Freedom Quotes

Vladimir Ilyich (Lenin), your concrete actions are completely unworthy of the ideas you pretend to hold.Is it possible that you do not know what a hostage really is — a man imprisoned not because of a crime he has committed, but only because it suits his enemies to exert blackmail on his companions? ... If you admit such methods, one can foresee that one day you will use torture, as was done in the Middle Ages.I hope you will not answer me that Power is for political men a professional duty, and that any attack against that power must be considered as a threat against which one must guard oneself at any price. This opinion is no longer held even by kings... Are you so blinded, so much a prisoner of your own authoritarian ideas, that you do not realise that being at the head of European Communism, you have no right to soil the ideas which you defend by shameful methods ... What future lies in store for Communism when one of its most important defenders tramples in this way every honest feeling?

~ Pyotr Kropotkin

All longings the essence for real liberation only, Freedom from all sides, an ultimate supremacy;- 43 -

~ Munindra Misra

But now I understand something more fully that I once only understood abstractly. I see how utterly ridiculous it is to think that the state can be the right means to help those who are poor or living at the margins of society. The state is their enemy, as it is for everyone else.

~ Jeffrey Tucker

That frontier operated as a rough and ready homeostatic device; the more a state pressed its subjects, the fewer subjects it had. The frontier underwrote popular freedom.

~ James C. Scott

If I had wings I would fly,I'd soar on high where only eagles dareI'd let them rip, I'd let them tear, until all that remained was me bare.

~ Michelle Horst

If God created our will, then he's responsible for every choice we make... So-- as I recall, the official philosophical answer is that free will doesn't exist. Only the illusion of free will, because the causes of hour behavior are so complex that we can't trace them back. If you've got one line of dominoes knocking each other down, one by one, then you can always say, look, this domino fell because that one pushed it. But when you have an infinite number of dominoes that can be traced back in an infinite number of directions, you can never find where the causal chain begins. So you think, That domino fell because it wanted to... Even if there is no such thing as free will, we have to treat each other as if there were free will in order to live together in society.

~ Orson Scott Card

And then there is the most dangerous risk of all - the risk of spending your life not doing what you want on the bet you can buy yourself the freedom to do it later.

~ Randy Komisar

If, living in the world, you refuse to be a part of it, you will help others out of this chaos - not in the future, not tomorrow, but now.

~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

If, living in the world, you refuse to be a part of it, you will help other out of this chaos - not in the future, not tomorrow, but now.

~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

When this happens, as it is today, then, to quote Eric Hoffer, “When freedom destroys order, the yearning for order will destroy freedom.”At that point the words left or right will make no difference. They are only two roads to the same end. There is no difference between authoritarian government from the right or the left: the results are the same. An elite, an authoritarianism as such, will gradually force form on society so that it will not go on to chaos. And most people will accept it - from the desire for personal peace and affluence, from apathy, and from the yearning for order to assure the functioning of some political system, business, and the affairs of daily life. That is just what Rome did with Caesar Augustus

~ Francis A. Schaeffer

To criticize one's country is to do it a service... Criticism, in short, is more than a right; it is an act of patriotism--a higher form of patriotism, I believe, than the familiar rituals and national adulation.

~ J. William Fulbright (Senator)

Now that a full flood of music has swept over our country, let Nikhil practise his scales, while we rouse the land with our cracked voices[.]

~ Rabindranath Tagore

This is our sacred land, Bharat, a land whose glories are sung by theGods, a land visualized by Mahayogi Aurobindo as the living manifestationof the Divine Mother of the universe, the Jaganmaataa, the Aadishakti,the Mahaamaayaa, the Mahaadurgaa, Who has assumed concrete form toenable us to see Her and worship Her,...a land worshipped by all our seers andsages as Maatrubhoomi, Dharmabhoomi, Karmabhoomi and Punybhoomi, averitable Devabhoomi and Mokshabhoomi -

~ Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar

When we have simplicity we have so much more freedom in every single aspect of our lives. Maybe it's a classic case of less is more? Less stress, less worries, more time, more happiness.

~ Evan Sutter

Simplicity is NOT boring. Simplicity is not self-denial. It is an indulgence, providing you with a wealth of time and space.Simplicity IS discerning the essential from the unessential. Simplicity is having room for the unexpected. It is savoring life.Most of all, simplicity is freedom: It's freedom to choose what you want in your life because you're not letting in everything that shows up. It's freedom to do what you want because you're not already committed to more obligations than you can handle and the maintenance of more objects than you'll ever use.

~ Victoria Moran

Freedom is the realization that it is sufficient to simply be a human being.

~ Bryant Mcgill

When you realize that the feeling you have — is — the response you choose, you are free in that moment.

~ Bryant Mcgill

Take your place, then. Look at what happened from every side and consider all the other ways it could have gone. Consider, even, an Africa unconquered altogether. Imagine those first Portuguese adventurers approaching the shore, spying on the jungle’s edge through their fitted brass lenses. Imagine that by some miracle of dread or reverence they lowered their spyglasses, turned, set their riggings, sailed on. Imagine all who came after doing the same. What would that Africa be now? All I can think of is the other okapi, the one they used to believe in. A unicorn that could look you in the eye.

~ Barbara Kingsolver

The mythology of freedom under capitalism for the average person is a con job.

~ Bryant Mcgill

Montrose decided then and there that a full library, one made of old-fashioned paper books with bindings, the kind that cannot be electronically re-edited by anonymous lines of hidden code, was just as much a necessity for a free man as a shooting iron or a printing press.

~ John C. Wright

The library is a symbol of freedom.

~ Sara Sheridan

Potentially, anyone writing on the Web can reach a global audience. In practice, hardly anyone ever does.

~ Nick Cohen

. . . I can see how the issue of exercising corporate control over users content is truly enraging here, on a site significantly made by these contributors. It’s unavoidable that we come to this, in my opinion (corporations always do), and GR/Amazon has all keys to the kingdom, but I can see why it’s so disappointing and enraging.Your content is theirs to do with as they please, their software works as they want, your choices are take it or leave it.The Internet is no longer for sharing (nor for porn!), it’s for corporations to exercise their control over users.

~ G.r. Reader

Why am I a socialist? Simple: Because I believe in freedom.

~ Michelle Templet

I have come to realize that we are born and we die and that the word 'freedom' is a man's greatest lie.

~ Harley Mei Kent

Do not treat others as you would not like to be treated' frees one from hypocrisy. 'Treat others as you would like to be treated' enslaves one with insincerity.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Lets toil under the sun to build poles of love. And let our roots be planted like strong trees that strong winds can't move.

~ Auliq Ice

Stop – Unplug – Escape – Enjoy.’ This is the message of the Priory, and the key to enjoying a peaceful and rewarding life.

~ Fennel Hudson

It is possible to escape the complexities, challenges and pace of modern life. All we have to do is close our eyes and picture a quiet world where time moves slowly.

~ Fennel Hudson

Isolation serves as the ideal antidote to the bone-aching stresses of work.

~ Fennel Hudson

The ever-increasing weight of responsibilities that enmeshes our lives keeps us locked into the system. We become the pulse that keeps the beast alive, but the cost is our own lives. The natural world around us shrinks, crushed beneath the suffocating might of work.

~ Fennel Hudson

We call ourselves poor, that's why we're poor. When we will start calling ourselves rich then we will become rich, even it won't look like that. Self trust is freedom.

~ Arefin Bashar Arif

Been Contented goes beyond our material wants; contentment sets us free from the illusion of having more or “Better things”, or expecting “better times it sets us free from the illusion that somehow things should be different.

~ Martin Suarez

Lebanese freedom of speech : You get to say whatever you like as long as the authorities approve of it... Hilarious.

~ Ziad K. Abdelnour

If it gathers dust, give it away ...

~ Ian Tucker

Give as you wish to live, it all come's back to you. And that's without exception ...

~ Ian Tucker

Remembering to be conscious is the beginning of inner peace and freedom.

~ Gabriella Kortsch

But what about the apparent absurdity of the idea of dignity, freedom, and reason, sustained by extreme military discipline, including of the practice of discarding weak children? This “absurdity” is simply the price of freedom—freedom is not free, as they put it in the film [300]. Freedom is not something given, it is regained through a hard struggle in which one should be ready to risk everything. Spartan ruthless military discipline is not simply the opposite of Athenian “liberal democracy,” it is its inherent condition, it lays the foundation for it: the free subject of Reason can only emerge through ruthless self-discipline. True freedom is not a freedom of choice made from a safe distance, like choosing between a strawberry cake and a chocolate cake; true freedom overlaps with necessity, one makes a truly free choice when one’s choice puts at stake one’s very existence—one does it because one simply “cannot do otherwise.” When one’s country is under foreign occupation and one is called by a resistance leader to join the fight against the occupiers, the reason given is not “you are free to choose,” but: “Can’t you see that this is the only thing you can do if you want to retain your dignity?

~ Slavoj Žižek

Freedom like charity, begins at home. No man is worthy to fight in the cause of freedom unless he has conquered his internal masters. He must learn control and discipline over the disastrous passions that would lead him to folly and ruin. He must conquer inordinate vanity and anger, self-deception, fear, and inhibition.

~ Jack Whiteside Parsons

We have not advanced very far in our spiritual lives if we have not encountered the basic paradox of freedom, to the effect that we are most free when we are bound. But not just any way of being bound will suffice; what matters is the character of our binding. The one who would like to be an athlete, but who is unwilling to discipline his body by regular exercise and by abstinence, is not free to excel on the field or the track. His failure to train rigorously and to live abstemiously denies him the freedom to go over the bar at the desired height, or to run with the desired speed and endurance. With one concerted voice the giants of the devotional life apply the same principle to the whole of life with the dictum: Discipline is the price of freedom.

~ Elton Trueblood