Quotes About Independence

Once you learn to read you will be forever free

To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the most pleasant sensations in the world. You are surrounded by adventure.

Das gibt dem Menschen seine ganze Jugend, daß er Fesseln zerreißt.

All I need is a sheet of paper and something to write with, and then I can turn the world upside down.

Today as always, men fall into two groups: slaves and free men. Whoever does not have two-thirds of his day for himself, is a slave, whatever he may be: a statesman, a businessman, an official, or a scholar.

Whenever I climb I am followed by a dog called 'Ego'.

I hate who steals my solitude, without really offer me in exchange company.

He who obeys, does not listen to himself!

Freedom is the will to be responsible for ourselves.

He who cannot obey himself will be commanded. That is the nature of living creatures.

There is a false saying: "How can someone who can't save himself save others?" Supposing I have the key to your chains, why should your lock and my lock be the same?

I mistrust all systematizers and avoid them. the will to a system is a lack of integrity.

The Great Man... is colder, harder, less hesitating, and without fear of 'opinion'; he lacks the virtues that accompany respect and 'respectability,' and altogether everything that is the 'virtue of the herd.' If he cannot lead, he goes alone... He knows he is incommunicable: he finds it tasteless to be familiar... When not speaking to himself, he wears a mask. There is a solitude within him that is inaccessible to praise or blame.

No one can build you the bridge on which you, and only you, must cross the river of life. There may be countless trails and bridges and demigods who would gladly carry you across; but only at the price of pawning and forgoing yourself. There is one path in the world that none can walk but you. Where does it lead? Don't ask, walk!

So long as men praise you, you can only be sure that you are not yet on your own true path but on someone else's.

Your educators can only be your liberators.

My conception of freedom. — The value of a thing sometimes does not lie in that which one attains by it, but in what one pays for it — what it costs us. Liberal institutions cease to be liberal as soon as they are attained: later on, there are no worse and no more thorough injurers of freedom than liberal institutions.

Are you a slave? Then you cannot be a friend. Are you a tyrant? Then you cannot have friends.

But in the loneliest desert happens the second metamorphosis: here the spirit becomes a lion; he will seize his freedom and be master in his own wilderness.

Do you want to go along with others? or go on ahead? or go off on your own?...you must know what you want and that you want. Fourth question for the conscience.

He is called a free spirit who thinks differently from what, on the basis of his origin, environment, his class and profession, or on the basis of the dominant views of the age, would have been expected of him

I am alone again and I want to be so; alone with the pure sky and open sea.

Disobedience- that is the nobility of slaves.

Here the spirit becomes a lion who would conquer his freedom and be master… Who is the great dragon whom the spirit will no longer call lord and go? 'Thou shalt' is the name of the great dragon. But the spirit of the lion says, 'I will.