Liberty, according to my metaphysics is a self-determining power in an intellectual agent. It implies thought and choice and power.
~ John Adams

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
~ John Adams

When people talk of the freedom of writing, speaking or thinking I cannot choose but laugh. No such thing ever existed. No such thing now exists; but I hope it will exist. But it must be hundreds of years after you and I shall write and speak no more.
~ John Adams

Yesterday the greatest question was decided which ever was debated in America; and a greater perhaps never was, nor will be, decided among men. A resolution was passed without one dissenting colony, ''that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States.''
~ John Adams

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

When we were told that by freedom we understood free enterprise, we did very little to dispel this monstrous falsehood. Wealth and economic well-being, we have asserted, are the fruits of freedom, while we should have been the first to know that this kind of ''happiness'' has been an unmixed blessing only in this country, and it is a minor blessing compared with the truly political freedoms, such as freedom of speech and thought, of assembly and association, even under the best conditions.
~ Hannah Arendt

Democracy arose from men's thinking that if they are equal in any respect, they are equal absolutely.
~ Aristotle

Within yourself deliverance must be searched for, because each man makes his own prison.
~ Sir Edwin Arnold

A nation which makes the final sacrifice for life and freedom does not get beaten.
~ Kemal Atatnrk

He that is kind is free, though he is a slave; he that is evil is a slave, though he be a king.
~ St. Augustine

The fly that touches honey cannot use it's wings; so too the soul that clings to spiritual sweetness ruins it's freedom and hinders contemplation.
~ Ghose Aurobindo

Any honest examination of the national life proves how far we are from the standard of human freedom with which we began. The recovery of this standard demands of everyone who loves this country a hard look at himself, for the greatest achievements must begin somewhere, and they always begin with the person. If we are not capable of this examination, we may yet become one of the most distinguished and monumental failures in the history of nations.
~ James Baldwin

The oppression of any people for opinion's sake has rarely had any other effect than to fix those opinions deeper, and render them more important.
~ Hosea Ballou

Freedom all solace to man gives: He lives at ease that freely lives.
~ John Barbour

What a curious phenomenon it is that you can get men to die for the liberty of the world who will not make the little sacrifice that is needed to free themselves from their own individual bondage.
~ Bruce Barton

In the last analysis, our only freedom is the freedom to discipline ourselves.
~ Bernard M. Baruch

The greatest blessing of our democracy is freedom. But in the last analysis, our only freedom is the freedom to discipline ourselves.
~ Bernard M. Baruch

As for freedom, it will soon cease to exist in any shape or form. Living will depend upon absolute obedience to a strict set of arrangements, which it will no longer be possible to transgress. The air traveler is not free. In the future, life's passengers will be even less so: they will travel through their lives fastened to their (corporate) seats.
~ Jean Baudrillard

True obedience is true freedom.
~ Henry Ward Beecher

There are always risks in freedom. The only risk in bondage is breaking free.
~ Gita Bellin