31 Inspiring Liberation Quotes

In a world striving for freedom and self-discovery, the words of wisdom from those who have walked the path of liberation can serve as powerful beacons of inspiration. Whether you are on a personal journey of breaking free from limitations or seeking motivation to empower others, the right quote can resonate deeply, offering guidance and strength. Here, we present a thoughtfully curated collection of 31 inspiring liberation quotes, each chosen for its ability to uplift the spirit and incite positive change. Let these words inspire you to embrace your journey wholeheartedly, as they capture the essence of what it means to be truly free.

1. “I just wondered what a thing it would be...if overnight everything you owe anything to, justice, or love, had really gone away. Free.It would be...heartless terror. Yes. Terrible, and...Very great. To shed your skin, every old skin, one by one and then walk away, unemcumbered, into the morning.” - Tony Kushner

2. “The oppressors do not favor promoting the community as a whole, but rather selected leaders.” - Paulo Freire

3. “To simply think about the people, as the dominators do, without any self-giving in that thought, to fail to think with the people, is a sure way to cease being revolutionary leaders. ” - Paulo Freire

4. “Looking at the past must only be a means of understanding more clearly what and who they are so that they can more wisely build the future.” - Paulo Freire

5. “You can do anything you want. You don't believe me. You think, she's out of her head. Yeah, I'm out of my head- on being me. What are you on? On being them. You don't even know. I bet you were never given a chance to know. ....Listen. You can be anything you want to be. Be careful. It's a spell. It's magic. Listen to the words.... You are anything...everyone, anyone. ...You listen to them, teachers, parents, politicians. They're always saying, if you steal you're a thief, if you sleep aroung you're a slut, if you take drugs you're a junkie. They want to get inside your head and control you with their fear. ...Don't play their game. Nothing can touch you; you stay beautiful.” - Melvin Burgess

6. “[...] Mots exagérés pour dire qu'il est des réclusions mineures où l'on passe finalement un temps très long avant de s'en libérer. Car c'est bien un acte de volonté subit qui décide du terme et l'on se demande pourquoi on ne s'en est pas délivré plus tôt.” - Erri De Luca

7. “Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn't fit in with the core belief.” - Frantz Fanon

8. “Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.” - Rosa Luxemburg

9. “Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.” - Martin Luther King Jr.

10. “In learning a language, when from mere words we reach the laws of words, we have gained a great deal. But if we stop at that point and concern ourselves only with the marvels of the formation of a language, seeking the hidden reason of all its apparent caprices, we do not reach that end, for grammar is not literature… When we come to literature, we find that, though it conforms to the rules of grammar, it is yet a thing of joy; it is freedom itself. The beauty of a poem is bound by strict laws, yet it transcends them. The laws are its wings. They do not keep it weighed down. They carry it to freedom. Its form is in law, but its spirit is in beauty. Law is the first step toward freedom, and beauty is the complete liberation which stands on the pedestal of law. Beauty harmonizes in itself the limit and the beyond – the law and the liberty.” - Rabindranath Tagore

11. “Great praxis demands great piety.” - Sallie McFague

12. “Anon from the castle wallsThe crescent banner falls,And the crowd beholds instead,Like a portent in the sky,Iskander's banner fly,The Black Eagle with double head;And a shout ascends on high,For men's souls are tired of the Turks,And their wicked ways and works,That have made of Ak-HissarA city of the plague;And the loud, exultant cryThat echoes wide and farIs: "Long live Scanderbeg!” - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

13. “I too entered the Lager as a nonbeliever, and as a nonbeliever I was liberated and have lived to this day.” - Primo Levi

14. “It is a mistake to consider any belief more liberated than another. It is the possibility of change which is important. Every new form of liberation is destined to eventually become another form of enslavement for most of its adherents. There is no freedom from duality on this plane of existence, but one may at least aspire to choice of duality.” - Peter J. Carroll

15. “Call no man lucky until he is dead, but there have been moment of rare satisfaction in the often random and fragmented life of the radical freelance scribbler. I have lived to see Ronald Reagan called “a useful idiot for Kremlin propaganda” by his former idolators; to see the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union regarded with fear and suspicion by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (which blacked out an interview with Miloš Forman broadcast live on Moscow TV); to see Mao Zedong relegated like a despot of antiquity. I have also had the extraordinary pleasure of revisiting countries—Greece, Spain, Zimbabwe, and others—that were dictatorships or colonies when first I saw them. Other mini-Reichs have melted like dew, often bringing exiled and imprisoned friends blinking modestly and honorably into the glare. E pur si muove—it still moves, all right.” - Christopher Hitchens

16. “Liberation, I guess, is everybody getting what they think they want, without knowing the whole truth. Or in other words, liberation finally amounts to being free from things we don't like in order to be enslaved by things we approve of. Here's to the eternal tandem.” - Robert Fulghum

17. “Posing the question: does the god of love use underarm deodorant, vaginal spray and fluoride toothpaste?” - Harlan Ellison

18. “Jane reminds us that God is in his heaven, the monarch on his throne and the pelvis firmly beneath the ribcage. Apparently rock and roll liberated the pelvis and it hasn't been the same since.” - Emma Thompson

19. “She had lost herself in this old work, her personality dissolving into it, so that she had been set free. The immortality of the soul lies in its dissolution; this was the cryptic comment that so frustrated Olivier and which Julien had only ever grasped as evidence for the history of a particular school of thought. He had known all about its history, but Julia knew what it meant. He found the realization strangely reassuring.” - Iain Pears

20. “Reading things that are relevant to the facts of your life is of limited value. The facts are, after all, only the facts, and the yearning passionate part of you will not be met there. That is why reading ourselves as a fiction as well as fact is so liberating. The wider we read the freer we become.” - Jeanette Winterson

21. “If solidarity is unity of purpose or togetherness, how to span this great divide of inequality, privilege, universal rights, political agency, and even our seeing things completely differently?In constructing this great bridge of international solidarity across the globe, where do we even begin?” - Ramor Ryan

22. “الصناعة هي المفتاح الأوحد للتنميه في العالم الثالث والتساؤل المطروح لمقلدي قاسم أمين:ائتوني ببرنامج واحد عبرالسنين ومنذنشأة هذا الفكر البراغماتي إلى اليوم قدم رؤية واضحة حول التصنيع والتنمية الحقيقة,لايوجد,انه صفر في الواقع...والحقيقة مارأيناه , تفاهات وقشور جئ بها من الخارج باسم التطور والتقدم...والمحصلة تحرير المرأه والاختلاط” - خالد ثامر السبيعي

23. “No pedagogy which is truly liberating can remain distant from the oppressed by treating them as unfortunates and by presenting for their emulation models from among the oppressors. The oppressed must be their own example in the struggle for their redemption (Freire, 1970, p. 54).” - Paulo Freire

24. “Conservatism is far from what I’m aiming at in proclaiming the establishment of a Sethian left-hand path tradition in the West as one of the first missions of the SLM. In fact, in establishing such a tradition, true to the spirit of sacred transgression and holy subversion that is essential to both Seth and the left-hand path, we are opening a door that enlightens through endangerment, that awakens through risk and peril: this is a radical (from Latin radix, root, implying how deep a change is required) enterprise that is the very opposite of conservatism.”--“From the Eye of the Storm” (Zeena's column as Hemet-Neter Tepi Seth for the SLM), Volume I - Summer Solstice issue (2003): "Building a Sethian Left-Hand Path Tradition in the West.” - Zeena Schreck

25. “Human beings are no longer born to their place in life, and chained down by an inexorable bond to the place they are born to, but are free to employ their faculties, and such favourable chances as offer, to achieve the lot which may appear to them most desirable.” - John Stuart Mill

26. “I find that there are a lot of objects and subjects within the world today. There's so much going on, that it seems like reality itself is trying hide something. Not only do we have to deal with illusions that the media, literature, states, governments, religions, and all of the plentiful theatrics of life entrances us with, but we have to deal with reality's false face. People continuously livelife, go to work, play, stress, dance, eat, sleep, and step back into yesterday, not understanding that there are invisible curtains blinding the truth from the surface. Become empty, just for a moment, and ask yourself simple paradoxical questions. Do you know where you are? Do you understand where you are? Do you understand who you are? Do you understand why you are? Gain a sense of glory, by being defeated by your own question, and liberate yourself from the mask that reality has given you since adolescence. However, that is the problem. So many have worn this invisible mask for so long, that they are unable to take it off, and are bound by the illusion that reality wants them to see. Liberation is a goal that you may no longer obtain, but don't worry, for ignorance and deception are your only true friends now. They can carry you to God, but they cannot wake you up.” - Lionel Suggs

27. “I also was persuaded that the woman most in need of liberation was the woman in every man just as the man most in need of liberation was the man in every woman.” - William Sloane Coffin

28. “When I say that we must establish values with originate in sisterhood, I mean to say that we must not accept, even for a moment, male notions of what non-violence is. These notions have never condemned the systematic violence against us. The men who hold these notions have never renounced the male behaviours, privileges, values and conceits which are in and of themselves acts of violence against us.” - Andrea Dworkin

29. “Tomorrow's leaders will not lead dictating from the front, nor pushing from the back. They will lead from the centre - from the heart” - Rasheed Ogunlaru

30. “We're merely one tree with various types, shapes and sizes of leaves that all wave differently in the breeze” - Rasheed Ogunlaru

31. “It is morally appalling for the so called liberators of South Sudan to keep liberating their own people from a war that has already been won.” - Duop Chak Wuol