Quotes About Freedom

San Francisco seems to be the last sanctuary for the rootless in its tolerance for every form of lifestyle.

Your fears are a kind of prison that confines you within a limited range of action. The less you fear, the more power you will have and the more fully you will live.

Do not commit yourself to anybody or anything, for that is to be a slave, a slave to every man.... Above all, keep yourself free of commitments and obligations—they are the device of another to get you into his power.... (Baltasar Gracián, 1601-1658) PART

I give my mind the liberty to follow the first wise or foolish idea that presents itself

So rid yourself of your nasty habit of avoiding conflict, which is in any case unnatural. You are most often nice not out of your own inner goodness but out of fear of displeasing, out of insecurity. Go beyond that fear and you suddenly have options—the freedom to create pain, then magically dissolve it. Your seductive powers will increase tenfold.

To follow precisely the lead of others or advice from a book is self-defeating

Why can't fellows be allowed to do what they like when they like and as they like, instead of other fellows sitting on banks and watching them all the time and making remarks and poetry and things about them?

Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing -- absolutely nothing -- half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats. Simply messing' he went on dreamily: 'messing -- in -- boats; messing

here am I, footsore and hungry, tramping away from it, tramping southward, following the old call, back to the old life, THE life which is mine and which will not let me go.

Late in the evening, tired and happy and miles from home, they drew up on a remote common far from habitations, turned the horse loose to graze, and ate their simple supper sitting on the grass by the side of the cart. . . . [The] stars grew fuller and larger all around them, and a yellow moon, appearing suddenly and silently from nowhere in particular, came to keep them company. . . .

Beyond the Wild Wood comes the Wide World,' said the Rat. 'And that's something that doesn't matter, either to you or me.

He did not at all want to abandon the new life and its splendid spaces, to turn his back on sun and air and all they offered him and creep home and stay there; the upper world was all too strong, it called to him still, even down there, and he knew he must return to the larger stage. But it was good to think he had this to come back to; this place, which was all his own, these things which were so glad to see him again and could always be counted upon for the same simple welcome.

Once well underground, you know exactly where you are. Nothing can happen to you, and nothing can get at you. You're entirely your own master and you don't have to consult anybody or mind what they say. Things go on all the same overhead, and you let 'em, and don't bother about 'em. When you want to, up you go, and there the things are, waiting for you.

and I shall keep a pony-chaise to jog about the country in, just as I used to in the good old days, before I got restless, and

All along the backwater, Through the rushes tall, Ducks are a-dabbling, Up tails all! Ducks' tails, drakes' tails, Yellow feet a-quiver, Yellow bills all out of sight Busy in the river! Slushy green undergrowth Where the roach swim—Here we keep our larder, Cool and full and dim. Everyone for what he likes! We like to be Heads down, tails up, Dabbling free! High in the blue above Swifts whirl and call—We are down a-dabbling Uptails all!

Glorious, stirring sight!' murmured Toad, never offering to move. 'The poetry of motion! The REAL way to travel! The ONLY way to travel! Here to-day–in next week to-morrow! Villages skipped, towns and cities jumped–always somebody else's horizon! O bliss! O poop-poop! O my! O my!' 'O STOP being an ass, Toad!' cried the Mole despairingly.

Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.

It is said that the price of freedom is vigilance, and an important form of vigilance is attention to political rhetoric, which often reveals how things are going.

Freedom must mean that institutions have the autonomy to determine their own practices and admirations within the law. Otherwise, we confront the totalitarian demand that everyone should think the same thing and participate in the same admirations.

The search for liberation is a rejection of the responsibilities of freedom in favour of a release into the irresponsibility of rights.

Kenneth Minogue

The search for liberation is a rejection of the responsibilities of freedom in favor of a release into the irresponsibility of rights. And a right is irresponsible because it is a legally entrenched liberty that does not contain within itself the limitations instinctive in a free society.

I told you I don't want to live like that anymore—for other people, what they think, what they believe. I don't think it's the way to live. It isn't for me anyway. All right. I wish I had your good sense. You're right, of course. Are you over it now? I'm getting there. Do you want another beer? No. But if you want more wine I'll sit here with you while you drink it. I'll just watch you.

That is the attitude we need today. That is the "Battle Hymn of the Republic": the soldiers who sang that they would die to make men free.