Quotes about freedom

Romanticism, like the Rousseauist Swinging Sixties, misunderstands the Dionysian as the pleasure principle, when it is in fact the gross continuum of pleasure-pain. Worshiping nature and seeking political and sexual freedom, Romanticism ends in imaginative entrammelment of every kind. Perfect freedom is intolerable and therefore impossible.

The search for freedom through sex is doomed to failure.

Sexual freedom, sexual liberation. A modern delusion. We are hierarchical animals. Sweep one hierarchy away, and another will take its place, perhaps less palatable than the first.

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing; the last of the human freedoms — to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.

I don't believe we need the government's help as much as some think we do. That belief sets me apart from the Democrats, since their way of dealing with everything is to tax and spend.

I also believe that government has no business telling us how we should live our lives. I think our lifestyle choices should be left up to us. What we do in our private lives is none of the government's business. That position rules out the Republican Party for me. As the cliché says, "I don't want Democrats in the boardroom and I don't want Republicans in the bedroom."

We've gotten into the bad habit of overlegislating. I believe in the America people's ability to govern themselves. If government would just get out of the way and allow them to lead their lives as they choose, they will succeed.

What good is a martyr, Captain Bastable? A martyr shows us the power of faith. But what if that faith is misinformed? While people believe in heroes and the magic power of an individual to save them from the human condition, they will never be free.

“I would be grateful if I was allowed to work out my own destiny for once,” I said. “For good or ill.”

Technology is potential freedom from brutality.

I do not defend Conchis’ decision at the execution, but I defend the reality of the dilemma. God and freedom are totally anti-pathetic concepts; and men believe in their imaginary gods most often because they are afraid to believe in the other thing. I am old enough to realise now that they do sometimes with good reason. True freedom lies between each two, never in one alone, and therefore is never absolute freedom.

Sometimes I almost pity them [other women]. I think I have a freedom they cannot understand. No insult, no blame, can touch me. Because I have set myself beyond the pale. I am nothing. I am hardly human any more. I am the French Lieutenant's Whore.

There is only one good definition of God: the freedom that allows other freedoms to exist.