Quotes About Independence

People know when they are being lied to, they know when their rulers are absurd, they know they do not love their chains.

At the evident risk of seeming ridiculous, I want to begin by saying that I have tried for much of my life to write as if I was composing my sentences to be read posthumously. I hope this isn't too melodramatic or self-centred a way of saying that I attempt to write as if I did not care what reviewers said, what peers thought, or what prevailing opinions may be.

I'm very happy by myself--I'm lucky in that way--if I've got enough to read and something to write about and a bit of alcohol for me to add an edge, not to dull it.

As the great Eugene Debs used to tell his socialist voters in the 1912 election campaign, he would not lead them into a Promised Land even if he could, because if they were trusting enough to be led in, they would be trusting enough to be led out again. He urged them, in other words, to do their own thinking.

I was abruptly recognized as nonthreatening, brusquely advised to fuck off, and off I duly and promptly fucked.

Yes I have free will; I have no choice but to have it.

M]ost people, most of the time, prefer to seek approval or security. [...] Nonetheless, there are in all periods who feel themselves in some fashion to be apart. And it is not too much to say that humanity is very much in debt to such people, whether it chooses to acknowledge the debt or not.

there are in all periods people who feel themselves in some fashion to be apart. And it is not too much to say that humanity is very much in debt to such people, whether it chooses to acknowledge the debt or not. (Don't expect to be thanked, by the way. The life of an oppositionist is supposed to be difficult.)

Only servility requires the realm of illusion.

arriésgate a pensar por ti mismo encontraras mas felicidad, verdad, belleza y sabiduría

Take the risk of thinking for yourself, much more happiness, truth, beauty, and wisdom will come to you that way.

Getting my breath back and managing a brief statement in my cut-glass Oxford tones, I was abruptly recognized as nonthreatening, brusquely advised to fuck off, and off I duly and promptly fucked.

the few heroic sluts on this great working-girl turf

Who but a slave thanks his master for what his master has decided to do without bothering to consult him.

You must feel not that you want to but that you have to. It's worth emphasizing, too, because there is a relationship, inexact to be sure but a relationship, between this desire or need and the ambition to rely upon internal exile, or dissent; the decision to live at a slight acute angle to society.

Orwell's] very ordinariness is the sterling guarantee that we need no saintly representative consciences. We would do better to make sterner use of our own.

The Dalai Lama, for example, is entirely and easily recognizable to a secularist. In exactly the same way as a medieval princeling, he makes the claim not just that Tibet should be independent of Chinese hegemony—a "perfectly good" demand, if I may render it into everyday English—but that he himself is a hereditary king appointed by heaven itself. How convenient! Dissenting sects within his faith are persecuted; his one-man rule in an Indian enclave is absolute;

People assert themselves out of an unquenchable sense of dignity.

Sei que não sou o único que não se importa nem um pouco se ilusões religiosas forem ridicularizadas, mas se fosse o único, ainda assim não daria a mínima.

the tree of liberty must be nurtured by the blood of tyrants, as well as of patriots).

All women like men to be strong and decided and following out their careers. A woman wants to be motherly to a man and protect his weak side, but he must have a strong side too, which she can respect ... If you ever care for a woman, I don't advise you to let her see that you've got no ambition. Otherwise she'll get to despise you.

So how do you preserve such freedom," Zehron countered, "if the state itself coerces the people to follow its rules?

I despise the cowardly clinging to life, purely for the sake of life, that seems so deeply ingrained in the American temperament.

Fine, as the tailor said to the broke and naked knight, suit yourself.