Khalil Gibran Quotes

Rebellion! the very word is a confession; an avowal of tyranny, outrage, and oppression. It is taken from the despot's code, and has no terror for others than slavish souls.

Rather die freemen than live to be the slaves.

The Slavs like liberty; they cannot bear unlimited rulers, and are not easily brought to submission

Freedom had been hunted round the globe; reason was considered as rebellion; and the slavery of fear had made men afraid to think. But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing.

You can't shut me up with your cynicism. I warn you- you must realize in time that you are not a mighty despot before whom everyone trembles. I do not tremble before you, I will fight you if you force me to it.

Gentlemen, you may soon have the alternative to live as slaves or die as free men

Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.

The first slave to read and write was the first to run away.

A thousand men enslaved fear one beast free.

I would rather be a rebel than a slave.

It is better to sacrifice everything than to live in slavery!

It is just as difficult and dangerous to try to free a people that wants to remain servile as it is to enslave a people that wants to remain free.

There are two kinds of rebellion. The first is one in which the slave demands something that the tyrant has got. The second is one in which he demands something that the tyrant has not got.

Where all your rights become only an accumulated wrong; where men must beg with bated breath for leave to subsist in their own land, to think their own thoughts, to sing their own songs, to garner the fruits of their own labours...then surely it is a braver, a saner and a truer thing, to be a rebel in act and deed against such circumstances as these than tamely to accept it as the natural lot of men.

We do not want the peace of slaves nor the peace of the grave.

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

Texas has yet to learn submission to any oppression, come from what source it may.

If you have security, you can rebel; if you don't, you hold on to any scraps of it that you have.

Death is better than slavery.

I'm not interested in being commodified. I'm not into being sold. I'm not a slave.

Peace secured by slavish submission is not peace.

My forebears refused to cut the sugar cane for plantation owners, and I am recognisably a product of that background.

In that first blow to the deaf walls of those who have everything, the blood of our people, our blood, ran generously to wash away injustice. To live, we die. Our dead once again walked the way of truth. Our hope was fertilized with mud and blood.

The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.

Unless one is inordinately fond of subordination, one is always at war.