Quotes About Freedom

The first effect of emancipation from the Church was not to make men think rationally, but to open their minds to every sort of antique nonsense

I should wish to see a world in which education aimed at mental freedom rather than at imprisoning the minds of the young in a rigid armor of dogma calculated to protect them through life against the shafts of impartial evidence.

The luxury to disparage freedom is the privilege of those who already possess it.

Freedom in general may be defined as the absence of obstacles to the realization of desires.

Liberty demands self-government, but not the right to interfere with others.

It is clear that thought is not free if the profession of certain opinions makes it impossible to earn a living. It is clear also that thought is not free if all the arguments on one side of a controversy are perpetually presented as attractively as possible, while the arguments on the other side can only be discovered by diligent search.

It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age; but, if so,it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that gaurds the door,and this dragon is religion

The object of education ought not to be to make all men think alike, but to make each think in the way which is the fullest expression of his own.

One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.

It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age; but, if so, it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that guards the door, and this dragon is religion.

The slave is doomed to worship Time and Fate and Death, because they are greater than anything he finds in himself, and because all his thoughts are of things which they devour. But, great as they are, to think of them greatly, to feel their passionless splendour, is greater still. And such thought makes us free men; we no longer bow before the inevitable in Oriental subjection, but we absorb it, and make it a part of ourselves.

A victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory.

Our nominal morality has been formulated by priests and mentally enslaved women. It is time that men who have to take a normal part in the normal life of the world learned to rebel against this sickly nonsense.

I have lived in the pursuit of a vision, both personal and social. Personal: to care for what is noble, for what is beautiful, for what is gentle; to allow moments of insight to give wisdom at more mundane times. Social: to see in imagination the society that is to be created, where individuals grow freely, and where hate and greed and envy die because there is nothing to nourish them. These things I believe, and the world, for all its horrors, has left me unshaken.

The romantic movement, in art, in literature, and in politics, is bond up with this subjective way of judging men, not as members of a community, but as aesthetically delightful objects of contemplation. Tigers are more beautiful than sheep, but we prefer them behind bars. The typical romantic removes the bars and enjoys the magnificent leaps with which the tiger annihilates the sheep. He exhorts men to imagine themselves tigers, and when he succeeds the results are not wholly pleasant.

There is equality where all are slaves, as well as where all are free. This shows that equality, by itself, is not enough to make a good society.

It is clear that the most elementary condition, if thought is to be free, is the absence of legal penalties for the expression of opinions. No great country has yet reached to this level, although most of them think they have.

It is curious that Mill makes very little mention of the police as a danger to liberty. In our day they are its worst enemy...

It is clear that thought is not free if the profession of certain opinions makes it impossible to earn a living. It is clear also that thought is not free if all the arguments on one side of a controversy are perpetually presented as attractively as possible, while the arguments on the other side can only be discovered by diligent search. Both these obstacles exist in every large country known to me, except China, which is the last refuge of freedom.

AÅŸ vrea sa traiesc într-o lume in care educaÅ£ia sa-ÅŸi propun? drept scop libertatatea intelectual? ÅŸi nu inchistarea unor minÅ£i fragede într-o armur? de dogme menite sa le protejeze de-a lungul vieÅ£ii de revelaÅ£ia unor probe impartiale. Lumea are nevoie de inimi deschise ÅŸi de minÅ£i deschise ÅŸi ele nu se pot obÅ£ine printr-un sistem rigid, fie el nou sau vechi.

Loss of zest in civilized society is very largely due to the restrictions upon liberty which are essential to our way of life.

And a society composed of men and women who do not bow too much to the conventions is a far more interesting society than one in which all behave alike.

I have spoken hitherto of those who command and those who obey, but there is a third type, namely, those who withdraw. There are men who have the courage to refuse submission without having the imperiousness that causes the wish to command. Such men do not fit readily into the social structure, and in one way or another they seek a refuge where they can enjoy a more or less solitary freedom.

Contemplation enlarges not only the objects of our thoughts, but also the objects of our actions and our affections: it makes us citizens of the universe, not only of one walled city at war will all the rest. In this citizenship of the universe consists man's true freedom, and his liberation from the thraldom of narrow hopes and fears.