon the thorns of life, I bleed. And then? I fall upon the thorns of life, I bleed. And what next? I get laid, I take a short holiday, but very soon after I fall upon those same thorns with gratification in pain, or suffering in joy - who knows what the mixture is! What good, what lasting good is there in me? Is there nothing else between birth and death but what I can get out of this perversity - only a favorable balance of disorderly emotions? No freedom? Only impulses? And what about all the good I have in my heart - does it mean anything? Is it simply a joke? A false hope that makes a man feel the illusion of worth? And so he goes on with his struggles. But this good is no phony. I know it isn't. I swear it. — Saul Bellow

The masculine in each of us struggles for greater freedom
and tries to achieve it through financial, creative, or political challenges. — David Deida

Humankind struggles with collective powers for its freedom, the individual struggles with dehumanization for the possession of his soul. — Saul Bellow

Surely, she was too young to have so many ghosts. — Cassandra Clare

Perhaps you should not think too hard on the political struggles. I think it is better if you find your freedom in Christ. He, unlike any man in this world, does not have expectations for you that you cannot meet. You are one of His children, and there is nothing that you can do to earn His favor, because you already have it. Find that truth, walk in the light of it, and you will be free indeed. — Sarah Holman

If a piece of burning charcoal be placed on a man's head, see how he struggles to throw it off. Similar will be the struggle for freedom of those who really understand that they are slaves of nature. — Swami Vivekananda

One of the great disappointments of our time has been that the United States, a beacon of hope during the freedom struggles of the Asian peoples, succumbed to the views and greater colonial experience of nations grown to power in an earlier period. — Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit

The aim of all struggles for liberty is to keep in bounds the armed defenders of peace, the governors and their constables. The political concept of the individual's freedom means: freedom from arbitrary action on the part of the police power. — Ludwig Von Mises

Hatred is corrosive of a person's wisdom and conscience; the mentality of enmity can poison a nation's spirit, instigate brutal life and death struggles, destroy a society's tolerance and humanity, and block a nation's progress to freedom and democracy. — Liu Xiaobo

National independence, and the preceding political struggles, helped create the space for literary creation in many post-colonial countries. Much of modern Indian or Chinese literature is inconceivable without the political movement for freedom from foreign rule. — Pankaj Mishra

Struggles among Roman patricians, plebeians, and slaves produced a version of the chordal triad universalized around a notion of libertas. Different notes of the chord were dominant from the Republic to the Empire. The slave's point of view was made prominent in the figure of Epictetus, one of the few major Roman theorists born a slave. By the Middle Ages, freedom had attained a spiritual dimension but was still linked to the political. With medieval Christendom came the triumph of the sovereignal conception of freedom. That triumph coincided with theocratic societal decadence, the doctrine of heresy, the transformation of mass slavery into the political language of serfdom, and the introduction of the root word Slav to refer to serfs across Europe. Heretics privileged their personal freedom over sovereign orthodoxy. Being burned at the stake was a consequence. — Neil Roberts

It's important that young people know about the struggles we faced to get to the point we are today. Only then will they appreciate the hard-won freedom of blacks in this country. — Amelia Boynton Robinson

While preaching against every kind of government, and demanding complete freedom, we must support all struggles for partial freedom, because we are convinced that one learns through struggle, — Errico Malatesta

Freedom is the one purport, wisely aimed at, or unwisely, of all man's struggles, toilings and sufferings, in this earth. — Thomas Carlyle

I don't need money, or, better, it's not money that I need; it's not even power; I need only what is obtained by power and simply cannot be obtained without power: the solitary and calm awareness of strength! That is the fullest definition of freedom, which the world so struggles over! — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

At its heart, socialism is about the creation of a new society, built from the bottom up, through the struggles of ordinary working people against exploitation, oppression, and injustice - one that eliminates profit and power as the prime goals of life, and instead organizes our world around the principles of equality, democracy, and freedom. The — Alan Maass

Freedom sees in religion the companion of its struggles and its triumphs, the cradle of its infancy, the divine source of its rights. It considers religion as the safeguard of mores; and mores as the guarantee of laws and the pledge of its duration. — Alexis De Tocqueville

I would say that as our struggles mature, they produce new ideas, new issues, and new terrains on which we engage in the quest for freedom. Like Nelson Mandela, we must be willing to embrace the long walk toward freedom. — Angela Y. Davis

In the midst of our lives, of our freedom and our struggles, we have to make a radical, absolute decision. And we never know when lightening will strike us out of the blue. It may be when we least expect to be asked whether we have the absolute faith and trust to say yes — Karl Rahner