Freedom quotes, explained

A call to public service at the height of the Cold War. The very next sentence widens the same challenge to the whole world, which is the half most people never quote.

The last words of the Gettysburg Address, spoken at a cemetery for Union soldiers. Lincoln turned a funeral into a promise that the war was being fought to keep democracy itself alive.

A summary of Voltaire's attitude written by an English biographer in 1906. She later explained that she never meant it as a quotation.

Douglass's argument that freedom is never handed over by those in power. It has to be demanded, and the demand will be uncomfortable.

King's answer to clergymen who called him an outside agitator. Because all communities are tied together, he argued, he had every right to be in Birmingham.

Churchill's promise, right after the Dunkirk evacuation, that Britain would never surrender even if invaded. He paired it with a blunt warning that Dunkirk was a defeat, not a victory.

Lincoln's warning that the United States could not stay half slave and half free forever. He borrowed the image from the Gospels, where Jesus uses it to answer critics.

Truth did give a famous speech for women's rights in 1851, but the refrain “Ain't I a woman?” appears only in a version published twelve years later by another activist.

Churchill did say this in Parliament in 1947, but in longer words and with a twist most people miss. He introduced it as something “that has been said,” not as his own invention.

Henry's call for Virginia to arm itself against Britain, weeks before the fighting began at Lexington and Concord. The famous words were written down only 42 years later, from listeners' memories.

The last words reported of a 21-year-old American spy hanged by the British. They were written down years later, and they echo a line from a popular play of the time.

Washington, at the request of Congress, set aside a day for Americans to thank God for the country's blessings, above all the chance to set up a new government peacefully.

A direct challenge to the Soviet leader to prove his reforms were real by opening the Berlin Wall. Many of Reagan's own advisers wanted the line removed.

People who once ran their own government now only want two things, free food and entertainment. Rulers who supply both can keep power without being questioned.

Thoreau argues that most people work themselves to exhaustion for things they don't need, and hide their despair behind ordinary routines. Walden is his experiment in living otherwise.

At his trial, Socrates refuses to stop questioning people about how to live, saying a life without such questioning is not worth living for a human being. He chose death over silence.

Written by Franklin for the Pennsylvania Assembly in a tax dispute with the colony's proprietors. It was a defense of the elected assembly's power to tax, not an argument against security measures.

The founding claim of the United States, drafted by Thomas Jefferson. Its authors applied it narrowly, but later generations used its own words to demand freedom and equal rights.

Parents bring children into the world and love them, but do not own them. Children have their own thoughts and their own future, and a parent's job is to send them forward, like a bow sending an arrow.

Jobs urges graduates to follow their own judgment rather than other people's expectations, because life is short. He spoke from the experience of a recent cancer diagnosis.