Eric Foner Quotes

The demand for individual freedom leads us to different realms, and it enables us to participate in social events.

Liberty is not collective. It is personal.

We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.

I believe that all people aspire to be free.

The appeal of conservatism is the mutuality it asserts between individual and political freedom, its beautiful idea of a free man in a free society. And it offers minorities the one thing they can never get from liberalism: human rather than racial dignity.

Our lives are bound by physical limits, familial ties, political conditions, and geographical restrictions. Individual freedom takes us beyond them all.

Freedom does not mean being free of something, but to be free to do something.

Liberty means that a man is recognized as free and treated as free by those who surround him.

The most important thing in this world is liberty. More important than food or clothes - more important than gold or houses or lands - more important than art or science - more important than all religions, is the liberty of man.

For one to be free there must be at least two.

What a free society offers to the individual is much more than what he would be able to do if only he were free.

Democracy means doing whatever you want without asking permission of anybody but your boss, your doctor, your lawyer, your landlord, your bank, your city, your state and federal authorities, and your wife and children.

You were born free by accident. You live free by choice. To die free is your responsibility.

It is for men to choose whether they will govern themselves or be governed.

If an American was condemned to confine his activity to his own affairs, he would be robbed of one half of his existence.

To be free is better than to be unfree – always. Any politician who suggests the opposite should be treated as suspect.

The only conception of freedom I can have is that of the prisoner or the individual in the midst of the State. The only one I know is freedom of thought and action.

Personal liberty is the paramount essential to human dignity and human happiness.

Just as man must have liberty to think and speak, so he must have liberty in food, dress, and marriage, and in every other thing, so long as he does not injure others.

I don't like people telling me what to do, or trying to MAKE me write songs.

Liberty means more to me than life itself.

I could do whatever I wanted, whether people liked it or not.

Freedom is the emancipation from the arbitrary rule of other men.

What then is freedom? The power to live as one wishes.

Since no one but you can know what's best for you, government control can't make your life better.