Freedom

All struggles against oppression in the modern woeld begin by redefining what had previously been consideered private, non-public and non-political issues as matters of public concern, as issues of justice, as sites of power.

Democracy is a suggestion box for slaves.

You can't take the sky from me.

I have not encouraged talk about man’s holy privacy, although I do respect and defend man’s right to have it.

Ah, if he had ever been a slave he would have known how difficult it was to trust white men.

As long as a man had the courage to reject what society told him to do, he could live life on his own terms. To what end? To be free. But free to what end? To read books, to write books, to think.

I just wondered what a thing it would be...If overnight everything you owe anything to, justice, or love, had really gone away. Free.It would be...Heartless terror. Yes. Terrible, and...Very great. To shed your skin, every old skin, one by one and then walk away, unemcumbered, into the morning.

All stories interest me, and some haunt me until I end up writing them. Certain themes keep coming up: justice, loyalty, violence, death, political and social issues, freedom.

Freedom means the opportunity to be what we never thought we would be.

We’re wasting our time trying to deal with Baghdad, It’s better to call for independence today.

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

The arc of American history almost inevitably moves toward freedom. Whether it's Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation, the expansion of women's rights or, now, gay rights, I think there is an almost-inevitable march toward greater civil liberties.

The love of liberty is the love of others the love of power is the love of ourselves.

Tyranny and anarchy are alike incompatible with freedom security and the enjoyment of opportunity.

Fly free with me.

This is the best reason to learn history: not in order to predict the future, but to free yourself of the past and imagine alternative destinies. Of course this is not total freedom - we cannot avoid being shaped by the past. But some freedom is better than none.

As a boy, the very words 'Liberty Bell' and 'Independence Hall' fired my imagination and made a profound and lasting impression on my mind. Throughout my struggle to secure national freedom for China, I have continuously dreamed of the day when she would assume the full stature of an independent, democratic nation.

True republicanism is the sovereignty of the people. There are natural and imprescriptible rights which an entire nation has no right to violate.

All authority belongs to the people.

The Constitution itself, the DNA of the country, can be altered by the collective will of the people, making America a self-evolving and self-writing program.