Quotes About Freedom

This concern with the basic condition of freedom — the absence of physical constraint — is unquestionably necessary, but is not all that is necessary. It is perfectly possible for a man to be out of prison and yet not free — to be under no physical constraint and yet to be a psychological captive, compelled to think, feel and act as the representatives of the national State, or of some private interest within the nation, want him to think, feel and act.

The nature of psychological compulsion is such that those who act under constraint remain under the impression that they are acting on their own initiative. The victim of mind-manipulation does not know that he is a victim. To him the walls of his prison are invisible, and he believes himself to be free. That he is not free is apparent only to other people. His servitude is strictly objective.

The urge to escape from selfhood and the environment is in almost everyone almost all the time.

A man may be a pessimistic determinist before lunch and an optimistic believer in the will's freedom after it.

As political and economic freedom diminishes, sexual freedom tends compensating to increase. And the dictator (unless he needs cannon fodder and families with which to colonize empty or conquered territories) will do well to encourage that freedom. In conjunction with the freedom to daydream under the influence of dope and movies and the radio, it will help to reconcile his subjects to the servitude which is their fate.

But liberty, as we all know, cannot flourish in a country that is permanently on a war footing, or even a near-war footing. Permanent crisis justifies permanent control of everybody and everything by the agencies of the central government.

All right then, said the Savage defiantly, I'm claiming the right to be unhappy.

The question of the next generation will not be one of how to liberate the masses, but rather, how to make them love their servitude.

Democracy is, among other things, the ability to say 'no' to the boss. But a man cannot say 'no' to the boss, unless he is sure of being able to eat when the boss's favour has been withdrawn.

Without economic security, the love of servitude cannot possibly come into existence

But, Bernard, you're saying the most awful things.' 'Don't you wish you were free, Lenina?' 'I don't know what you mean. I am free. Free to have the most wonderful time. Everybody's happy nowadays.' He laughed, 'Yes, Everybody's happy nowadays. We begin giving children that at five. But wouldn't you like to be free to e happy in some other way, Lenina? In your own way, for example; not in everybody else's way.

The values, first of all, of individual freedom, based upon the facts of human diversity and genetic uniqueness; the values of charity and compassion, based upon the old familiar fact, lately rediscovered by modern psychiatry - the fact that, whatever their mental and physical diversity, love is as necessary to human beings as food and shelter; and finally the values of intelligence, without which love is impotent and freedom unattainable.

There was something called democracy. As though men were more than physico-chemically equal.

What fun it would be if one didn't have to think about happiness! - From Brave New World

The most nearly free men have always been those who combined virtue with insight.

And do remember that a gramme is better than a damn.

In a few years, no doubt, marriage licences will be sold like dog licences, good for a period of twelve months, with no law against changing dogs or keeping more than one animal at a time.

Your true traveler finds boredom rather agreeable than painful. It is the symbol of his liberty - his excessive freedom. He accepts his boredom, when it comes, not merely philosophically, but almost with pleasure.

Oh, what fun it would be, he thought, if one didn't have to think about happiness.

Meanwhile there is still some freedom left in the world. Many young people, it is true, do not seem to value freedom. But some of us still believe that, without freedom, human beings cannot become fully human and that freedom is therefore supremely valuable. Perhaps the forces that now menace freedom are too strong to be resisted for very long. It is still our duty to do whatever we can to resist them.

Each one of us, of course, the Controller meditatively continued, goes through life inside a bottle. But if we happen to be Alphas, our bottles are, relatively speaking enormous.

In the street he drew a deep breath. He was free. Free from recollection and anticipation. Free, for an hour or two, to refuse to admit the existence of the past or future. Free to live only now and here, in the place where his body happened at each instant to be. Free -- but the boast was idle; he went on remembering. Escape was not so easy a matter.

All men are born with an equal and inalienable right to disillusionment. So, until they choose to waive that right, it's three cheers for Technological Progress and a College Education for everybody.

Liberty to be inefficient and miserable. Freedom to be a round peg in a square hole.