Fighting for Freedom Quotes

Better to die on your feet than live on your knees.

If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may be even a worse fate, you may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.

I'd rather die standing than live on my knees.

In time of revolution, with perseverance and courage, a soldier should think nothing impossible.

I was a working class Jewish girl. In my girlhood, anti-Semitism was a daily fact of life in Detroit. I did not come from people who had many options in their lives or many choices open to them. I was a girl in a family in which women were, as in society at large, very much second-class citizens. I did not see why I should accept these forced limitations without a fight. Being free to make my own choices thus became very important to me at an early age.

When time and need require, we should resist with all our might, and prefer death to slavery and disgrace.

I am not ready to give up this country without a fight.

Better that we should die fighting than be outraged and dishonored... Better to die than to live in slavery.

Liberty is never fully paid off, and to be deserving of it, one must be willing to fight for it on the battlefield, in the halls of Congress, by involving yourselves in your communities. Such a struggle is not a burden, it is a privilege.

I would rather be a rebel than a slave.

All I ask is equal freedom. When it is denied, as it always is, I take it anyhow.

So keep fighting for freedom and justice, beloveds.

If it is right for men to fight for their freedom, and God knows what the human race would be like today if men had not, since time began, fought for their freedom, then it is right for women to fight for their freedom and the freedom of the children they bear.

While we are fighting for freedom, we must see, among other things, that labor is free.

Freedom is not just something with which we are born; it is something we achieve. America did not receive a perpetual endowment of freedom; it has had to struggle and fight to preserve it. Freedom is not an heirloom or an antique; it is a life that must fight against the corrosive powers of death and nourish itself on the daily bread of goodness and virtue.

When we decided to take up arms, it was because the only other choice was to surrender and to submit to slavery.

We must complain. Yes, plain, blunt complaint, ceaseless agitation, unfailing exposure of dishonesty and wrong - this is the ancient, unerring way to liberty and we must follow it.

I felt that one had better die fighting against injustice than to die like a dog or rat in a trap. I had already determined to sell my life as dearly as possible if attacked. I felt if I could take one lyncher with me, this would even up the score a little bit.

Where is the coward that would not dare to fight for such a land as Scotland?

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.

It is wrong to think that belief in freedom always leads to victory; we must always be prepared for it to lead to defeat. If we choose freedom, then we must be prepared to perish along with it.

Being an old radical, I like films like Spartacus. I could relate to the hero.

... the connection between imperial politics and culture is astonishingly direct. American attitudes to American "greatness", to hierarchies of race, to the perils of "other" revolutions (the American revolution being considered unique and somehow unrepeatable anywhere else in the world) have remained constant, have dictated, have obscured, the realities of empire, while apologists for overseas American interests have insisted on American innocence, doing good, fighting for freedom.

Our forefathers would think it's time for a revolution. This is why they revolted in the first place... They revolted against much more mild oppression.

It was a glorious resurrection, from the tomb of slavery, to the heaven of slavery. My long-crushed spirit rose, cowardice departed, bold defiance took its place; and I now resolved that, however long I might remain a slave in form, the day had passed forever when I could be a slave in fact.