The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask.

No one is free, even the birds are chained to the sky.

The proudest human that walks the earth is a free American citizen.

For too many of us life was no longer free; liberty no longer real; men could no longer follow the pursuit of happiness.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity. But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free.

Freedom to learn is the first necessity of guaranteeing that man himself shall be self-reliant enough to be free.