Quotes About Freedom

If capital is privately controlled, then people are going to have to sell themselves in order to survive. Now, you can say, they rent themselves freely, it's a free contract - but that's a joke. If your choice is, do what I tell you or starve, that's not a choice - it's infact what was commonly referred to as 'wage slavery' in more civilized times, like the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

The picture of the world that's presented to the public has only the remotest relation to reality. The truth of the matter is buried under edifice after edifice of lies upon lies. It's all been a marvellous success from the point of view in deterring the threat of democracy, achieved under conditions of freedom, which is extremely interesting.

So if a person produces an object on command, Humboldt wrote, we may admire what he did but we will despise what he is, not a true human being who acts in his own impulses and desires.

I don't think we're smart enough to design, in any detail what a perfectly just and free society would be like. I think we can give some guidelines and more significant, we can ask how we can progress in that direction.

Freedom without opportunity is a devil's gift.

A democracy is a system in which you are free to do whatever you like as long as you do what we tell you.

There is oppression that shouldn't exist. There is a struggle for freedom all the time. There are very serious dangers: the species may be heading toward extinction. I can't see how anybody can fail to have an interest in trying to help people become more engaged in thinking about these problems and doing something about them.

What we have to do is trap them into consumerism. Carry out enough propaganda and teasers and so on to make freed slaves feel they've got to have these commodities. They go to the company store and they get them, they're in debt, and pretty soon they're trapped—the slave economy's back.

If capital is privately controlled, then people are going to have to rent themselves in order to survive. Now, you can say, "they rent themselves freely, it's a free contract"—but that's a joke. If your choice is, "do what I tell you or starve," that's not a choice—it's in fact what was commonly referred to as wage slavery in more civilized times, like the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, for example.

The choice is ours, the choice is yours.

Classical liberalism was wrecked on the shoals of capitalism, but

she has a blank sheet to write upon.

Whatever does not spring from a man's free choice, or is only the result of instruction and guidance, does not enter into his very being, but remains alien to his true nature; he does not perform it with truly human energies, but merely with mechanical exactness

La libertad, cuando no hay oportunidades, es un regalo envenenado; y negarse a proporcionar estas oportunidades es un acto criminal.

People are called intellectuals because they're privileged. It's not because they're smart or they know a lot. There are plenty of people who know more and are smarter but aren't intellectuals because they don't have the privilege. The people called intellectuals are privileged. They have resources and opportunities, and enough freedom has been won so that they state does not have an unrestrained capacity to repress

The workers who built the settlements and produced the export crops may now enjoy their freedom in the world's largest prison.58

The enormous public relations industry, from its Origins early in this Century, has been dedicated to the control of the public mind as Business Leaders described the task and they acted on their words, surely one of the central themes of modern history. The fact that the public relations industry has its roots and major centers in the country that is most free is exactly which we should expect, with a proper understanding of Humes Maxim.

Di solito, più si sente la necessità di parlare degli ideali della democrazia, meno democratico è il sistema.

Si la escuela fuera verdaderamente democrática, no sería necesario adoctrinar con tópicos sobre la democracia.

It took Dewey only a few years to shift from responsible intellectual of World War I to "anarchist of the lecture-platform," denouncing the "un-free press" and questioning "how far genuine intellectual freedom and social responsibility are possible on any large scale under the existing economic regime.

En una sociedad democrática y libre, los trabajadores deberían ser «los dueños de su propio destino industrial», y no herramientas alquiladas por los empresarios.

Es «antiliberal y amoral» el formar a los niños para que trabajen «sin apelar a la libertad ni a la inteligencia, sino en nombre del salario».

If capital is privately controlled, then people are going to have to rent themselves in order to survive. Now, you can say, "they rent themselves freely, it's a free contract"—but that's a joke. If your choice is, "do what I tell you or starve," that's not a choice

Oggi come ieri, non c'è motivo di pensare che siamo governati da leggi misteriose e sconosciute, anziché da semplici decisioni prese all'interno di istituzioni che sono soggette alla volontà umana, istituzioni umane, che devono dimostrare la propria legittimità e se non superano l'esame possono essere sostituite da altre più libere e più giuste, com'è accaduto spesso in passato.