Quotations

“The power of the ballot we need in sheer self-defense,—else what shall save us from a second slavery?”

Defending political participation as essential protection against renewed oppression. · The Souls of Black Folk, 1903

“The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife,—this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self.”

Framing liberation as the achievement of an undivided and fully recognised self. · The Souls of Black Folk, 1903

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois

“My own mind is my own church.”

Expressing religious independence and the authority of individual conscience · The Age of Reason

Thomas Paine

“The greatest luxury in life is to be able to do what you like, when you like, and how you like.”

Celebrating independence and the freedom to shape one’s own life · Commonly attributed remark

Robert Cunninghame-Graham

“Freedom of thought is the breath of life for any true poet.”

Original: حرية الفكر هي هواء الحياة لكل شاعر حقيقي — A passionate defense of artistic liberty · Attributed court defense (Arabic)

Abu Nuwas

“Solitude is sweet only when you choose it, not when it is imposed.”

Original: الوحدة عذبة فقط عندما تختارها، لا عندما تُفرض عليك — Distinguishes between independence and isolation · Attributed reflection (Arabic)

Abu Nuwas

“Poetry is the sanctuary of the free-spirited and the record of human emotions.”

Original: الشعر ملاذ الأحرار وسجل الوجدان — A poetic reflection on liberty and raw emotion · Attributed literary commentary (Arabic)

Abu Nuwas

“Liberty consists in the power of doing that which is permitted by the laws.”

Framing true freedom within the structure of reason and legal order · Prose reflections on government and liberty

Abraham Cowley

“To forgive is to liberate a prisoner and discover that the prisoner was yourself.”

Original: Å tilgi er å sette en fange fri og oppdage at fangen var deg selv. — Highlights the profound personal healing that comes through forgiveness · Moral reflection (Norwegian)

Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson

“Freedom is not a gift that one receives; it is a right that one must constantly defend.”

Original: Frihet er ikke en gave man mottar; det er en rett man uavbrutt må forsvare. — A powerful reminder of the ongoing duty required to preserve liberty · Political speech (Norwegian)

Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson

“Nothing can take from us that run from Ostend to Ghent.”

Celebrating an exhilarating moment of freedom and movement amid the uncertainty of war. · A Journal of Impressions in Belgium, September 1914

May (Julian) Sinclair

“Tyranny itself is to me a word less odious than toleration.”

Toleration as a condescending form of oppression · Conversation / essay (as commonly attributed)

Walter Savage Landor

“I would recommend a free commerce both of matter and mind.”

Freedom of trade and thought · Conversation / essay (as commonly attributed)

Walter Savage Landor

“It's punishment to be compelled to do what one doesn't wish.”

A simple observation on the nature of obligation and freedom · Conversation or diary (commonly attributed)

Alice Dunbar Nelson

“Whitman fought for the modern point of view which has discarded chastity as the perverted ideal of Asiatic mysticism.”

Shows Masters's admiration for Whitman's challenge to inherited conventions surrounding the body and sexuality · Whitman

Edgar Lee Masters

“To band together, unite or form groups in order to write verse or produce any kind of art is absurd, disagreeable and dangerous to the development of personality.”

Original: Agregarse, unirse, agruparse para escribir versos o producir cualquier género de arte es absurdo, antipático y peligroso para el desarrollo de la personalidad. — Warning that artistic movements can suppress individual creative identity · Article, Los jóvenes del Ultra, 1919 (Spanish)

Manuel Machado

“I shall go on committing Gallicisms whenever they suit me, if they make me more expressive and clear.”

Original: Seguiré cometiendo galicismos siempre que me acomode para ser más expresivo y claro. — Putting clarity and expressive power before strict linguistic convention · Preface, La guerra literaria (Spanish)

Manuel Machado

“I decline to go on sticking to the convention which has hitherto forced me to suppress the truth.”

Declaring his intention to speak openly despite prevailing convention · The Autobiography of Lord Alfred Douglas, 1929

Alfred Douglas

“We shall need to invent no pretexts for studying this subject or that.”

Rejecting the demand that every intellectual pursuit justify itself practically · Introductory Lecture, University College London, 1892

A.E.Housman

“Every man and woman is free to accept or deny life—to accept or reject this questionable gift—this thistle.”

Presenting engagement with life as a difficult but fundamental act of choice · Essay, Notes on Thought and Vision

Hilda Doolittle

“I hated gardens where gaudy flowers were trained in rows but loved the wild things of change and circumstance.”

Prefers spontaneous natural beauty to imposed order · Autobiographical letter to Lewis Chase, 6 June 1917

Francis Ledwidge

“I loved all wandering people and things and several times tried to become part of a gypsy caravan.”

Reveals an early attraction to wandering lives and freedom · Autobiographical letter to Lewis Chase, 6 June 1917

Francis Ledwidge

“Negro poetic expression hovers for the moment, pardonably perhaps, over the race problem, but its highest allegiance is to Poetry—it must soar.”

Arguing that poetry can arise from social struggle while aspiring beyond immediate circumstance · Essay, The Negro in American Literature

William Stanley Braithwaite

“Only gradually through the dull purgatory of the Age of Discussion, has Negro life eventually issued forth to an Age of Expression.”

Describing the movement from being discussed by others towards creative self-expression · Essay, The Negro in American Literature

William Stanley Braithwaite

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Topic: Freedom