Top 100 Quotes on Liberty (2025 Update)

1. “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

— Thomas Jefferson

Also featured in: Opportunity Quotes, Freedom Quotes, Powerful Quotes, Important Quotes

2. “Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.”

— Henry David Thoreau

Also featured in: Resistance Quotes

3. “The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.”

— Charlie Chaplin

Also featured in: Epic Quotes

4. “As government expands, liberty contracts.”

— Ronald Reagan

5. “If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth.”

— Ronald Reagan

6. “I am interested in politics only in order to secure and protect freedom.”

— Ayn Rand

7. “Freedom: To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing.”

— Ayn Rand

8. “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me: I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

— Emma Lazarus

Also featured in: Acceptance Quotes, Helping Quotes, Quotes About People, Moving Quotes, Diversity Quotes

9. “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

— Benjamin Franklin

Also featured in: Giving Up Quotes, Peace Quotes, Freedom Quotes, History Quotes

10. “The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.”

— Aung San Suu Kyi

Also featured in: Overcoming Fear Quotes, Rights Quotes

11. “Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love.”

— Khalil Gibran

Also featured in: Meaning Quotes, Humanism Quotes, Truth Quotes, Love Is Quotes

12. “I was not designed to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest.”

— Henry David Thoreau

Also featured in: Willpower Quotes, Resistance Quotes, Individuality Quotes

13. “Liberties aren’t given, they are taken.”

— Aldous Huxley

14. “I predict future happiness for Americans, if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.”

— Thomas Jefferson

15. “Today as always, men fall into two groups: slaves and free men. Whoever does not have two-thirds of his day for himself, is a slave, whatever he may be: a statesman, a businessman, an official, or a scholar.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

16. “Man is free at the moment he wishes to be.”

— Voltaire

17. “Get up, stand up, Stand up for your rights. Get up, stand up, Don’t give up the fight.”

— Bob Marley

Also featured in: Music Quotes, Resistance Quotes, Struggle Quotes, Being Strong Quotes

18. “Freedom of speech and thought matters, especially when it is speech and thought with which we disagree. The moment the majority decides to destroy people for engaging in thought it dislikes, thought crime becomes a reality.”

— Ben Shapiro

19. “Give me liberty or give me death.”

— Patrick Henry

Also featured in: Freedom Quotes, Hero Quotes, History Quotes

20. “Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains. Those who think themselves the masters of others are indeed greater slaves than they.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Also featured in: Hard Hitting Quotes, Resistance Quotes

21. “When freedom is outlawed, only outlaws will be free.”

— Tom Robbins

22. “I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.”

— Thomas Jefferson

23. “So long as you do not achieve social liberty, whatever freedom is provided by the law is of no avail to you.”

— B.R. Ambedkar

24. “Every generation needs a new revolution.”

— Thomas Jefferson

25. “Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.”

— Rosa Luxemburg

Also featured in: Resistance Quotes

26. “This is the highest wisdom that I own; freedom and life are earned by those alone who conquer them each day anew.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

27. “Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.”

— Ayn Rand

Also featured in: Quotes About Civilization

28. “The equal rights of man, and the happiness of every individual, are now acknowledged to be the only legitimate objects of government.”

— Thomas Jefferson

Also featured in: Principles And Laws, Democracy Quotes

29. “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”

— George Orwell

Also featured in: Hard Hitting Quotes, Truth Quotes, Freedom Quotes

30. “Afoot and lighthearted I take to the open road, healthy, free, the world before me.”

— Walt Whitman

Also featured in: Cheer Quotes, Carpe Diem Quotes, Path Quotes

31. “Dare to think for yourself.”

— Voltaire

Also featured in: Enlightenment Quotes, Boldness Quotes, Intelligence Quotes

32. “I would rather be a rebel than a slave.”

— Emmeline Pankhurst

Also featured in: Resistance Quotes, Strong Women Quotes, Women Empowerment Quotes

33. “As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.”

— Abraham Lincoln

Also featured in: Past Quotes, Democracy Quotes

34. “Freedom of the press is not just important to democracy, it is democracy.”

— Walter Cronkite

Also featured in: Democracy Quotes

35. “I have never believed that man’s freedom consisted in doing what he wants, but rather in never doing what he does not want to do.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

36. “I’m not a number, I’m a free man.”

— Patrick McGoohan

Also featured in: Resistance Quotes

37. “Free software’ is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of ‘free’ as in ‘free speech,’ not as in ‘free beer’.”

— Richard Stallman

Also featured in: IT Quotes

38. “Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.”

— Jerry Pournelle

39. “I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”

— Ayn Rand

Also featured in: Integrity Quotes, Relationship Quotes, Values Quotes, Life Philosophy Quotes

40. “Birds make great sky-circles of their freedom. How do they learn it? They fall and falling, they’re given wings.”

— Rumi

Also featured in: Poetry Quotes

41. “Insurrection is the most sacred of rights and the most indispensable of duties.”

— Marquis de Lafayette

Also featured in: Resistance Quotes, Rights Quotes

42. “We are forever indebted to those who have given their lives that we might be free.”

— Ronald Reagan

Also featured in: Service Quotes, Military Quotes, Grateful Quotes

43. “Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

— Abraham Lincoln

Also featured in: Epic Quotes, History Quotes, Government Quotes

44. “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

— S.G. Tallentyre

Also featured in: Democracy Quotes

45. “I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.”

— John Adams

Also featured in: Philosophy Quotes

46. “They may kill me, but they cannot kill my ideas. They can crush my body, but they will not be able to crush my spirit.”

— Bhagat Singh

Also featured in: Willpower Quotes, Obstacles Quotes, Resistance Quotes, Grit Quotes

47. “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed; We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

Also featured in: Make A Difference Quotes, Changing the World Quotes, Moving Quotes, Justice Quotes

48. “I am the dream and the hope of the slave.”

— Maya Angelou

Also featured in: Resistance Quotes, Legacy Quotes, Culture Quotes, Diversity Quotes

49. “The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.”

— Ayn Rand

Also featured in: Focus Quotes, Empowering Quotes, Deep Quotes, Freedom Quotes

50. “I have no time to waste on this planet being told what to do by those who think that God has given them instructions.”

— Christopher Hitchens

Also featured in: Hard Hitting Quotes, Doubt Quotes, Rejection Quotes