Quotes About Freedom

Our hearts are so often captivated by paltry God-replacements that matter to us more than the true God. When we start to see this, it is the beginning of change and the pathway to freedom.

Paul and Silas sang hymns in the Philippian jail. You can only do that if you have remembered that your welfare and freedom are in the hands of an all-powerful God who is your Father. Much of the drama of God's people is a drama of identity.

Forgiveness Involves Canceling a Debt

Forgiveness Is Costly, But Not Forgiving Is More Costly

If political leaders choose which rights to give citizens, then there must be a caste of leaders who enjoy greater freedom than do the citizens who are the recipients of these "rights." That is, the rulers must stand on a higher plane from which they can hand down judgments about what rights are to be given to or withheld from the people below.

brings to mind the tribulations of those groups—blacks in the 19th century, women in the 20th, gays in the 21st—who have learned through struggle that freedom is not given, only claimed.

to presume that some people are fundamentally entitled to decide how much freedom others should enjoy. What Would It Mean if the State Did Create Freedom? The danger of confusing the state's protection of prepolitical rights on one hand, with its creation of rights/privileges on the other, becomes clear when we ask whether the state creates, say, a woman's right not to be raped.

Beat and cuff the slave, keep him hungry and spiritless, and he will follow the chain of his master like a dog," but "give him a good master, and he wishes to become his own master."1

Modern tyranny is terror management. When the terrorist attack comes, remember that authoritarians exploit such events in order to consolidate power. The sudden disaster that requires the end of checks and balances, the dissolution of opposition parties, the suspension of freedom of expression, the right to a fair trial, and so on, is the oldest trick in the Hitlerian book. Do not fall for it.

10 Believe in truth. To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.

Be calm when the unthinkable arrives. Modern tyranny is terror management. When the terrorist attack comes, remember that authoritarians exploit such events in order to consolidate power. The sudden disaster that requires the end of checks and balances, the dissolution of political parties, the suspension of freedom of expression, the right to a fair trial, and so on, is the oldest trick in the Hitlerian book. DO NOT FALL FOR IT.

The most intelligent of the Nazis, the legal theorist Carl Schmitt, explained in clear language the essence of fascist governance. The way to destroy all rules, he explained, was to focus on the idea of the exception. A Nazi leader outmaneuvers his opponents by manufacturing a general conviction that the present moment is exceptional, and then transforming that state of exception into a permanent emergency. Citizens then trade real freedom for fake safety. When

Russians who voted in 1990 did not think that this would be the last free and fair election in their country's history, which (thus far) it has been.

In the end, though, freedom depends upon citizens who are able to make a distinction between what is true and what they want to hear. Authoritarianism arrives not because people say that they want it, but because they lose the ability to distinguish between facts and desires.

A common American error is to believe that freedom is the absence of state authority.

Do not obey in advance. Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.

What the great political thinker Hannah Arendt meant by totalitarianism was not an all-powerful state, but the erasure of the difference between private and public life. We are free only insofar as we exercise control over what people know about us, and in what circumstances they come to know it.

Inevitability and eternity have specific propaganda styles. Inevitability politicians spin facts into a web of well-being. Eternity politicians suppress facts in order to dismiss the reality that people are freer and richer in other countries, and the idea that reforms could be formulated on the basis of knowledge.

When politicians today invoke terrorism they are speaking, of course, of an actual danger. But when they try to train us to surrender freedom in the name of safety, we should be on our guard. There is no necessary tradeoff between the two. Sometimes we do indeed gain one by losing the other, and sometimes not. People who assure you that you can only gain security at the price of liberty usually want to deny you both.

The word freedom is hypocritical when spoken by the people who create the conditions that leave us sick and powerless. If our federal government and our commercial medicine make us unhealthy, they are making us unfree.

Tyrants seek the hook on which to hang you. Try not to have hooks.

the legal theorist Carl Schmitt, explained in clear language the essence of fascist governance. The way to destroy all rules, he explained, was to focus on the idea of the exception. A Nazi leader outmaneuvers his opponents by manufacturing a general conviction that the present moment is exceptional, and then transforming that state of exception into a permanent emergency. Citizens then trade real freedom for fake safety.

To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.

The American abolitionist Wendell Phillips did in fact say that "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." He added that "the manna of popular liberty must be gathered each day or it is rotten.