Quotes About Freedom

We cling nervously to the melody, but we don't handle it freely, we don't really make anything new out of it, we merely overload it.

I never found much comfort in overly organized religion of any sort.

I'm speaking for everyone who has ever been incarcerated, especially those who are innocent or have been overly charged.

We ask our men and our women to go overseas to fight for our country and sacrifice so much for this great country so that we can be the land of the free, the land of the brave.

Every day, people serve their neighbors and our nation in many different ways, from helping a child learn and easing the loneliness of those without a family to defending our freedom overseas. It is in this spirit of dedication to others and to our country that I believe service should be broadly and deeply encouraged.

I wasn't overwhelmed by dogma, and that sort of freed me up to look at things differently.

Rooms without a view are like prisons for the people who have to stay in them.

Equality of rights means that some people cannot simply impose obligations on others, for the moral agency and rights of those others would then be violated.

Libertarians argue that no normal adult has the right to impose choices on other normal adults, except in abnormal circumstances, such as when one person finds another unconscious and administers medical assistance or calls an ambulance.

Without the right to self-preservation all of the other rights are meaningless.

In a world where you are constantly asked to be 'committed,' it is liberating to give yourself the license to be a dilettante. Commit to nothing. Try everything.

W]e should be mucking about all the time, because mucking about is enjoying life for its own sake, now, and not in preparation for an imaginary future. It's obvious that the mirth-filled man, the cheerful soul, the childish adult is the one who has least to fear from life.

Idleness for me is not a giving up on life but a spirited grabbing hold of it.

A conclusion I've come to at the Idler is that it starts with retreating from work but it's really about making work into something that isn't drudgery and slavery, and then work and life can become one thing.

Self-importance is a trap, because the moment we start to think that we actually matter is the moment when things start to go wrong. The truth is that you are supremely unimportant and nothing matters. All of man's striving is for nothing; all effort is wasted. To realize that everything is meaningless is tremendously liberating, since it then leaves us completely free to create our own lives and ignore the plans that others have for us.

We need to be responsible for ourselves; we must create our own republics. Today we hand over our responsibility to the boss, to the company, to government, and then blame them when everything goes wrong.

Only a few prefer liberty—the majority seek nothing more than fair masters. Sallust, Histories

All status was relative. What value would freedom have in a world where everyone was free? Even the poorest citizen could know himself to be immeasurably the superior of even the best-treated slave.

The Roman people too, in the end, grew tired of antique virtues, preferring the comforts of easy slavery and peace. Rather bread and circuses than endless internecine wars. As the Romans themselves recognized, their freedom had contained the seeds of its own ruin, a reflection sufficient to inspire much gloomy moralizing under the rule of a Nero or a Domitian.

Eclecticisme voert de boventoon, zoals overal in België, van bouwstijl tot grondwet, van burgerlijk interieur tot moraal. De een noemt het anarchie, de ander liberalisme, een derde bric-à-brac.

Er woekert een hardnekkig misverstand, bij kenners en bij leken, dat schrijven 'bewaren' betekent. Het is natuurlijk andersom. Schrijven is vernielen, bij gebrek aan beter. Waar je over schrijft gaat pas dan en juist daardoor voorbij. Literatuur is loslaten. Schrijven is verdrijven.

The Chinese leadership hoped that the world would soon forget the Tiananmen Square massacre. Our job in Congress is to ensure that we never forget those who lost their lives in Tiananmen Square that day or the pro-democracy cause for which they fought.

Let me start with Yahoo. As we meet today, a Chinese citizen who had the courage to speak his mind on the Internet is in prison because Yahoo chose to share his name and address with the Chinese Government.

And that we, far from being its authors, or its operators, or even its slaves (for slaves are agents who can harbour hopes, however faint, that one day a Moses or a Spartacus will set them free), were no more than actions and commands within its key-chains.