Quotes About Freedom

When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know, the end result is tyranny and oppression no matter how holy the motives.

Limiting the freedom of news 'just a little bit' is in the same category within the classic example 'a little bit pregnant.'

Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny.

Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.

I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.

You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once.

There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.

Butterflies are self propelled flowers.

Genuine freedom is not based upon the negative psychology of release. Its roots are in positive acts of dedication to ends and values. Freedom presupposes the autonomous existence of values which men wish to be free to follow and measure up to.

A sense of the past is far more basic to the maintenance of freedom than hope for the future. The former is concrete and real; the latter is necessarily amorphous and more easily guided by those who can manipulate human actions and beliefs.

T]he forcing of any special brand of freedom and democracy on a people, whether they want it or not, by the brute force of war will be a denial of those very democratic principles which we are striving to advance.

True freedom depends on local self-government, effective access of the people to their individual rights. Sometimes I question whether the United States has not reached the limit of size under which the people of a nation can have a real voice in its government.

Eventually, you reach your goal of complete nondual freedom, the simultaneous nondual experience of supremely liberated cognitive dissonance, wherein you joyfully live the moment-to-moment reconciliation of all dichotomies. (p. 77)

There is no need for you to formally promote certain doctrines: your very presence becomes a teaching example to others, a liberating art that opens their imagination to the potential freedom they also can experience. (p. 79)

We have the assurance of the enlightened beings that reality is goodness, that reality is freedom from suffering, that reality is bliss. So we should never fear to open ourselves to reality, to cast aside our preconceptions and biases, and to open more and more to whatever turns out to be real. You can have faith in enlightenment, faith in evolutionary potential, faith in infinity, faith in your infinite self. (p. 222)

The world is what the individual makes it. A world of individuals is the intersubjective, collective mind field of all those individuals. Standing on the ground of freedom, we can see things afresh, enter relationships renewed and with a new purpose of sharing freedom and happiness. We can become poets and seers of reality. We can become great adepts, true individuals, agents of compassion. To live in a world is to be constantly creating that world. (p. 215)

A buddha is the butterfly that finally emerges from the cocoon of the human life-form. (p. 63)

Jazz has endured because it doesn't have a beginning or an ending. It's a moment.

[M*A*S*H] didn't get released by FOX, it escaped.

The sad thing is that, even though we know our lives aren't working in certain areas, we are still afraid to change. We are locked into our comfort zone, no matter how self-destructive it may be. Yet, the only way to get out of our comfort zone and to be free of our problems and limitations is to get uncomfortable.

Everything in life is a matter of choice. There are only two things we have no choice about. We cannot avoid these two things no matter how hard we try. The first is that we must die. Death is an absolute certainty, and the second thing we have no choice about is that we must live until we die. Now understand this - everything else in your life that you think you have to do, or are forced to do, is a choice.

The fear of death is the beginning of slavery.

On a planet that increasingly resembles one huge Maximum Security prison, the only intelligent choice is to plan a jail break.

Freedoms once granted will not be relinquished without a fight.