Fetters Quotes

• An oppressed people are authorized whenever they can to rise and break their fetters.

  Henry Clay

  People, Revolution, Rebellion

  Henry Clay (1857). “The speeches of Henry Clay”, p.142

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• To tame the proud, the fetter'd slave to free,
  These are imperial arts.

  John Dryden

  Art, Proud, Slave

  John Dryden, C. B., Esquire Charles BATHURST (1852). “Selections from the poetry of Dryden, including his plays and translations. [The editor's preface signed: C. B., i.e. Charles Bathurst.]”, p.312

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• Poetry fettered fetters the human race.

  William Blake

  Race, Poetry, Proportion

  Jerusalem "To the Public" plate 1 (1815)

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• Poetry fettered, fetters the human race. Nations are destroyed or flourish in proportion as their poetry, painting, and music are destroyed or flourish.

  William Blake

  Race, Painting, Proportion

  William Blake (2005). “Collected Poems”, p.201, Routledge

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• The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels and God, and at liberty when of Devils and Hell, is because he was a true poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it.

  William Blake

  Party, Angel, Knowing

  The Marriage of Heaven and Hell "The Voice of the Devil" (note) (1790 - 1793)

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• Freedom and slavery are mental states.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Motivational, Freedom, Slavery

  'Non-Violence in Peace and War' (1949) vol. 2, ch. 5

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• The weak in courage is strong in cunning.

  William Blake

  Strong, Weak, Cunning

  William Blake, William Butler Yeats (1905). “Collected Poems”, p.171, Psychology Press

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• Basically, to sum up: We're a generation of anarchists, and we just haven't gotten our hands on the means of production yet so we can fetter the wheels. We haven't been handed the controls yet except to the Internet, which is why it looks like it does.

  Mark Pesce

  Mean, Hands, Wheels

  "An Afternoon with Mark Pesce: The Uncut Version". Interview with Gregory Pleshaw, en.wikiquote.org.

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• One of the gladdest moments of human life, methinks, is the departure upon a distant journey into unknown lands. Shaking off with one mighty effort the fetters of habit, the leaden weight of routine, the cloak of many cares and the slavery of home, man feels once more happy.

  Richard Burton

  Travel, Home, Journey

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• How strange now, looks the life he makes us lead; So free we seem, so fettered fast we are!

  Robert Browning

  Freedom, Deep Thought, Seems

  "My Last Duchess and Other Poems".

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• Neither the chains of dictatorship nor the fetters of oppression can keep down the forces of freedom for long.

  Angela Merkel

  Women, Long, Empowering

  Angela Merkel's Remarks in an Exchange of Toasts with President Obama, www.newsroomamerica.com. June 7, 2011.

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• Golden fetters are no less galling to a self-respecting man that iron ones; the sting lies in the fetters, not in the metal.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Lying, Men, Self

  Mahatma Gandhi (1965). “Glorious Thoughts of Gandhi: Being a Treasury of about Ten Thousand Valuable and Inspiring Thougths of Mahatma Gandhi, Classified Under Four Hundred Subjects”

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• England may as well dam up the waters of the Nile with bulrushes as to fetter the step of Freedom, more proud and firm in this youthful land than where she treads the sequestered glens of Scotland, or couches herself among the magnificent mountains of Switzerland.

  Lydia M. Child

  Freedom, Land, Water

  "Bartlett's Familiar Quotations", 10th edition, 1919.

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• However weighed down and entangled in earthly fetters you may be, it can never be too late.

  Tito Colliander

  Too Late, Asceticism, May

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• To succeed in chaining the multitude, you must seem to wear the same fetters.

  Voltaire

  Succeed, Multitudes, Seems

  Francois Voltaire (1977). “The Portable Voltaire”, p.147, Penguin

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• Why should a man be in love with his fetters, though of gold?

  Francis Bacon

  Love, Men, Gold

  'Essay of Death' in The Remaines of...Lord Verulam (1648)

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• By a declaration of rights, I mean one which shall stipulate freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of commerce against monopolies, trial by juries in all cases, no suspensions of the habeas corpus, no standing armies. These are fetters against doing evil which no honest government should decline.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Mean, Army, Rights

  Thomas Jefferson (2011). “Jefferson on Freedom: Wisdom, Advice, and Hints on Freedom, Democracy, and the American Way”, p.11, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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• The dream is the liberation of the spirit from the pressure of external nature, a detachment of the soul from the fetters of matter.

  Sigmund Freud

  Dream, Soul, Matter

  Sigmund Freud (2012). “On Dreams”, p.2, Courier Corporation

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• Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites…in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.

  Edmund Burke

  Wise, Passion, Men

  Letter to a Member of the National Assembly, 1791.

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• Their poverty secured their freedom, since our desires and our possessions are the strongest fetters of despotism.

  Edward Gibbon

  Freedom, Desire, Liberty

  Edward Gibbon (1839). “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, p.127

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• It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.

  Edmund Burke

  Passion, Character, Men

  Edmund Burke (1803). “The Works of ... Edmund Burke”, p.64

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• One of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one's own ever-shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of objective perception and thought.

  Albert Einstein

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

  Albert Einstein (2011). “Essays in Science”, p.11, Open Road Media

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• It is enough for me by day To walk the same bright earth with him; Enough that over us by night The same great roof of stars is dim. I do not hope to bind the wind Or set a fetter on the sea -- It is enough to feel his love Blow by like music over me.

  Sara Teasdale

  Stars, Blow, Night

  Sara Teasdale (1917). “Love Songs”

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• Repose, leisure, peace, belong among the elements of happiness. If we have not escaped from harried rush, from mad pursuit, from unrest, from the necessity of care, we are not happy. And what of contemplation? Its very premise is freedom from the fetters of workaday busyness. Moreover, it itself actualizes this freedom by virtue of being intuition.

  Josef Pieper

  Mad, Intuition, Unrest

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• Let only that little be left of me whereby I may name thee my all. Let only that little be left of my will whereby I may feel thee on every side, and come to thee in everything, and offer to thee my love every moment. Let only that little be left of me whereby I may never hide thee. Let only that little of my fetters be left whereby I am bound with thy will, and thy purpose is carried out in my life--and that is the fetter of thy love.

  Rabindranath Tagore

  Names, Purpose, May

  Rabindranath Tagore (2013). “Gitanjali - Song Offerings”, p.34, Read Books Ltd

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