Quotes About Freedom

You only lose what you cling to.

In December 1850, Harriet learned that her niece Kessiah was again up for sale. (Her owner hadn't been able to sell her before.)

In 1810, there were over one million slaves in America.

If a slave was caught learning how to read and write, he could have his fingers or toes cut off!)

marrying a free man did not mean Harriet became free, too.

He loved the idea of this country (theory and practice often being diametrically opposed), but the manner in which the original documents of freedom had been mangled to steer corporate/military interests drove him close to clinically insane. I believe it was grief for a nation that finally killed him.

I realized then that I didn't have to have women all the time, and that guilt is the weapon used by a muddled society to stop people having a good time. 'All the world loves a lover.' What crap! Even in the sexually liberated 'seventies young people still had to get pissed or high to do what they really wanted to do in the first place.

Rocinante was of more value for a true traveller than a jet plane. Jet planes were for business men.

He had always despised people who thought about the past. To live was to leave behind; to be as free as a shipwrecked man who has lost everything.

He had opened the book at random several times, seeking a sortes Virgilianae, before he chose the sentences on which his code was to be based. 'You say: I am not free. But I have lifted my hand and let it fall.' It was as if in choosing that passage, he were transmitting a signal of defiance to both the services. The last word of the message, when it was decoded by Boris or another, would read 'goodbye.

He felt the sad relief of a man who realizes that there is one love at least that no longer hurts him.

Freedom, I thought, comes only to the successful and in his trade my father was a success. If a client didn't like my father's manner or his estimates, he could go elsewhere. My father wouldn't have cared. Perhaps it is freedom, of speech and conduct, which is really envied by the unsuccessful, not money or even power.

Perhaps it is freedom, of speech and conduct, which is really envied by the unsuccessful, not money or even power.

I could have hated him for saying it: it was like a claim. If you really loved me, I thought, you'd behave like any other injured husband. You'd get angry and your anger would set me free.

I had no memory at all of Sarah and I was completely free from anxiety, jealousy, insecurity, hate: my mind was a blank sheet on which somebody had just been on the point of writing a message of happiness. I felt sure that when my memory came back, the writing would continue and that I should be happy.

We are possessed by nobody not even by ourselves

Men will always have to choose a lesser evil and the lesser evil may mean the state, the prison camp, yes, if you like to say it, the psychiatric hospital.

I got a glimpse of something young, dark and happy and not yet spoiled: an animal that didn't yet recognize her captivity.

When I looked at him I could see all the delegates sitting there between his ribs and the chief speaker rising and saying, "Freedom is of importance to creative writers." It was very uncanny at breakfast.

Freedom, I thought, comes only to the successful

but he intentionally courted dishonour, he rejoiced in contempt and disregard, for 'he who is despised lies happy, freed of all attachment'.

Good, because if you have got a problem with it I can't see you. Can't smoke, can't see. You can't smoke anywhere these days. That's why I gave up and organized my practice from home. You can drive a bloody car pell-mell with a high risk of slaughtering a thousand little children a year but you can't smoke in case they get a whiff of your tobacco. What sort of a country is that?" He

The modern superstition is that we're free of superstition.

You let go. It's as simple and as complicated as Antonia had told me. You cry. You come. You sing. You laugh. You scream. You let go. No one needs to hang on to a first edition. Whoever wrote it; even if it was Moses. I looked back up at the sky, blinking at the lustrous beauty of the ascending and departing demons. They formed an alphabet I was beginning to learn to read. They were fire in the sky.