Quotes About Freedom

Freedom is the recognition of contingency.

In 1866, Congress enforced the abolition of slavery by passing a Civil Rights Act, prohibiting actions that it deemed perpetuated the characteristics of slavery. Actions that made African Americans second-class citizens, such as racial discrimination in housing, were included in the ban.

Acceptance of dissent is the fundamental requirement of a free society.

Not giving a shit, she decided, is like the defrost option on a car's heater that miraculously unfogs the windshield, allowing you to see where you're headed.

What I discovered I liked best about striking out on my bicycle was that the farther I got from home, the more interesting and unusual my thoughts became.

Well, you know, it ain't nothin' out of the ordinary happened to Olive and me. Happens hundreds of times every day. But we're still livin' in the dark ages, I guess. Cain't just go to a doctor and say you want an abortion. Be ten thousand people that's got nothin' better to do than trying to run everybody else's lives, and they'd put you in jail, or shoot you or somethin'.

Why be normal? What's the point?

Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.

There's no such thing as neutral education. Education either functions as an instrument to bring about conformity or freedom.

I cut off my head and threw it in the sky. It turned into birds. I called it thinking.

His hands keep turning into birds, and his hands keep flying away from him. Eventually the birds must land.

I cut off my head and threw it in the sky.

names of fire and flight and snow

His hands keep turning into birds, and his hands keep flying away from him. Eventually the birds must land. - Unfinished Duet

Take the light inside you like a blessing, like a knee in the chest, holding onto it and not letting go. Now let it go.

the horses running until they forget that they are horses.

Value your freedom or you will lose it, teaches history. 'Don't bother us with politics', respond those who don't want to learn.

With paper printed books, you have certain freedoms. You can acquire the book anonymously by paying cash, which is the way I always buy books. I never use a credit card. I don't identify to any database when I buy books. Amazon takes away that freedom.

In the free/libre software movement, we develop software that respects users' freedom, so we and you can escape from software that doesn't.

When I launched the development of the GNU system, I explicitly said the purpose of developing this system is so we can use our computers and have freedom, thus if you use some other free system instead but you have freedom, then it's a success. It's not popularity for our code but it's success for our goal.

Free software is software that respects your freedom and the social solidarity of your community. So it's free as in freedom.

If ebooks mean that readers' freedom must either increase or decrease, we must demand the increase.

I don't have a problem with someone using their talents to become successful, I just don't think the highest calling is success. Things like freedom and the expansion of knowledge are beyond success, beyond the personal. Personal success is not wrong, but it is limited in importance, and once you have enough of it it is a shame to keep striving for that, instead of for truth, beauty, or justice.

Even after emerging from prison and becoming South Africa's first democratically elected president, he continued