Quotes About Freedom

The ability to go anywhere in our imagination is a pure expression of individual freedom. It is a creative force that can help us transcend reality.

We have hundreds of virtual "friends" but no one we can ask to feed the cat. We are a lot more free than our grandparents were, but also more disconnected.

These couples, in their own ways, have chosen to acknowledge the possibility of the third: the recognition that our partner has his or her own sexuality, replete with fantasies and desires that aren't necessarily about us. When we validate one another's freedom within the relationship, we're less inclined to search for it elsewhere.

Erotic, emotional connection generates closeness that can become overwhelming, evoking claustrophobia. It can feel intrusive. What was initially a secure enclosure becomes confining. While our need for closeness is almost as basic as our need for food, it carries with it anxieties and threats that can inhibit desire. We want closeness, but not so much that we feel trapped by it.

His security rests not only on what Alice does but also on what she thinks. Her fantasies are proof of her freedom and separateness, and that

These developments, in conjunction with postwar economic prosperity, have contributed to a period of unmatched freedom and individualism.

In the move from the village to the city, we became more free but also more alone. Individualism began its remorseless conquest of Western civilization. Mate selection became infused with romantic aspirations meant to counter the increasing isolation of modern life.

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."9

Swinging is a form of consensual adultery. It also accords equal freedom to both partners.

Pascal Bruckner writes, "Freedom does not release us from responsibilities but instead increases them. It does not lighten our burden but weighs us down further. It resolves problems less than it multiplies paradoxes. If this world sometimes seems brutal, that is because it is 'emancipated' and each individual's autonomy collides with that of others and is injured by them: never have people had to bear on their shoulders so many constraints.

Infidelity happens in good marriages, in bad marriages, and even when adultery is punishable by death. It happens in open relationships where extramarital sex is carefully negotiated beforehand. And the freedom to leave or divorce has not made cheating obsolete.

First, the institutionalization of relationships—a passage from freedom and independence to commitment and responsibility. Second, the overfamiliarity that develops when intimacy and closeness replace individuality and mystery. And lastly, the desexualizing nature of certain roles—mother, wife, and house manager all promote the de-eroticization of the self.

monogamy should be an "opt-in." If people were given more opportunity to choose, he offers, maybe some of them wouldn't have opted in and then they wouldn't be in trouble for adultery. Rather than penalize those who fail monogamy's standardized test, we should recognize that the test is disproportionately difficult.

Defining adultery is at once quite simple and quite complicated. Today, in the West, relationship ethics are no longer dictated by religious authority. The definition of infidelity no longer resides with the Pope, but with the people. This means more freedom, as well as more uncertainty. Couples must draw up their own terms.

Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl distills a profound truth: "Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."9

All these discussions inevitably raise the thorny question of the nature of our erotic freedom. Do we expect our partners' erotic selves to belong entirely to us? I'm talking about thoughts, fantasies, dreams, and memories, and also turn-ons, attractions, and self-pleasure. These aspects of sexuality can be personal, and part of our sovereign selfhood—existing in our own secret garden.

Being a mistress suited Rose—in the words of novelist Susan Cheever, "I had my freedom and I was someone else's fantasy.

Erotic intimacy invites us into a state of unboundedness where we experience a sweet freedom. We get a temporary break from ourselves—the legacies of our childhood, the habits of our relationship, and the constraints of our respective cultures.

Thank God. You are now a little bit lighter, you are a little bit more you. 'Cause if you can lose it—a car, an idea, a belief, a woman—it wasn't yours.

Oddly, with discipline, structure, and order, you will find freedom, anything is possible. Without it, locating your saddle may take all morning.

Piccole decisioni prese per prova ci portano ad altre decisioni e a mano a mano che il tempo passa e che le decisioni si sommano, la nostra libertà nel prendere decisioni è sempre più limitata per colpa dei legami che ci sono sempre tra una decisione e l'altra.

Up home we loved a good storm coming, we'd fly outdoors and run up and down to meet it," her mother used to say. "We children would run as fast as we could go along the top of that mountain when the wind was blowing, holding our arms right open. The wilder it blew the better we liked it.

Don't ever let this husband of yours, whoever he is, know you can cook, Dabney Fairchild, or you'll spend the rest of your life in the kitchen. That's the first thing I want to tell you.

People live their own way, and to a certain extent I almost believe they may die their own way, Laurel.