Ralph Waldo Emerson Freedom Quotations

The desire of gold is not for gold. It is for the means of freedom and benefit.

Only by obedience to his genius; only by the freest activity in the way constitutional to him, does an angel seem to arise beforea man, and lead him by the hand out of all the wards of the prison.

The revelation of thought takes men out of servitude into freedom.

For what avail the plough or sail, or land or life, if freedom fail?

Though we love goodness and not stealing, yet also we love freedom and not preaching.

Wild liberty breeds iron conscience; natures with great impulses have great resources, and return from far.

Behind every individual closes organization; before him opens liberty,--the Better, the Best. The first and worse races are dead.The second and imperfect races are dying out, or remain for the maturing of the higher. In the latest race, in man, every generosity, every new perception, the love and praise he extorts from his fellows, are certificates of advance out of fate into freedom.

Wild liberty develops iron conscience. Want of liberty, by strengthening law and decorum, stupefies conscience.

Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors.

If you put a chain around the neck of a slave, the other end fastens itself around your own.

My angel,-his name is Freedom,- Choose him to be your king; He shall cut pathways east and west, And fend you with his wing.

We grant no dukedoms to the few, We hold like rights and shall; Equal on Sunday in the pew, On Monday in the mall. For what avail the plough or sail, Or land, or life, if freedom fail?

So far as a person thinks; they are free.

Liberty is slow fruit. It is never cheap; it is made difficult because freedom is the accomplishment and perfectness of man.

If you cannot be free be as free as you can.

A part of fate is the freedom of man. Forever wells up the impulse of choosing and acting in his soul.