Quotes about freedom

What haunts me is not exactly the absence of literal space so much as a deep craving for metaphorical space: release, escape, some kind of open-ended freedom.

But he was fighting for the dignity of man and in that way he was fighting for himself. If men were equal in America, all these former Poles and English and Czechs and lacks, then they were equal everywhere, and there was really no such thing as a foreigner; there were only free men and slaves. And so it was not even patriotism but a new faith. The Frenchman may fight for France, but the American fights for mankind, for freedom; for the people, not the land.

"Here we judge you by what you do, not by who your father was. Here you can be something. Here's a place to build a home. It isn't the land-there's always more land. it's the idea that we all have value, you and me, we're worth something more than the dirt. I never saw dirt I'd die for, but I'm not asking you to come join us and fight for dirt. What we're all fighting for, in the end, is each other."

“It’s impossible to protect anyone completely without enslaving them. I think that’s something you’ve never understood because you’ve always demanded too much of yourself. You blame yourself for your sister’s death—”

“I didn’t watch her carefully enough.”

“What could you have done? Remember her life, not her death. She was brave and happy and arrogant, the way a child should be. You could only protect her more by chaining her to you with fear. She couldn’t live that way, not and remain the person you loved.”

And in the manner of this ideal we strive, though even that not too onerously. For piety itself may be used to make a chain about the soul.

Wealth, or large amounts of possessions seemed to him limiting. They brought their own prison with them. He preferred, since he had once known a kind of prison, to travel free.

Anarchism adjures us to be bold creative artists, and care for no laws or limits. But it is impossible to be an artist and not care for laws and limits. Art is limitation; the essence of every picture is the frame. If you draw a giraffe, you must draw him with a long neck. If, in your bold creative way, you hold yourself free to draw a giraffe with a short neck, you will really find that you are not free to draw a giraffe. The moment you step into the world of facts, you step into a world of limits. You can free things from alien or accidental laws, but not from the laws of their own nature. You may, if you like, free a tiger from his bars; but do not free him from his stripes. Do not free a camel from the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel. Do not go about as a demagogue, encouraging triangles to break out of the prison of their three sides. If a triangle breaks out of its three sides, its life comes to a lamentable end.

True ideology has vanished, replaced by fear and fantasy. The right wing wants corporate control and a return to a past that never existed. The left wing wants government control and a future that will never exist. Both groups lose sight of the essential questions: how can the individual speak and think and create freely? New ideas are the only evolutionary force that will save us from destruction.

"I hate zoos," she told Gabriel. "They remind me of prisons."

"People like to see animals."

"Citizens want to kill wild creatures or put them into cages. It helps them forget that they're also prisoners."

The urge to control others is very strong, but the desire for freedom and the ability to show compassion will always survive. Darkness is everywhere, but the Light still appears.

True freedom is tolerant. It gives people the right to live and think in new ways.

There is no progress toward ultimate freedom without transformation, and this is the key issue in all lives.