Quotes About Freedom

Take these broken wings and learn to fly.

Paul's last words to Linda: "You're up on your beautiful Appaloosa stallion. It's a fine spring day. We're riding through the woods. The bluebells are all out, and the sky is clear-blue".

When I wake up on a Monday morning and I realise I don't have to go and work at the civil service, I really think I've won.

The imagination was the only country where a man could truly breathe free.

I could only dimly articulate it then, but I think I believed that Art would give me entry into a no-man's-land where the laws of straight no longer applied. And that once I touched the soul of another artist, a comrade in arms, the bodies would fall into place like folds of a garment, twining us in a passion of the flesh. Pretty high-falutin', and an awful lot of effort just to get a man to go to bed with you.

A curious paradox here: hand in hand with the political rebellion of the age went a certain omnisexual freedom, but that meant you could sleep with anyone, not that you could be gay.

A man ought to be free to find his reason. Not that freedom alone will serve it up: it requires the gods' own fury of luck to get two people to meet.

You need only to have glimpsed it once to know there's a window out of all this black and sleepless night. Then you must use it to hope on. Key to the dream country where all your people are whole again, and the gunboats can't reach you, and the Empire of Hate is rubble. You and your secret dream of freedom are the tidal wave. Keep watch, every night if you have to. As for sleeping, you can sleep when you're dead.

There is no God, I'm sure of that. But the more they've sought me out, the more I am convinced that there are holy men and women. So I send blessings, such as they are, to all my priests who constitute the Resistance. Down with the fur and the edicts. And if they like, they're welcome to include me in their prayers. Can't hurt. None of us will free the world of intolerance alone. We need people of God, especially if He isn't here.

That would be my theme, I thought: once I came out, the world was all windows.

People stay married because they want to, not because the doors are locked.

One can understand that there are more methodical arguments for revolution, but few that are more persuasive than this one: it takes leisure to be a man.

I agree with everything he said about emotional independence which he listed as his most important item.

Why should my happiness depend on the thoughts going on in someone else's head?

A.A. program of recovery is a spiritual way of life which allows alcoholics to live comfortably free from alcohol no matter what is or is not going on in their lives.

This requires a great deal of emotional independence.

He talks about the total destructiveness of resentments and the way in which they spiritually chain us to the person we dislike. Finally, he describes the actual process of forgiveness.

From this moment on, it is entirely His. You are completely free of it. It is gone, done, finished, over. It is as if it never happened. Through the Love of God, you and the other person are both now and forever free.

The more you try to control another person, the more you are under that person's control." If how you feel or what you do next depends on what the person you are trying to control does or does not do next, then you are under that person's control.

the Haitian Revolution was the inspiration for the pursuit of liberty in the Americas.

Forgiveness has no deadline.

You will learn most things by looking, but reading gives understanding. Reading will make you free.

Lezen is een soort handgemeen tussen lezer en boek. Het is een strijd. (...) Het is een afstandelijke houding, waarin ik leer de ruimte van mijn verbeelding te vergroten, alsof ik bepaalde rollen uitprobeer. Dat is een oefening in vrijheid en geeft aan mijn eigen levensovertuiging een zekere soepelheid en groothartigheid. Door op deze manier andere wegen uit te proberen, scheppen we opnieuw ruimte om onze houding te overwegen.

As an artist I come to sing, but as a citizen, I will always speak for peace, and no one can silence me in this.