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Quotes About Freedom

That was what happened to laughter when you caged it. It became unbearably sad. It was worse than crying.
~ Isobelle Carmody
It is up-hill work to oppose our prejudices; we have a democracy, but freedom of speech is enjoyed only by the most foolish members of this Assembly and by the comic poets in the theatre. As, however, I am not here to court your votes, I shall say what I think...
~ Isocrates
Under that democracy, license was not confounded with freedom. Political 'equality' has been understood in two senses: as meaning either that all are to share absolutely alike, or that every man is to receive his due. Our ancestors preferred that 'equality' which does not efface the distinction between merit and worthlessness.
~ Isocrates
Man is free in his imagination, but bound by his reason.
~ Unknown
????? ???? ???? Ne possédant rien comme mon cœur est léger comme l'air est frais
~ Unknown
Upon hearing that all phenomena are but a reflection of the mind, their minds were suddenly opened and their spirits settled; they let go of what they had depended on and gained total freedom of action.
~ Unknown
Swordsmanship is the art used at the border between life and death. It is easy to throw away your life and proceed toward death, but it is difficult not to make life and death two... Entrust life to life, and entrust death to death; but do not make this mind two... With this, you will gain complete freedom.
~ Unknown
One should be light like a bird and not like a feather.
~ Italo Calvino
Renouncing things is less difficult than people believe: it's all a matter of getting started. Once you've succeeded in dispensing with something you thought essential, you realize you can also do without something else, then without many other things.
~ Italo Calvino
To fall asleep like a bird. To have a wing you could stick your head under, a world of branches suspended above the earthly world, barely glimpsed down below, muffled and remote. Once you begin rejecting your present state, there is no knowing where you can arrive.
~ Italo Calvino
When you're young, all evolution lies before you, every road is open to you, and at the same time you can enjoy the fact of being there on the rock, flat mollusk-pulp, damp and happy.
~ Italo Calvino
A human being becomes human not through the casual convergence of certain biological conditions, but through an act of will and love on the part of other people. If this is not the case, then humanity becomes — as it is already to a large extent — no more than a rabbit-warren. But this is no longer a "free-range" warren but a "battery" one, in the conditions of artificiality in which it lives, with artificial light and chemical feed.
~ Italo Calvino
All this is like a dream which the word bears within itself and which, passing through him who writes, is freed and frees him.
~ Italo Calvino
Praise to be the stars that implode. A new freedom opens up within them: annulled from space, exonerated from time, existing at last, for themselves alone and no longer in relation to all the rest, perhaps only they can be sure they really exist.
~ Italo Calvino
L'umano arriva dove arriva l'amore, non ha confini se non quelli che gli diamo.
~ Italo Calvino
Escape, is one of those words I cannot hear without abandoning myself to endless ruminations
~ Italo Calvino
Her breast was young, the nipples rosy. Cosimo just grazed it with his lips, before Viola slid away over the branches as if she were flying, with him clambering after her, and that skirt of hers always in his face
~ Italo Calvino
Cosimo si gettò nel folto: avrebbe voluto che fosse mille volte più folto, una valanga di foglie e rami e spini e caprifogli e capelveneri da affondarci e sprofondarci e solo dopo essercisi del tutto sommerso cominciare a capire se era felice o folle di paura.
~ Italo Calvino
prendete la vita con leggerezza, che leggerezza non è superficialità, ma planare sulle cose dall'alto, non avere macigni sul cuore
~ Italo Calvino
Praise be to the stars that implode. A new freedom opens up within them: annulled from space, exonerated from time, existing, at last, for themselves alone and no longer in relation to all the rest, perhaps only they can be sure they really exist.
~ Italo Calvino
Para guardar sus libros, Cosimo construyo en varias ecuaciones una especie de bibliotecas colgantes, defendidas de la mejor manera posible de la lluvia y de los roedores, pero las cambiaba continuamente de sitio, según los estudios y los gustos del momento, porque consideraba los libros un poco como los pájaros y no quería verlos quietos o enjaulados, decía que se entristecían.
~ Italo Calvino
When the human realm seems doomed to heaviness, I feel the need to fly like Perseus into some other space. I am not talking about escaping into dreams or into the irrational. I mean that I feel the need to change my approach, to look at the world from a different angle, with different logic, different methods of knowing and proving. The images of lightness I'm looking for shouldn't let themselves dissolve as dreams do in the reality of the present and future . .
~ Italo Calvino
When examples of openness of thought come from a single ruler, they count for nothing, except to show that he alone can afford to be like that because he is king.
~ Italo Calvino
A distanza di tanti anni, devo dire che questo spirito, che permise ai partigiani di fare le cose meravigliose che fecero, resta ancor oggi, per muoversi nella contrastata realtà del mondo, un atteggiamento umano senza
~ Italo Calvino