Quotes About Freedom

Thinking for yourself and making your own decisions can be frightening. Letting go of other people's expectations can leave you feeling empty for a time. And yet seeing yourself as an independent adult who can stand up for your own choices frees you to accept yourself as you are.

I do not make the rules [. . .] This annoys me, and so I comfort myself by breaking them

People who have no choice are generally unhappy. But people with too many choices are almost as unhappy as those who have no choice at all.

DOGMA: a political belief one is unreasonably committed to, such as the notion that freedom is good and slavery is bad. BIAS: predeliction for a particular dogma. For example, the feminist bias is that women are equal to men and the male chauvinist bias is that women are inferior. The unbiased view is that the truth lies somewhere in between. (an early comment on backlash, from Glossary for the Eighties)

To refuse to fight for love that is both free and responsible is in a sense to reject the possibility of love itself.

What matters is to leave what has always been, and look for what has never been yet. I had had riches and marriage and a child, and I had nothing. Nothing is not enough for any man. The only answer is to abandon that nothing, and go in search of something. A different kind of treasure, perhaps. A different kind of salvation. Perhaps not salvation at all, only the loss of oneself.

he thought of songbirds caged, drooping without air to play on the cords of their throats, without heart to sing, and knew that they might very well die.

Hey! Not so fast, or we might arrive on time. Freedom means never arriving on time—never, never!

Blind and unwavering undisciplined at all times constitutes the real strength of all free men.

and he had to have freedom-not even that, just to read and sleep in peace, without a uniform-sooner still.

O! cette ville n'est remarquable que parce qu'elle est composée de maisons comme toutes les villes et que toutes ses maisons ressemblent à toutes les maisons! ...pas curious du tout / La vérité me force? Nous sommes les hommes libres! Nous devons donc désobéir, même à la vérité.

For man is man and master of his fate.

The vow that binds too strictly snaps itself.

I do but sing because I must,And pipe but as the linnets sing.

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky!

Go by, go by, with all your din, Your dust, your greed, your guile, Your pomp, your gold; you cannot win From her one smile.... Outlawed? Then hills and glens and streams Are outlawed, too. Proud world, from our immortal dreams, We banish you.

The free social individual can only come into existence with the abolition of the division of labour, and the division of labour is fundamentally identical with the division of society into classes.

Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas. The source of better ideas is wisdom. The surest path to wisdom is a liberal education.

Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only weapon against bad ideas is better ideas.

Books won't stay banned - Ideas won't go to jail.

Não se deve esperar da cultura de massas e, menos ainda, da sua versão capitalista de indústria cultural, o que ela não quer dar: lições de liberdade social e estímulos para a cons­trução de um mundo que não esteja atrelado ao dinheiro e ao status.

Air represented a confident and free imagination in which everything was possible. Earth he still loved, but only as a place to land on and take off from.

Not easily may an individual escape the deep slavery of the herd.

Ah, yet would God this flesh of mine might beWhere air might wash and long leaves cover me;Where tides of grass break into foam of flowers,Or where the wind's feet shine along the sea.