Walter Kaufmann Quotes

Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can't ride you unless your back is bent.

Be free, and live life fully.

I made my own assessment of my life, and I began to live it. That was freedom.

Education liberates a woman.

But the whole point of liberation is that you get out. Restructure your life. Act by yourself.

Negative freedom is freedom from - freedom from oppression, whether it's a colonial power or addiction to alcohol oppressing you. You need to be freed from negative freedom. Positive freedom is freedom for, freedom to be. And that's what's routinely ignored today.

I made a vow to myself while I was a hostage that if I were lucky enough to live and to get out of Somalia, I would do something meaningful with my life - and specifically something that would be meaningful in the country where I'd lost my freedom.

I think one of the greatest gifts you can give to someone is just access to the possibility of freedom that you don't have to be totally depressed and enslaved by your own environment.

If you don't want to be a slave, stop acting like a slave.

To be free is to have achieved your life.

More having to do whatever anybody said you had to do. I couldn't really do anything on my own. But as I got older and then came to America and then Grace became my name, it somehow freed me. All of a sudden, I can be this other person.

My story is a freedom song of struggle. It is about finding one's purpose, how to overcome fear and to stand up for causes bigger than one's self.

Some books leave us free and some books make us free.

Being independent opens the doors to so many other things for you.

The choice is yours: Do you want to exist, or do you want to live?

You have to start looking in the mirror and saying, 'this is who I am, this is what I am and this is how I'm going to be' and start demanding more from yourself. In spite of everything that this system has thrown at us, we still have to live at the end of the day. We still have to find purpose and find ways to prosper and make a profit so you have to find ways to stand on your own two feet and fulfill your potential as a black man or black woman on this planet no matter how marginalized or oppressed you may be.

Subjection of any kind and in any place is beneath the dignity of man ... the highest joy is to fight by the side of those who for any reason of their own making or ours, are unable to develop to full human stature.

We gain internal freedom through external actions.

I am not yet born; O fill me with strength against those who would freeze my humanity.

As long as you keep a person down, some part of you has to be down there to hold him down, so it means you cannot soar as you otherwise might.

The company Liberated People represents just not liberation of different nations around the world; it can be special liberation days. It can be what the company represents and helps highlight someone's personal liberation date.

I was kind of raised with the suggestion that I had a duty to do; that life was real, life was earnest. And I hated that, actually. I needed to be liberated, to be told that I could live the life that I wanted to live; that I didn't need a job, or to be shouted at; that I could be myself; that I could be happy.

Death is better than slavery.

A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.

People have to liberate themselves, because liberation is not a single act. It's a question of eternal vigilance. Otherwise, you'll just become enslaved by someone else.