People demand freedom only when they have no power.
Meaning of the quote
People usually only ask for freedom when they feel they have no control over their lives. This means that when people are powerless, they start to want more freedom. But when they already have power, they may not care as much about having more freedom.
About Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was an American poet and educator best known for his iconic poems like “Paul Revere’s Ride” and “The Song of Hiawatha.” He was the first American to translate Dante’s Divine Comedy and was part of the renowned “Fireside Poets” group from New England. Despite facing personal tragedies, Longfellow’s lyrical and sentimental works made him one of the most popular poets of his time, both in the United States and abroad.
More quotes from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
However things may seem, no evil thing is success and no good thing is failure.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
It is foolish to pretend that one is fully recovered from a disappointed passion. Such wounds always leave a scar.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
Heights by great men reached and kept were not obtained by sudden flight but, while their companions slept, they were toiling upward in the night.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
Into each life some rain must fall.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
I have an affection for a great city. I feel safe in the neighborhood of man, and enjoy the sweet security of the streets.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
The Helicon of too many poets is not a hill crowned with sunshine and visited by the Muses and the Graces, but an old, mouldering house, full of gloom and haunted by ghosts.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
It takes less time to do a thing right, than it does to explain why you did it wrong.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
The mind of the scholar, if he would leave it large and liberal, should come in contact with other minds.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
In character, in manner, in style, in all things, the supreme excellence is simplicity.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
Evil is only good perverted.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
Something attempted, something done, Has earned a nights repose.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
The human voice is the organ of the soul.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
A torn jacket is soon mended; but hard words bruise the heart of a child.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
Whenever nature leaves a hole in a person’s mind, she generally plasters it over with a thick coat of self-conceit.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
Music is the universal language of mankind.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
Like a French poem is life; being only perfect in structure when with the masculine rhymes mingled the feminine are.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
A single conversation across the table with a wise man is better than ten years mere study of books.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
Joy, temperance, and repose, slam the door on the doctor’s nose.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
The nearer the dawn the darker the night.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
Thy fate is the common fate of all; Into each life some rain must fall.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
The talent of success is nothing more than doing what you can do well, and doing well whatever you do without thought of fame. If it comes at all it will come because it is deserved, not because it is sought after.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
Critics are sentinels in the grand army of letters, stationed at the corners of newspapers and reviews, to challenge every new author.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
All things must change to something new, to something strange.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
He that respects himself is safe from others. He wears a coat of mail that none can pierce.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
The life of a man consists not in seeing visions and in dreaming dreams, but in active charity and in willing service.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
It is difficult to know at what moment love begins; it is less difficult to know that it has begun.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
Method is more important than strength, when you wish to control your enemies. By dropping golden beads near a snake, a crow once managed To have a passer-by kill the snake for the beads.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
A thought often makes us hotter than a fire.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
They who go Feel not the pain of parting; it is they Who stay behind that suffer.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
Talk not of wasted affection – affection never was wasted.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
The dawn is not distant, nor is the night starless; love is eternal.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
It is a beautiful trait in the lover’s character, that they think no evil of the object loved.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
As to the pure mind all things are pure, so to the poetic mind all things are poetical.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
The counterfeit and counterpart of Nature is reproduced in art.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
Perseverance is a great element of success. If you only knock long enough and loud enough at the gate, you are sure to wake up somebody.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
Sometimes we may learn more from a man’s errors, than from his virtues.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
Fame comes only when deserved, and then is as inevitable as destiny, for it is destiny.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
There are moments in life, when the heart is so full of emotion That if by chance it be shaken, or into its depths like a pebble Drops some careless word, it overflows, and its secret, Spilt on the ground like water, can never be gathered together.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
Whoever benefits his enemy with straightforward intention that man’s enemies will soon fold their hands in devotion.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
When she had passed, it seemed like the ceasing of exquisite music.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
Love gives itself; it is not bought.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
Give what you have to somebody, it may be better than you think.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
There is no grief like the grief that does not speak.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
Look not mournfully into the past, it comes not back again. Wisely improve the present, it is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy future without fear and with a manly heart.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
Not in the clamor of the crowded street, not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng, but in ourselves, are triumph and defeat.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
If you only knock long enough and loud enough at the gate, you are sure to wake up somebody.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
Man is always more than he can know of himself; consequently, his accomplishments, time and again, will come as a surprise to him.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
Simplicity in character, in manners, in style; in all things the supreme excellence is simplicity.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
Lives of great men all remind us, we can make our lives sublime, and, departing, leave behind us, footprints on the sands of time.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
Youth comes but once in a lifetime.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
There is nothing holier in this life of ours than the first consciousness of love, the first fluttering of its silken wings.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
For age is opportunity no less Than youth itself, though in another dress, And as the evening twilight fades away The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing, only a signal shown, and a distant voice in the darkness; So on the ocean of life, we pass and speak one another, only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
Love keeps the cold out better than a cloak.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
Build today, then strong and sure, With a firm and ample base; And ascending and secure. Shall tomorrow find its place.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
The love of learning, the sequestered nooks, And all the sweet serenity of books.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
Thought takes man out of servitude, into freedom.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
The rapture of pursuing is the prize the vanquished gain.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
Men of genius are often dull and inert in society; as the blazing meteor, when it descends to earth, is only a stone.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
Therefore trust to thy heart, and to what the world calls illusions.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
Sit in reverie and watch the changing color of the waves that break upon the idle seashore of the mind.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
Intelligence and courtesy not always are combined; Often in a wooden house a golden room we find.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
Resolve and thou art free.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
That which the fountain sends forth returns again to the fountain.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
Morality without religion is only a kind of dead reckoning – an endeavor to find our place on a cloudy sea by measuring the distance we have run, but without any observation of the heavenly bodies.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
The greatest firmness is the greatest mercy.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
In this world a man must either be anvil or hammer.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
Most people would succeed in small things if they were not troubled with great ambitions.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
Ambition is so powerful a passion in the human breast, that however high we reach we are never satisfied.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
Each morning sees some task begun, each evening sees it close; Something attempted, something done, has earned a night’s repose.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
All things come round to him who will but wait.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
The strength of criticism lies in the weakness of the thing criticized.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
Not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng, but in ourselves, are triumph and defeat.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
If you would hit the mark, you must aim a little above it.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
If we could read the secret history of our enemies we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
The best thing one can do when it’s raining is to let it rain.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
People demand freedom only when they have no power.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)
For his heart was in his work, and the heart giveth grace unto every art.
American poet and educator (1807-1882)