Quotes About Freedom

In a way it was a relief to be spared the responsibilities that came with a knowledge of the details of another life.

The war, when it comes, will not be for opium. It will be for a principle: for freedom – for the freedom of trade and for the freedom of the Chinese people. Free Trade is a right conferred on Man by God, and its principles apply as much to opium as to any other article of trade. More so perhaps, since in its absence many millions of natives would be denied the lasting advantages of British influence.

Stars and planets, after all, travelled on predictable orbits - but the wind, nobody knew where the wind would choose to go.

I felt all of existence swelling in my veins. Letting my umbrella drop, I flung back my head to open myself to the wind and the suns. It was as though in the course of one night I had cast away the emptiness I had so long held in my arms.

Why should we try, why not just take the world as it is? I told her how he had said that we had to try because the alternative wasn't blankness – it only meant that if we didn't try ourselves, we would never be free of other people's inventions.

Rules, rules, she said softly. All you ever talk about is rules. That's how you and your kind have destroyed everything—science, religion, socialism—with your rules and your orthodoxies. That's the difference between us: you worry about rules and I worry about being human.

that one could grant freedom by imposing subjugation? that one could open a cage by pushing it inside a bigger cage? How could any section of a people hope to achieve freedom where the entirety of a populace was held in subjection?

Love is a kind of infection, possessing then releasing you.

only a woman has the power to choose whether or not to bestow.

And when she played the clarinet it was as though the music came not from the instrument but straight out of her body, only passing through the clarinet to pick up some sweetness and sadness, and taking you to a real, silent place where there is no enemy, no struggle, and where everything is free from shame and treachery and clear of thoughts of betrayal.

I wanted to go free, to be liberated once and for all from these two enemies, the body and the soul. I wanted to be a cloud. To be a stone on the surface of the moon.

Jag skulle aldrig slåss för ett extra sovrum åt nationen. Jag skulle aldrig slåss för heliga platser eller heliga sevärdheter. Jag skulle aldrig slåss för så kallade nationella intressen. Men jag skulle slåss för liv och frihet och ingenting annat, slåss av bara helvete.

A captive may sing but still perish

Love goes where it will, and the attempt to redirect it actually corrupts it.

Our soul, as bird, escapéd is out of the fowler's snare: the snare asunder broken is; and we delivered are. —Psalm 124, Verse 7 The Bay Psalm Book,* 1640

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

She whirls around and around in her red English stockings and white moccasins, her cloak of wampum and feathers flying out around her like the wings of a great hawk.

My dogs can't do anything--and what a relief. I don't make any demands of them, and I don't try to shape them or their future. For the most part, I trust them to make the right choices for themselves. I always look forward to seeing them, and I love just watching them sleep. What a great relationship.

I like radio personalities, and I like to change lanes. And losing yourself on the freeway is like living at the beach--you're not aware of lapsed time, and suddenly you're there, where it was you were going.

But then again a good person doesn't cheat, doesn't fuck around for sport. Good and bad, though, aren't mutually exclusive are they? At least she didn't, Laney rationalizes, at least she didn't pretend that what she had with John, with any of the men, was more than it was. Didn't fool herself into thinking she had any jurisdiction over their freedom. That the fucking had anything to do with

I don't have to be logical. I'm a leopard. We're considered wild animals, you know. (Spoken by Megan.)

Choices are powerful things. In fact, they're more powerful than most things.

They know where happiness lies, not in a cave or a country, but in love and the freedom to give and take what has been there all along.

With hope, a mind is always free.