Explore curated lists of quotes on various subjects, annotated by Bonmots editors.

Below are 12 quotes from war films. War is about life and death but it's also about many other things. And I think the intensity of the experience of those other things is heightened by the life-and-death nature of war. Next to each quote heading I've included a word or phrase that I think captures the element of war that the quote exemplifies.

One of the the best illustrations of the power of words is the fact that a single quote can actually cause you to take action: to get up out of your chair, to run farther, to do an extra rep, to burn the midnight oil, all in service of a goal. And clearly there is an appetite for motivational quotes: as of the writing of this post, there are 32,088,830 posts on Instagram with the hashtag #MondayMotivation.

Freedom is one of the core values of Western, and increasingly, global, society.  Ideas about freedom and liberation have upended societies around the world, from the Israelites in ancient Egypt to the American Civil Rights movement in the 1960s.  But the concept of freedom is slippery, and is in tension with other values that we also prize.

Here, in roughly chronological order, is a sample of 20 quotes that explore this concept from different perspectives.