I am a free man, I do not need to copy Petrarch or Boccaccio. My own genius is enough. Let others worry themselves about style and so cease to be themselves. Without a master, without a model, without a guide, without artifice,Igotowork and earnmy living, my well- being, and my fame.What do Ineedmore? Witha goose quill and a few sheets of paper I mock the universe.

-Aretino, Pietro
Quoted in  J H Plumb (ed)  The Horizon Book of the Renaissance (1961, new edn by Penguin,1982).

Others abide our question. Thou art free. We ask and ask:Thou smilest and art still, Out-topping knowledge.

-Arnold, Matthew
  The Strayed Reveller, and Other Poems,'Shakespeare'.

   In the deserts of the heart Let the healing fountain start, In the prison of his days Teach the free man how to praise.

-Auden,W(ystan) H(ugh)
  'In Memory of  W.B.Yeats', pt.3.

Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd: Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

-Auden,W(ystan) H(ugh)
  'The Unknown Citizen'.

Freedom is not something that anybody can be given; freedomissomething peopletakeand peopleareasfree as they want to be.

-Baldwin,James Arthur
Nobody Knows My Name,'Notes for a Hypothetical Novel'.

A man is either free or he is not. There cannot be any apprenticeship for freedom.

-Jones
  'Tokenism', in Kulchur, spring issue.

Homme libre, toujours tu che¤  riras la mer. Free man! You shall always cherish the sea.

-Baudelaire, Charles
  Les Fleurs du mal,'L'Homme et la mer'.

Land of Hope and Glory, Mother of the Free, How shall we extol thee who are born of thee? Wider still and wider shall thy bounds be set; God who made thee mighty, make thee mightier yet.

-Benson, A(rthur) C(hristopher)
  'Land of Hope and Glory'.

Create in me a clean heart,O God; and renew a right spirit within me.Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy holy spirit from me.Restore unto methe joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free spirit. Thenwill Iteachtransgressorsthy ways; and sinnersshall be converted unto thee.

-Bible (Old Testament)
Psalms 51:10^13.

And ye shall know thetruth, and thetruth shall make you free.

-Bible (NewTestament)
St  John 8:32.

If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.

-Bible (NewTestament)
St  John 8:36.

The chief captain answered,With a great sum obtained I this freedom. And Paul said,But I was free born.

-Bible (NewTestament)
Acts of the  Apostles 22:27^8.

There isneither Jew nor Greek, there isneither bond nor free, there isneither malenor female: for yeareall onein Christ Jesus. 122

-Bible (NewTestament)
Galatians 3:28.

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children, England mourns for her dead across the sea. Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit, Fallen in the cause of the free.

-Binyon, (Robert) Laurence
  'For the Fallen', in The Times, 21 Sep.

It's ironical that the first people to demand free speech are the first people to deny it to others.

-of)
  Of student protesters who disrupted the appearance of Clark Kerr, former President of Berkeley, at the University of Toronto, 5 Feb. Recalled in Halfway up Parnassus (1974).

So free we seem, so fretted fast we are!

-Browning, Robert
  Men and Women,'Andrea del Sarto'.

See, free nations are peaceful nations.Free nations don't attack each other. Free nations don't develop weapons of mass destruction.

-Bush, GeorgeW(alker)
  Speaking in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 3 Oct.

Hereditary bondsmen! know ye not Who would be free themselves must strike the blow?

-Rochdale
^18  Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, canto 2, stanza 76.

Give me a lover bold and free, Not eunuched with formality.

-Cleveland,John
  'The  Antiplatonic'.

The creation of music is just as natural as the air we breathe.I believemusic isreallya freething, and any way you can enjoy it, you should.

-Coleman, Ornette
  Sleeve-note, Something Else!