Quotes About Freedom

But how do you know who's a watcher and who's a prisoner?" I asked, pulling into the empty parking lot. "That's the point. Even the watchers are prisoners.

I climbed into my car and started to head home, my visor down against the glare of the sun. But at the last minute, I turned left, because I never had before, and because I had time to go down different road.

The saying at Latham was 'Welcome to the rotation,' but the unspoken second half of that phrase was 'you can exit through either of two doors.

The gooey, amorphous "spirituality" of paganism allowed people to do their own thing in matters of religion. Sing, shout, prophesy, pray, go into a trance . . . nobody gave a fig, so long as you did not attempt to impose any of your high-falutin' opinions on anyone else.

The longer we remain isolated in a period of liberty, the harder it will be to find one another in a time of persecution.

Developing the cognitive control that leads to a more contemplative Christian life is the key to living as free men and women in post-Christian America. The man whose desires are under the control of his reason is free. The man who does whatever occurs to him is a slave. Untold

We cannot hope to resist the coming soft totalitarianism if we do not have our spiritual lives in order. This is the message of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the great anti-communist dissident, Nobel laureate, and Orthodox Christian. He believed the core of the crisis that created and sustained communism was not political but spiritual.

The testimony of anti-communist dissidents is clear: Only in solidarity with others can we find the spiritual and communal strength to resist. The longer we remain isolated in a period of liberty, the harder it will be to find one another in a time of persecution. We must see in our brothers and sisters not a burden of obligation but the blessing of our own freedom from loneliness, suspicion, and defeat.

The essence of modernity is to deny that there are any transcendent stories, structures, habits, or beliefs to which individuals must submit and that should bind our conduct. To be modern is to be free to choose. What is chosen does not matter; the meaning is in the choice itself. There is no sacred order, no other world, no fixed virtues and permanent truths. There is only here and now and the eternal flame of human desire. Volo ergo sum—I want, therefore I am.

Rather, they must keep their balance and stay focused on, in Havel's words, "the everyday, thankless, and never-ending struggle of human beings to live more freely, truthfully, and in quiet dignity.

Developing the cognitive control that leads to a more contemplative Christian life is the key to living as free men and women in post-Christian America. The

In therapeutic culture, which has everywhere triumphed, the great sin is to stand in the way of the freedom of others to find happiness as they wish. This goes hand in hand with the sexual revolution, which, along with ethnic and gender identity politics, replaced the failed economic class struggle as the utopian focus of the post-1960s radical left.

vivir «tras la virtud» no significa solo habitar en una sociedad llena de discrepancias a la hora de considerar virtuosa tal creencia o conducta, sino en una que además cuestiona que la virtud exista. En la sociedad de la posvirtud, los individuos están dotados del mayor grado de libertad de pensamiento y acción y la sociedad se convierte en «una colección de desconocidos que persiguen su interés bajo un mínimo de limitaciones».

That, and the way those who take away freedom couch it in the language of liberating victims from oppression.

The old, hard totalitarianism had a vision for the world that required the eradication of Christianity. The new, soft totalitarianism does too, and we are not equipped to resist its sneakier attack. As we know, communism was militantly atheistic and declared religion to be its mortal enemy. The Soviets and their European allies murdered clergy and cast an uncounted number of believers, both ordained and lay, into prisons and work camps, where many suffered torture.

If you isolate yourself, you will become weird," Father Marc continued. "It is a tricky balance between allowing freedom and openness on the one hand, and maintaining a community identity on the other. The idea of community itself should not be allowed to become an idol. A community is a living organism that must change and grow and adapt.

The truth has power to end every tyranny.

Here is the end point of modernity: the autonomous, freely choosing individual, finding meaning in no one but himself.

we should start thinking seriously about why we have become the richest and most free society ever to exist, yet our wealth and personal liberty have bought us so little happiness.

Nothing was real about life under communism. The state's control was total. What led Popkov to seek fellowship with Christians was reading The Stranger, the celebrated 1942 novel by Albert Camus, the French existentialist. Though Camus was an atheist, the novel compelled the young Russian living in an atheist state to look for Christ.

Now, in liberty and relative prosperity, the children of the last communist generation have fallen to a more subtle, sophisticated tyranny: one that tells them that anything they find difficult is a form of oppression. For these millennials, unhappiness is slavery and freedom is liberation from the burden of unchosen obligations.

Classical liberals are more concerned with individual freedom, while leftists embrace equality of outcome.

the concept that real freedom is found by liberating the self from all binding commitments (to God, to marriage, to family), and be increasing worldly comforts - that is a road that leads to hell.

Cats have it all - admiration, an endless sleep, and company only when they want it.