There is no easy walk to freedom anywhere, and many of us will have to pass through the valley of the shadow of death again and again before we reach the mountaintop of our desires.
The writer, a free man addressing free men, has only one subject – freedom.
The world always says the same thing. And in that patient truth which proceeds from star to star is established a freedom that releases us from ourselves and from others, as in that other patient truth which proceeds from death to death.
The truly free man wants only what he can do and does what he pleases.[L’homme vraiment libre ne veut que ce qu’il peut, et fait ce qu’il lui plaît.]
The state is the embodiment of concrete freedom.
The public use of man’s reason must always be free, and it alone can bring about enlightenment among men.[Der öffentliche Gebrauch seiner Vernunft muß jederzeit frei sein, und der allein kann Aufklärung unter Menschen zu Stande bringen.]
The price of liberty is not so much eternal vigilance as eternal dirt.
The person must give himself an external sphere of freedom in order to have being as Idea.
The liberty of the individual is no gift of civilization. It was greatest before there was any civilization, though then, it is true, it had for the most part no value, since the individual was scarcely in a position to defend it.
The essence of the modern state is the union of the universal with the full freedom of the particular, and with the welfare of individuals.
The English nation thinks that it is free, but is greatly mistaken, for it is so only during the election of members of Parliament.[Le peuple anglais pense être libre, il se trompe fort: il ne l’est que durant l’élection des membres du parlement.]
The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom: for in all the states of created beings capable of law, where there is no law, there is no freedom.
