Quotes About Freedom

The book is not about liberation in general or about political and religious freedom in particular, but about deliverance from bad servitude to good servitude. The Israelites served (abad) Pharaoh but were called by God to serve (again, abad) him instead.44

The truth shall make you free," she said, "but first it will make you miserable.

Jennie taught me just how worthless that is. Being smart. Jennie wasn't smart by human standards, but she had a set of values. Real values. You see, for Jennie, freedom was the highest value. Language gave Jennie freedom. Although I didn't know it at the time, she taught me the real meaning of the word "freedom," not the bullshit meaning you get from politicians and priests.

On October 3, 2011, Amanda Knox walked out of Capanne Prison a free woman, escorted by her family, on her way to a flight back home to Seattle, while Raffaele Sollecito headed to his father's house and liberty, soon to enroll at the University of Verona to continue his college studies.

When you get out of the driver's seat, you find that life can drive itself, that actually life has always been driving itself. When you get out of the driver's seat, it can drive itself so much easier—it can flow in ways you never imagined. Life becomes almost magical. The illusion of the "me" is no longer in the way. Life begins to flow, and you never know where it will take you.

Until the whole world is free to agree with you or disagree with you, until you have given the freedom to everyone to like you or not like you, to love you or hate you, to see things as you see them or to see things differently—until you have given the whole world its freedom—you'll never have your freedom.

Those who are free don't want anything. They don't want anything from their mind, they don't want anything from their emotions, they don't want anything from anyone, and they don't want anything from life. They don't want anything. If you don't want, all that's left is an incredible sense of being free.

Freedom is the realization that everything and everybody gets to be exactly as they are. Unless we've come to that point, unless we've seen that this is how reality sees things, then we're actually withholding freedom from the world. We're seeing it as a possession, and we're only concerned with ourselves. How good I can feel? How free I can feel? True freedom is a gift to everything and everybody.

That which comes and goes is not real; quit chasing it. It doesn't matter. What haven't you lost? That is what's important. What always is? What is there in bliss and in misery? Who you are is always present and is always the same. That which doesn't come and go is real. That is where Freedom is found – nowhere else. (p. 31)

True realization, true enlightenment, comes through a complete relinquishing of personal will - a complete letting go.

The freedom that's discovered isn't, "I have attained enlightenment." The freedom is, "My God, there is nobody here to be enlightened. Therefore, there is nobody there to be unenlightened." That's the light. Only the concept "me" thinks it needs enlightenment, freedom, liberation, and emancipation. It thinks it needs to find God or get a Ferrari—it's all the same thing when you get right down to it.

One of the most common of these traps is a sense of meaninglessness. From our new view of reality, we are free from the egoic desire to find meaning. We see that the ego's desire to find meaning in life is actually a substitute for the perception of being life itself. The search for meaning in life is a surrogate for the knowledge that we are life. Only someone who is disconnected from life itself will seek meaning. Only someone disconnected from life will look for purpose.

As soon as you break your fidelity to Truth, you kick yourself out of the freedom of Truth. As soon as anything—power, praise, person, place, thing, outward love, respect, acknowledgment—becomes more important than Truth, you will begin to suffer and feel separate. There is only room for Truth in the Truth. This means there is only room for seeing the Truth, choosing the Truth, and loving the Truth. A fierce commitment to Truth is a moment-to-moment choice.

When this unification occurs, there's a simplicity to life, a deep sense of freedom and essential well-being and also of fearlessness.

I have found that one of the keys to really being free is to live in the same way as you meditate.

Once again, eternity is peering through the latticework of time and space, and this sense of eternal stillness and deep freedom is what the iconic image of the seated Buddha conveys. What this image doesn't convey is a sense of humanity, of a real flesh-and-blood human being. But in the Jesus story, it's as if the still point that the image of the Buddha evokes within us becomes

Death is better, a milder fate than tyranny.

Willingly no one chooses the yoke of slavery.

Whoever is just willingly and without compulsion will not lack happiness; he will never be utterly destroyed.

Death is preferable -- it is a milder fate than tyranny.

To be free from evil thoughts is God's best gift.

Destiny waits alike for the free man as well as for him enslaved by another's might.

What are blessings in freedom are curses in slavery.

Little liberties are great offenses.