J. R. R. Tolkien Quotes

If you tie a man's hands there is nothing moral about his not committing murder.

Coercion, after all, merely captures man. Freedom captivates him.

With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men's labor ... Each of the things is, by the respective party, called by two different and incompatible names—liberty and tyranny.

You can't try to keep someone against their will, or it's difficult to get them to listen or have the right mentality.

This is not supposed to be a fascist country, where you are forced to do things you don't want to do. This is a free country.

Force works on servile natures, not the free.

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.

If Truth is taken away from us, then Right and Wrong are taken from us as well. If we don't know Right and Wrong, then we can't, we won't control ourselves, but will look to someone else to bring order through brute force and raw power. We will be controlled by a tyrant, and we will no longer be free.

To choose evil is to choose freedom, emancipation from all restraint.

As long as you're not hurting anyone, your choices are your choices.

No government on earth can make men, who have realized freedom in their hearts, salute against their will.

For the power of Man to make himself what he pleases means... the power of some men to make other men what THEY please.

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

Freedom requires responsibility to choose who we are above and beyond our immediate impulses, needs, and social pressures, so that we can genuinely express the type of person we want to be, live the life we truly want to live, leave the legacy we desire.

But restraint is the only one sort of control, and absence of restraint isn't freedom. It's not control that's lacking when one feels 'free', but the objectionable control of force.

There has never been a slave who did not choose to be a slave. Their choice may be between bondage and death, but the choice is always there.

I am free to choose my own actions. Indeed, like everyone else, I must be so. A good act that is compelled is not goodness at all, but merely force.

To many people, free will is a license to rebel not against what is unjust or hard in life but against what is best for them and true.

It would bother me if a judge told me how I had to believe.

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

There is a secret pride in every human heart that revolts at tyranny. You may order and drive an individual, but you cannot make him respect you.

One doesn't want one's identity coerced.

I believe in the freedom of choice in both life and death.

When liberty is taken away by force it can be restored by force. When it is relinquished voluntarily by default it can never be recovered.

One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.