Quotes About Freedom

The capacity for consistent self-direction is one of the most valuable that a human being can possess. It is practically unknown in young children, and is never developed either by a very rigid discipline or by complete freedom.

Querría ver un mundo en el que la educación tendiese a la libertad mental en lugar de encerrar la mente de la juventud en la rígida armadura del dogma, calculado para protegerla durante toda su vida contra los dardos de la prueba imparcial. El mundo necesita mentes y corazones abiertos, y éstos no pueden derivarse de rígidos sistemas, ya sean viejos o nuevos. BERTRAND RUSELL

Education, and the life of the mind generally, is a matter in which individual initiative is the chief thing needed; the function of the state should begin and end with insistence on some kind of education, and, if possible, a kind which promotes mental individualism, not a kind which happens to conform to the prejudices of government officials.

It is impossible for technique to remain long progressive without science, or for science to flourish where there is no freedom of thought. Consequently insistence on doctrinal uniformity, even in matters quite remote from war, is ultimately fatal to military efficiency in a scientific age.

We may say that thought is free when it is exposed to free competition among beliefs—i.e., when all beliefs are able to state their case, and no legal or pecuniary advantages or disadvantages attach to beliefs. This is an ideal which, for various reasons, can never be fully attained. But it is possible to approach very much nearer to it than we do at present.

Un mundo bueno necesita conocimientos, bondad y valor; no necesita el pesaroso anhelo del pasado, ni el aherrojamiento de la inteligencia libre mediante las palabras proferidas hace mucho por hombres ignorantes.

The mind which has become accustomed to the freedom and impartiality of philosophic contemplation will preserve something of the same freedom and impartiality in the world of action and emotion.

In this lies Man's true freedom: in determination to worship only the God created by our own love of the good.

Il mondo non ha bisogno di dogmi, ha bisogno di libera ricerca.

Querría ver un mundo en el que la educación tendiese a la libertad mental en lugar de encerrar la mente de la juventud en la rígida armadura del dogma, calculado para protegerla durante toda su vida contra los dardos de la prueba imparcial.

In England, under the Blasphemy Laws, it is illegal to express disbelief in the Christian religion, though in practice the law is not set in motion against the well-to-do. It is also illegal to teach what Christ taught on the subject of non-resistance. Therefore, whoever wishes to avoid becoming a criminal must profess to agree with Christ's teaching, but must avoid saying what that teaching was.

Socialism as a panacea seems to me to be mistaken in this way, since it is too ready to suppose that better economic conditions will of themselves make men happy. It is not only more material goods that men need, but more freedom, more self-direction, more outlet for creativeness, more opportunity for the joy of life, more voluntary coöperation, and less involuntary subservience to purposes not their own.

I regard love as one of the most important things in human life, and I regard any system as bad which interferes unnecessarily with its free development.

In such a life [of private interests] there is something feverish and confined, in comparison with which the philosophic life is calm and free.

Bertrand Russell

Only in thought is man a God; in action and desire we are the slaves of circumstance.

No man need fear that by making himself rational he will make his life dull. On the contrary, since rationality consists in the main of internal harmony, the man who achieves it is freer in his contemplation of the world and in the use of his energies to achieve external purposes that is the man who is perpetually hampered by inward conflicts. Nothing is so dull as to be encased in self, nothing so exhilarating as to have attention and energy directed outwards.

I think the essence of wisdom is emancipation, as far as possible, from the tyranny of the here and now.

Religion has existed since before the dawn of history, while science has existed for at most four centuries; but when science has become old and venerable, it will control our lives as much as religion has ever done. I foresee the time when all who care for the freedom of the human spirit will have to rebel against a scientific tyranny.

We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.

Ich hätte gern eine Welt, in der das Ziel der Erziehung geistige Freiheit wäre und nicht darin bestünde, den Geist der Jugend in eine Rüstung zu zwängen, die ihn das ganze Leben lang vor den Pfeilen objektiver Beweise schützen soll. Die Welt braucht offene Herzen und geistige Aufgeschlossenheit, und das erreichen wir nicht durch starre Systeme, mögen sie nun alt oder neu sein.

The morality of work is the morality of slaves, and the modern world has no need of slavery

Take yer happiness, try to harm none, and let no man, even the one ye love, dominate ye. 'Tis my rule of life now.

The hours that made them were good, and so were the moments that made the hours. I have had responsibilities and work, dangers and pleasure, good friends, and a world without walls to live in. These things I still have, I remind myself — and shall have until I leave them.