Revolutionary Freedom Quotes & Sayings

The people's community must not be a mere phrase, but a revolutionary achievement following from the radical carrying out of the basic life needs of the working class. A ruthless battle against corruption! A war against exploitation, freedom for the workers! The elimination of all economic-capitalist influences on national policy ... Maintaining a rotten economic system has nothing to do with nationalism, which is an affirmation of the Fatherland. I can love Germany and hate capitalism. Not only can I, I must. — Joseph Goebbels

Patriot writers attempted to inculcate civic virtue through allusions to classical history, frequently Greek but even more often Roman, and ancient glory. A revolutionary writer in the Virginia Gazette, wishing to "secure this valuable blessing [of classical virtue], and learn the greatness of its worth," wished to recommend to his "countrymen, especially the younger part of it, a thorough acquaintance with these records of illustrious liberty, the histories of Greece and Rome." The writer intended this recommendation not as a theoretical or academic exercise, but rather as a spur to urge Americans to "a glorious emulation of those virtues, which have immortalized their names." Classical examples would surely instill Americans with "a just hatred of tyranny and zeal for freedom," and induce them to follow "the godlike actions of those heroes and patriots, whose lives are delivered down to us by Plutarch. — Eran Shalev

Latinos have fought in all of America's wars, beginning with the Revolutionary War. Many Latinos are fighting and dying for our country today in Iraq, just as several of their ancestors fought for freedom in Mexico over a century ago. — Joe Baca

That year, and every year, it seemed, we began by studying the Revolutionary War. We were taken in school buses on field trips to visit Plymouth Rock, and to walk the Freedom Trail, and to climb to the top of the Bunker Hill Monument. We made dioramas out of colored construction paper depicting George Washington crossing the choppy waters of the Delaware River, and we made puppets of King George wearing white tights and a black bow in his hair. During tests we were given blank maps of the thirteen colonies, and asked to fill in names, dates, capitals. I could do it with my eyes closed. — Jhumpa Lahiri

The reactionary of any kind condemns sexual pleasure because it stimulates and repulses him at the same time. He is unable to solve the conflict within him between sexual demands and moralistic inhibitions. The revolutionary refutes the perverse, unhealthy kind of pleasure, because it is not his kind of pleasure, because it is not the sexuality of the future, but the sexuality which results from the conflict between instinct and morals, the sexuality of authoritarian society, a debased, smutty, pathological sexuality. — Wilhelm Reich

The revolutionary artist does not only focus on the negative aspects of capitalist lives, but also creates visions of a revolutionary future. — Pablo Picasso

What is in the minds of the majority the society is unmindful of. — Amit Abraham

They were complicated years. The order of the world in which we had grown up was dissolving. The old skills resulting from long study and knowledge of the correct political line suddenly seemed senseless. Anarchist, Marxist, Gramscian, Communist, Leninist, Trotskyite, Maoist, worker were quickly becoming obsolete labels or, worse, a mark of brutality. The exploitation of man by man and the logic of maximum profit, which before had been considered an abomination, had returned to become the linchpins of freedom and democracy everywhere. Meanwhile, by means legal and illegal, all the accounts that remained open in the state and in the revolutionary organizations were being closed with a heavy hand. One might easily end up murdered or in jail, and among the common people a stampede had begun. — Elena Ferrante

The British Army and Navy sang a rousing song called "Heart of Oak"; the rebels had writ one to counter it called "The Liberty Song." Both songs blustered of freedom; but both were sung to the same tune.
And we, to avoid offense, played the tune without words. — M T Anderson

I was only a working-class boy from a Nationalist ghetto. But it is repression that creates the revolutionary spirit of freedom. — Bobby Sands

The truly revolutionary promise of our nation's founding document is the freedom to pursue happiness-with-a-capital-H. — Dan Savage

If TV sitcoms idealized the American suburbs of the 1960s, the works of the artistic elite disparaged them ceaselessly, then and now. The songs of Pete Seeger, novels like Revolutionary Road, the stories of John Cheever, movies like Pleasantville and American Beauty, television series like Mad Men: in all of them, that long-ago land of lawns and houses is depicted as a country of stultifying conformity and cultural emptiness, sexual hypocrisy, alcoholism, and spiritual despair. Privilege murders the senses there, the creatives tell us. Gender roles strangle freedom. Family life turns the heart of adventure to ashes. There's bigotry and gossip and dangerous liaisons behind every closed door. Oh, the soul, the human soul! In the suburbs of fiction, she is forever dying. But — Andrew Klavan

HOW TO MAKE A REVOLUTIONARY CONSCIOUSNESS IS: educate yourself. On the train, for example, read the same two pages of Das Kapital over and over, willing them to make sense. — Garth Risk Hallberg

When I was younger, I was listening to a lot of Armenian music, you know, revolutionary music about freedom and protest. In the 70s I was listening to soul and the Bee Gees and ABBA, and funk. — Serj Tankian

Since Shakespeare had a feel for revolutionary rhetoric, let's all cry: "Peace, freedom and liberty! — Carl William Brown

As precious as life itself is our heritage of individual freedom, for man's free agency is a God-given gift. In sensing our responsibility to preserve it for ourselves and our posterity, let students and patriotic people ever keep in mind the warning voice of James Russell Lowell proclaiming: 'Our American republic will endure only as long as the ideas of the men who founded it continue dominant.'
There is a crying need today to have this truth heralded throughout the land that youth especially may appreciate and hold the freedom of the individual as sacred as did our revolutionary fathers — David O. McKay

History likewise shows that sometimes the 'monetary standard of the victors' can prove to be very bad. There have seldom been more brilliant victories than those eventually achieved by the American insurgents under Washington against the English troops. But the American 'continental dollar did not benefit from them. The more proudly the star-spangled banner rose on high, the lower did the exchange-rate fall, until, at the very moment when the victory of the rebels was secured, the dollar became entirely valueless. The course of events was no different not long afterwards in France. In spite of the victories of the revolutionary army, the metal premium rose. — Ludwig Von Mises

The unveiled Algerian woman, who assumed an increasingly important place in revolutionary action, developed her personality, discovered the exalting realm of responsibility. The freedom of the Algerian people from then on became identified with woman's liberation, with her entry into history. This woman who, in the avenues of Algier or of Constantine, would carry the grenades or the submachine-gun chargers, this woman who tomorrow would be outraged, violated, tortured, could not put herself back into her former state of mind and relive her behaviour of the past; this woman who was writing the heroic pages of Algerian history was, in so doing, bursting the bounds of the narrow in which she had lived without responsibility, and was at the same time participating in the destruction of colonialism and in the birth of a new woman. — Frantz Fanon

The path of the spiritual revolutionary is a long-term and gradual journey toward awakening. If you are looking for a quick fix or easy salvation, turn back now, plug back into the matrix, and enjoy your delusional existence. This is a path for rebels, malcontents, and truth seekers. The wisdom and compassion of the Buddha is available to us all, but the journey to freedom is arduous. It will take a steadfast commitment to truth and, at times, counterinstinctual action. You have at your disposal — Noah Levine

The tragic right is a condition of life, a condition in which the human personality is able to flower and realize itself. The wrong is the condition which suppresses man, perverts the flowing out of his love and creative instinct. Tragedy enlightens-and it must, in that it points the heroic finger at the enemy of man's freedom. The thrust for freedom is the quality in tragedy which exalts. The revolutionary questioning of the stable environment is what terrifies. — Arthur Miller

True revolutionary change begins by first challenging yourself -- not the world. Until you own your story and the complexities of your experience, no matter how much you may strain against it, you will still be enslaved -- if not by your oppressor, by your past. — Sil Lai Abrams

Today I have lost one of my dearest friends, England one of her greatest men. Keith Joseph understood that it was necessary to win again the intellectual argument for freedom, and that to do this we must start from first principles. He was in many ways an unlikely revolutionary. For all his towering intellect, he was deeply humble. He spoke out boldly, however hostile the audience. Yet he hated to give offence. Above all, his integrity shone out in everything he said and did. His best memorial lies in the younger generations of politicians whom he inspired. But for me he is irreplaceable. — Margaret Thatcher

Not for the first time, I longed to tell someone that I was one of them, a sympathizer with the Left, a revolutionary fighting for peace, equality, democracy, freedom, and independence, all the noble things my people had died for and I had hid for. — Viet Thanh Nguyen

Long life is not necessary to do some thing great and extra ordinary
bagat singh proved it..
real indian hero with help of his revolutionary brothers
hats off to all of them ...
they fought for freedom ,to breath with there family,
but after 66 years of independence
I my self feel we slaved by our government only ...
we need war against them ... — Palash

A revolutionary war of freedom, he said" Hiawatha responded crisply, "and I agree ... does Superman ever fly to Thailand and free the kids slaving in the sweat shops owned by the rich corporations? No, he doesn't. Does Batman ever break into prison and free the wrongfully convicted and over sentenced black man whose rights were trampled on when he was incarcerated? No, he doesn't. Does Spider man ever break into a house in suburbia and beat up the abusive and violent husband? No, he doesn't."
"Do the Fantastic Four ever fly out to third world countries and defend the rights of the poor civilians against greedy American corporations? No, they don't," said the Pirate, not to be outdone.
"They're all just tools used by the state to maintain the status quo," said Hiawatha. — Arun D. Ellis

Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth
more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, careless of the well-tried wisdom of the ages. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid ... Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man. — Bertrand Russell

Georgian England was very radical; there were all these new revolutionary ideas, and I think women had more freedom than they did later on. — Marion Bailey

The world is not ready for some people when they show up, but that shouldn't stop anyone. — Ashly Lorenzana

Introducing a technology is not a neutral act
it is profoundly revolutionary. If you present a new technology to the world you are effectively legislating a change in the way we all live. You are changing society, not some vague democratic process. The individuals who are driven to use that technology by the disparities of wealth and power it creates do not have a real choice in the matter. So the idea that we are giving people more freedom by developing technologies and then simply making them available is a dangerous illusion. — Karl Schroeder

After visits to several Communist countries (USSR, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Slovenia, East Germany, Vietnam, China, Cuba), I feel strongly that most "revolutionary" types around the world don't realize the importance of freedom of the press and the air, a right to peaceably assemble and discuss anything, including the dangers of such discussions. — Pete Seeger

Without Revolutionary theory, there can be no Revolutionary Movement. — Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

The human beings at the helm of the new nation [USA], whatever their limitations [slave owners, anti-democracy], were truly revolutionary. The theory of liberty born in that era, the seed of the idea, was perfect.
More important, the idea itself carried within it the moral power to correct the contradictions in its execution that were obvious from the very birth of the new nation. — Naomi Wolf

What do those who struggle against power do when they seize power? What does the revolutionary do when the revolution triumphs? Why do those who call for independence and freedom take away the independence and freedom of others? And is it sane or insane to believe, as so many around us apparently do, in nothing? We can only answer these questions for ourselves. Our life and our death have taught us always to sympathize with the undesirables among the undesirables. Thus magnetized by experience, our compass continually points toward those who suffer. — Viet Thanh Nguyen

The democracy of to-day hold the liberty of one man to be absolutely nothing when in conflict with another man's right of property...
This is a world of compensations; and he 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, can not long retain it.
All honor to Jefferson - to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so embalm it there, that to-day, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of re-appearing tyranny and oppression. Your obedient Servant,
[Abraham Lincoln]
April 6, 1859, in a letter to MA State Rep Henry L. Pierce
Springfield, Ill. — Abraham Lincoln

And, when the revolutionary cries that he is fighting for 'freedom', be sure to go running away from him just as fast as you can, for you can be damned certain he's fighting for the freedom to tell you what to do. — Neal Asher

Growing up in the '50s and being in the '60s, in that revolutionary time space, I thought freedom was what I was looking for. Slowly but surely, it became clear that the last thing I was interested in was freedom. Because if you're going to be free, you have to be free from something. — Anthony Braxton

The proposal to quit voting is basically revolutionary; it amounts to a shifting of power from one group to another, which is the essence of revolution. As soon as the nonvoting movement got up steam, the politicians would most assuredly start a counterrevolution. Measures to enforce voting would be instituted; fines would be imposed for violations, and prison sentences would be meted out to repeaters. — Frank Chodorov

Dr. Sun Yat-sen, Father of the Republic, made it his great aim in his revolutionary leadership to secure freedom and equality of status for China among the nations of the world. — Chiang Kai-shek

In an ironic sense, Karl Marx was right. We are witnessing today a great revolutionary crisis, a crisis where the demands of the economic order are conflicting directly with those of the political order. But the crisis is happening not in the ... West, but in the home of Marxism-Leninism, the Soviet Union. It is the Soviet Union that runs against the tide of history by denying human freedom and human dignity to its citizens. — Ronald Reagan

I tell you the truth: if I lived in a country where there was no day appointed for elections, I would become a revolutionary, if not a terrorist. And that is because I love liberty too much; without liberty a man is not a man. He has no dignity. — Silvio Berlusconi

It is true that freedom, when it is made up principally of privileges, insults labor and separates it from culture. But freedom is not made up principally of privileges; it is made up especially of duties. And the moment each of us tries to give freedom's duties precedence over its privileges, freedom joins together labor and culture and sets in motion the only force that can effectively serve justice. The rule of our action, the secret of our resistance can be easily stated: everything that humiliates labor also humiliates the intelligence, and vice versa. And the revolutionary struggle, the centuries-old straining toward liberation can be defined first of all as a double and constant rejection of humiliation. — Albert Camus

The conservative thinks of political policies as intended to preserve order, justice, and freedom. The ideologue, on the contrary, thinks of politics as a revolutionary instrument for transforming society and even transforming human nature. In his march toward Utopia, the ideologue is merciless. — Russell Kirk

Christianity brought something new and revolutionary: freedom and unconditional dignity for each individual, regardless of his religion, culture or nationality. But the East and the West have parted ways since the Crusades. — Walter Kasper

Radical or revolutionary consciousness . . . is the perception of oneself as unfree, as oppressed - and finally it is the discovery of oneself as one of the oppressed who must unite to transform the objective conditions of their existence in order to resolve the contradiction between potentiality and actuality. Revolutionary consciousness leads to the struggle for one's own freedom in unity with others who share the burden of oppression. — Greg Calvert

I ask you ... to adopt the principles proclaimed by yourselves, by your revolutionary fathers, and by the old bell in Independence Hall ... — Frederick Douglass

I had a right to my own political opinions. I am a Southern woman, born with Revolutionary blood in my veins. Freedom of speech and of thought were my birthright, guaranteed, signed and sealed by the blood of our fathers. — Rose O'Neal Greenhow

The whiteness celebrated in Paris is Burning is not just any old brand of whiteness but rather that brutal imperial ruling-class capitalist patriarchal whiteness that presents itself -its way of life- as the only meaningful life there is. What could be more reassuring to a white public fearful that marginalized disenfranchised black folks might rise any day now make revolutionary black liberation struggle a reality than a documentary affirming that colonized, victimized, exploited black folks, are all too willing to be complicit in perpetuating the fantasy that ruling-class white culture is the quintessential site of unrestricted joy, freedom, power and pleasure. — Bell Hooks

Slavery all day,
and then, suddenly, by nightfall- freedom! — Margarita Engle

What makes revolutionary thought unique is its clarity and dignity, and its clear grasp of freedom and justice: simple, clear words that are understood without the need for any help from elite writers or thinkers. — Nawal El Saadawi

Equality has a built-in revolutionary force lacking in such ideas as justice or liberty. For once the ideal of equality becomes uppermost, it can become insatiable in its demands.
It is possible to conceive of human beings conceding that they have enough freedom or justice in a social order; it is not possible to imagine them ever declaring they have enough equality-once, that is, equality becomes a cornerstone of national policy. In this respect it resembles some of the religious ideals or passions that offer, just by virtue of the impossibility of ever giving them adequate representation in the actual world, almost unlimited potentialities for continuous onslaught against institutions. — Robert A. Nisbet