I was thinking about past Fourth of July holidays when I remembered getting off a long ago train and finding the streets of Paris alive with parties and parades and dancing in the streets. Celebrated on the 14th, shortly after our own Independence Day, it turned out to be Bastille Day. And what a jubilant celebration it was with wine everywhere and neighbors toasting each other and their illustrious compatriots who had stormed the hated Bastille and set their country on the path to liberation.
That night we lay in bed watching dazzling Parisian fireworks light up the sky outside our window. One of my best Paris memories.
Today with many countries still chained by their own King George’s and King Louis’s, I gathered together some quotes on different aspects of freedom:
“I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free. Mankind will surely not deny to Harold Skimpole what it concedes to the butterflies!” ~ Charles Dickens
“Those who begin by burning books will end by burning people.” ~ Heinrich Heine
“You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.” ~ John Viscount Morley
“Caged birds accept each other but flight is what they long for.” ~ Tennessee Williams
“Real freedom is having nothing. I was freer when I didn’t have a cent.” ~ Mike Tyson
“There is no freedom like seeing myself as I am and not losing heart.” ~ Elizabeth J. Canham
“No one is free, even the birds are chained to the sky.” ~ Bob Dylan
“There are only two kinds of freedom in the world; the freedom of the rich and powerful, and the freedom of the artist and the monk who renounces possessions.” ~ Anais Nin
“The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act, as the destroyer of liberty. Plainly the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of the word liberty; and precisely the same difference prevails today among human creatures.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
As usual, Abe hit it right on the American Nose.
More Holiday Quotes:
- Love and Money Among the Valentine Roses
- Upper East Side Ghosts and Halloween Quotes
- Thanksgiving Quotes Beyond Top Turkey Day
- Christmas Quotations with Zing!
- Labor Day Quotes and the Virtues of Hooting
- Good Fortune Quotes for 2012
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