Let me point out to you that freedom is not something that anybody can be given; freedom is something people take and people are as free as they want to be. One hasn’t got to have an enormous military in order to be unfree when it’s simpler to be asleep, when it’s simpler to be apathetic, when it’s simpler, in fact, not to want to be free, to think that something else is more important.

James Baldwin (1924-1987) American novelist, playwright, activist

“Notes for a Hypothetical Novel,” speech, San Francisco College (22 Oct 1960)
    (Source)

Later published in Nobody Knows My Name (1961).