This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Muriel James and Dorothy Jongeward
It takes courage to experience the freedom that comes with autonomy, courage to accept intimacy and directly encounter other persons, courage to take a stand in an unpopular cause, courage to choose authenticity over approval and to choose it again and again, courage to accept the responsibility for your own choices, and, indeed, courage to be the unique person you really are.
Authenticity | Cause | Courage | Experience | Freedom | Responsibility | Unique | Approval |
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
All theory is against the freedom of the will; all experience for it.
Experience | Freedom | Will |
T. E. Hulme, fully Thomas Ernest Hulme
The process of evolution can only be described as the gradual insertion of more and more freedom into matter.
Karl Jaspers, fully Karl Theodor Jaspers
Man is always something more than what he knows of himself. He is not what he is simply once for all, but is a process; he is not merely an extant life, but is, within that life, endowed with possibilities through the freedom he possesses to make of himself what he will by the activities on which he decides.
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
While the State exists, there can be no freedom. When there is freedom there will be no State.
Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze
For governing a country well thee is nothing better than moderation. The mark of a moderate man is freedom from his own ideas. Tolerant like the sky, all-pervading like sunlight, firm like a mountain, supple like a tree in the wind, he has no destination in view and makes use of anything life happens to bring his way. Nothing is impossible for him. Because he has let go, he can care for the people’s welfare as a mother cares for her child.
Better | Care | Freedom | Ideas | Life | Life | Man | Moderation | Mother | Nothing | People |
Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung
Without freedom there can be no morality.
Persuasion that property and freedom are inseparably connected, and that economic leveling is not economic progress. Separate property from private possession, and liberty is erased.
Freedom | Liberty | Persuasion | Progress | Property |
We should never forget that everything Hitler did in German was “legal” and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was “illegal.”
Freedom |
José Martí, fully José Julián Martí Pérez
The dagger plunged in the name of Freedom is plunged into the breast of Freedom.
Freedom |
We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that his nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Birth | Earth | Freedom | God | Government | People | Government |
Iris Murdoch, aka Dame Jean Iris Murdoch
Freedom is not choosing; that is merely the move that we make when all is already lost. Freedom is knowing and understanding and respecting things quite other than ourselves.
Freedom | Knowing | Understanding |
Acceptance of death is acceptance of freedom – freedom to live each day with clarity and courage… If we know we are going to die, all danger disappears. There is less fear about what can go wrong, because the worst that can possibly go wrong – our own death – is completely assured. All there is left to do is live, and live well.
Acceptance | Courage | Danger | Day | Death | Fear | Freedom | Wrong | Danger |
We consider progress as legitimate only when it reinforces, rather than undermines, freedom and democracy.
Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
How is freedom measured, in individuals as in nations? By the resistance which has to be overcome.
Simply to be a human being is to be a futurist of sorts. For human freedom is largely a matter of imaging alternative futures and then choosing among them.
Freedom |