Quotes About Freedom

At this point in their history, give most Muslims the freedom to vote, and they will freely vote to tear out their political freedoms by the root.

I can think of no right more fundamental than the right to peacefully steward the contents of one's own consciousness.

We spend our lives telling ourselves the story of past and future, while the reality of the present goes largely unexplored. Now we live in ignorance of the freedom and simplicity of consciousness, prior to the arising of thought.

What you are calling "I" is itself a feeling that arises among the contents of consciousness. Consciousness is prior to it, a mere witness of it, and, therefore, free of it in principle.

Life under the Taliban is, to a first approximation, what millions of Muslims around the world want to impose on the rest of us. They long to establish a society in which—when times are good—women will remain vanquished and invisible, and anyone given to spiritual, intellectual, or sexual freedom will be slaughtered before crowds of sullen, uneducated men.

Believe in truth. To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.

Either our wills are determined by prior causes and we are not responsible for them, or they are the product of chance and we are not responsible for them. If

The realistic goal to be attained through spiritual practice is not some permanent state of enlightenment that admits of no further efforts, but a capacity to be free in this moment, in the midst of whatever is happening. If you can do that, you have already solved most of the problems you will encounter in life.

we are all prisoners of our thoughts.

He had eyes only for California.

We all nurture impulses which promise freedom from the demands of others, even if that freedom means death.

Books are like imprisoned souls till someone takes them down from a shelf and frees them.

Of all God's creatures there is only one that cannot be made the slave of the lash. That one is the cat.

Justice is my being allowed to do whatever I like. Injustice is whatever prevents my doing so.

How small, of all that human hearts endure, That part which laws or kings can cause or cure. Still to ourselves in every place consign'd, Our own felicity we make or find:

I know not why any one but a schoolboy in his declamation should whine over the Commonwealth of Rome, which grew great only by the misery of the rest of mankind. The Romans, like others, as soon as they grew rich, grew corrupt; and in their corruption sold the lives and freedoms of themselves, and of one another.

Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it.

Being in a ship is like being in jail, with the chance of being drowned.

We love to overlook the boundaries which we do not wish to pass.

A secret in his mouth, is like a wild bird put into a cage; whose door no sooner opens, but 'tis out.

As soon as I enter the door of a tavern, I experience oblivion of care, and a freedom from solicitude. There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn.

The flesh of animals who feed excursively, is allowed to have a higher flavour than that of those who are cooped up. May there not be the same difference between men who read as their taste prompts and men who are confined in cells and colleges to stated tasks?

Where I a pris'ner chain'd, scarce freely drawThe air imprison'd also, close and damp,Unwholsome draught; but here I feel amends,The breath of heav'n fresh blowing, pure and sweet,With day-spring born; here leave me to respire.Milton'sSampson Agonistes.

ADESPOTICK  (ADESPO'TICK)   adj. Not absolute; not despotick.Dict.