c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Know, then, that now, precisely now, these people are more certain than ever before that they are completely free, and at the same time they themselves have brought us their freedom and obediently laid it at our feet. It is our doing, but is it what you wanted? This sort of freedom?'Again I don't understand', Alyosha interrupted, 'Is he being ironic? Is he laughing?'Not in the least. He precisely lays it to his and his colleagues' credit that they have finally overcome freedom, and have done so in order to make people happy.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
Self-reliance is the only road to true freedom, and being one's own person is its ultimate reward
— Patricia Sampson
Wings are a constraint that makes it possible to fly.
— Robert Bringhurst, The Tree Of Meaning: Thirteen Talks
This “freedom” put a proud people in chainsAnd turned free men into slaves“Independence” made us weakAnd slaughtered usIn the name of kindnessThis is democracy by the whipAnd the fear of chainsWith a whirlwind at its core
— Abdul Salam Zaeef, My Life with the Taliban
Freedom is that instant between when someone tells you to do something and when you decide how to respond.
— Jeffrey T. Borenstein
Perhaps he has confused making money with freedom.
— John Charles Chasteen, Born in Blood and Fire: A Concise History of Latin America
The novel is the privileged vehicle of two ways of being: narrative and freedom: to be new (novel) in a speech open to all, and to be free in a speech that never concludes.
— Carlos Fuentes, Myself with Others: Selected Essays
. . . a constitution, intended toendure for ages to come, andconsequently, to be adapted to thevarious crises of human affairs.
— John Marshall
The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all fre
— William O. Douglas
We sensible often resist intrusive love and its chaos practically, employing measures to prevent the former for fear of the latter. But for all our wit and work, that desperation for control also prevents the pure, transcendental freedom more often delivered by both.
— Tiffany Madison
May we think of freedom not as the right to do as we please but as the opportunity to do what is right.
— Peter Marshall
Forgiveness is really just another word for freedom.
— Julie Lessman
People are naturally born as Libertarians till governments and oppressive societies force them to adopt their ideologies and their ways.
— Hany Ghoraba
Augustine taught that true freedom is not choice or lack of constraint, but being what you are meant to be. Humans were created in the image of God. True freedom, then, is not found in moving away from that image but only in living it out.
— Augustine of Hippo
Besides, a life without freedom to choose is not worth having.
— Alasdair Gray, Poor Things
He said to people: you’re free. And they said hooray, and then he showed them what freedom costs and they called him a tyrant and, as soon as he’d been betrayed, they milled around a bit like barn-bred chickens who’ve seen the big world outside for the first time, and then they went back into the warm and shut the door...
— Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay
Perhaps, there is no such person who can be called truly free, but only those who can be deemed so by comparison.
— Ashim Shanker, Sinew of the Social Species
The only place where compensation comes before service is in the dictionary or anywhere the government meddles.
— Orrin Woodward, LIFE
If one prevents a man from working for the good of society while at the same time providing for the satisfaction of his own needs, then only one way remains open to him: to make himself richer and others poorer by the violent oppression and spoliation of his fellow men.
— Ludwig von Mises, Liberalism
To have so little, and it of so little value, was to be quaintly free.
— Wallace Stegner, All the Little Live Things
Small tyrants, threatened by big,sincerely believethey love liberty.
— W.H. Auden
The world is a room of heavy furniture. Eventually you are allowed to leave.
— Adam Foulds, The Quickening Maze
Now he understood clearly that roads do divide, at the crossroad there is a choice, and blinding oneself to it is a form of choosing, too; it is the fool's way, the coward's way.
— Erik Christian Haugaard, The Untold Tale
Struggles to coerce uniformity of sentiment in support of some end thought essential to their time and country have been waged by many good as well as by evil men. Nationalism is a relatively recent phenomenon but at other times and places the ends have been racial or territorial security, support of a dynasty or regime, and particular plans for saving souls. As first and moderate methods to attain unity have failed, those bent on its accomplishment must resort to an ever-increasing severity. . . . Those who begin coercive elimination of dissent soon find themselves exterminating dissenters. Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard.It seems trite but necessary to say that the First Amendment to our Constitution was designed to avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings. There is no mysticism in the American concept of the State or of the nature or origin of its authority. We set up government by consent of the governed, and the Bill of Rights denies those in power any legal opportunity to coerce that consent. Authority here is to be controlled by public opinion, not public opinion by authority.If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.
— Robert H. Jackson
What naive garbage. People don't want freedom anymore--even those to whom freedom is a kind of religion are afraid of it, like trembling acolytes who make sacrifices to some pagan god. People want their governments to keep secrets from them. They want the hand of law to be brutal. They are so terrified by their own power that they will vote to have it taken out of their hands. Look at America. Look at the sharia states. Freedom is a dead philosophy, Alif. The world is returning to its natural state, to the rule of the weak by the strong. Young as you are, it's you who are out of touch, not me.
— G. Willow Wilson, Alif the Unseen
I feel free when I see no one and nobody knows my name
— Lana Del Rey, Lana del Rey - Honeymoon
Among a people generally corrupt, liberty cannot long exist.
— Edmund Burke
There is no such thing as freedom on earth," he said. "Only different kinds of bondages. And comparative bondages. YOU think you are free now because you've escaped from a peculiarly unbreakable kind of bondage. But are you? You love me - THAT'S a bondage.
— L.M. Montgomery, The Blue Castle
The securest place is a prison cell, but there is no liberty
— Benjamin Franklin
I am a Canadian, free to speak without fear, free to worship in my own way, free to stand for what I think right, free to oppose what I believe wrong, or free to choose those who shall govern my country. This heritage of freedom I pledge to uphold for myself and all mankind.
— John G. Diefenbaker
So if you care to find me/Look to the western sky/As someone told me lately/Everyone deserves the chance to fly!/And if I'm flying solo/At least I'm flying free/Tell those who'd ground me/Take a message back from me/Tell them how I am defying gravity!/I'm flying high defying gravity/And soon I'll match them in renown./And nobody in all of Oz/No Wizard that there is or was/Is ever gonna bring me down!/
— Stephen Schwartz, Wicked [With CD (Audio)]
A Rule: Life without Islam is a naked tree,Birds without trees can never feel free.
— Leena Ahmad Almashat, Harmony Letters
Free women," said Anna, wryly. She added, with an anger new to Molly, so that she earned another quick scrutinizing glance from her friend: "They still define us in terms of relationships with men, even the best of them.
— Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook
Man is complete in himself. When they go into the world, the world will disagree with them. That is inevitable. The world hates Individualism. But that is not to trouble them. They are to be calm and self-centred. If a man takes their cloak, they are to give him their coat, just to show that material things are of no importance. If people abuse them, they are not to answer back. What does it signify? The things people say of a man do not alter a man. He is what he is. Public opinion is of no value whatsoever. Even if people employ actual violence, they are not to be violent in turn. That would be to fall to the same low level. After all, even in prison, a man can be quite free. His soul can be free. His personality can be untroubled. He can be at peace. And, above all things, they are not to interfere with other people or judge them in any way. Personality is a very mysterious thing. A man cannot always be estimated by what he does. He may keep the law, and yet be worthless. He may break the law, and yet be fine. He may be bad, without ever doing anything bad. He may commit a sin against society, and yet realise through that sin his true perfection.
— Oscar Wilde, Der Sozialismus und die Seele des Menschen
Reckon it's best if you don't have anyone you care about
—  then it can't hurt you. Don't have to be afraid of losing someone if you no one to lose.
Most of us cherish freedom, but when we actually get the opportunity to make our own way it can be terrifying.
— Tom Butler-Bowdon, 50 Self-Help Classics: 50 Inspirational Books to Transform Your Life from Timeless Sages to Contemporary Gurus
Life’s too short to not forgive those who hurt us. I trust you to do what’s right. Right by your own heart.…Forgiveness sets you free.
— Cheryl Kaye Tardif, Whale Song
In that tremendous flash of freedom, on my way to do The Thing for the first time, sanctioned by Almighty Harry, I receded, faded back into the scenery of my own dark self, whole the other me crouched and growled. I would do It at last, do what I had been created to do. And I did.
— Jeff Lindsay, Darkly Dreaming Dexter
Every man has within him only one life and one nature ... It behooves a man to look within himself and turn to the best dedication possible those endowments he has from his Maker. You do no wrong in questioning what once you held to be right for you, if now it has come to seem wrong. Put away all thought of being bound. We do not want you bound. No one who is not free can give freely.
— Ellis Peters, The Potter's Field
How can you be free, If you don't even know you're trap or lock inside?
— Ann Marie Aguilar
If you need a reason to get involved in world politics, all you need to do is watch a playground of children for awhile. Imagine a world that happy and free all the time, that vision is the future worth fighting for.
— Laurance Kitts
Freely chosen, discipline is absolute freedom.
— Ron Serino
IsoldA: The only way to be alone is to behave as though we are alone already.
— Victor Pelevin, The Helmet of Horror: The Myth of Theseus and the Minotaur
The scientist seeks laws; the historian, causes; the artist, freedom.
— Marty Rubin
He dabbed at his tuxedo with a damp rag, and the fungi came away easily. "Hate to do this, Bill," he said of the fungi he was murdering. "Fungi have as much right to life as I do. they know what they want, Bill. Damned if I do anymore."Then he thought about what Bill himself might want. It was easy to guess. "Bill," he said, "I like you so much, and I am such a big shot in the Universe, that I will make your three biggest wishes come true." He opened the door of the cage, something Bill couldn't have done in a thousand years.Bill flew over to the windowsill. He put his little shoulder against the glass. there was just one layer of glass between Bill and the great out-of-doors. Although Trough was in the storm window business, he had no storm windows on his own abode."Your second wish is about to come true," said Trout, and he again did something which Bill could never have done. he opened the window. But the opening of the window was such an alarming business to the parakeet that he flew back to his cage and hopped inside.Trout closed the door of the cage and latched it. "That's the most intelligent use of three wishes I ever heard of," he told the bird. "You made sure you'd still have something worth wishing for--to get out of the cage.
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Breakfast of Champions
Then I will speak upon the ashes.
— Sojourner Truth
Darwin did not know what a bitter satire he wrote on mankind ... when he showed that free competition, the struggle for existence, which the economists celebrate as the highest historical achievement, is the normal state of the animal kingdom. Only conscious organization of social production, in which production and distribution are carried on in a planned way, can lift mankind above the rest of the animal.
— Friedrick Engels
The greatest mistake we can make is to stay on the ground after falling.
— Victor Manuel Rivera, In Search of True Freedom
Freedom is based on the anarch’s awareness that he can kill himself. He carries this awareness around
—  it accompanies him like a shadow that he can conjure up. “A leap from this bridge will set me free.
The dirtier your Bible, the cleaner your heart!
— Victor Manuel Rivera, In Search of True Freedom
My feeling is this whole country is founded on the principle of 'if you are not hurting anyone, and you're not fucking with someone else's shit, and you are paying your taxes, you should be able to just do what you want to do.' It's the freedom and the independence.
— Adam Carolla
No, solitude did not trouble her. She could spend long minutes gazing out the window, hours listening to the BBC on the public radio station. She relished the very texture of her privacy, its depth of space and freedom, much of an entire day hers alone.
— Daphne Kalotay, Russian Winter
Freedom is not doing what we want, but what we should.
— Victor Manuel Rivera, In Search of True Freedom
In the marketing society, we seek fulfillment but settle for abundance. Prisoners of plenty, we have the freedom to consume in stead of our freedom to find our place in the world.
— Clive Hamilton, Growth Fetish
Freedom, I found is not only in the running but in the heart, the mind, the hands.
— Louise Erdrich, The Plague of Doves
Then she added in a sort of childish delight: 'We'll be poor, won't we? Like people in books. And I'll be an orphan and utterly free. Free and poor! What fun!' She stopped and raised her lips to him in a delighted kiss.'It's impossible to be both together,' said John grimly. 'People have found that out. And I should choose to be free as preferable of the two...
— F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Diamond as Big as the Ritz, and Other Stories
We both have no home to go back to... so we can go anywhere at all.
— Kazuya Minekura
No circumstance in the world can ever prevent us from believing in God, from placing all our trust in him, from loving him with our whole heart, or from loving our neighbor. Faith, hope, and charity are absolutely free, because if they are rooted in us deeply enough, they are able to draw strength from whatever opposes them! If someone sought to prevent us from believing by persecuting us, we always would retain the option of forgiving our enemies and transforming the situation of oppression into one of greater love. If someone tried to silence our faith by killing us, our deaths would be the best possible proclamation of our faith! Love, and only love, can overcome evil by good and draw good out of evil.
— Jacques Philippe, Interior Freedom
Nobody's busting into YOUR apartment at three in the morning, are they? Well, then don't worry about what they're doing in South Korea and places like that. It's like the standard of living. Are you content to achieve your higher standard of living at the expense of people all over the world who've got a lower standard of living? Most Americans would say yes. Now we ask the question, are you content to enjoy your political freedom at the expense of people who are less free? I think they would also say yes.
— William S. Burroughs, With William Burroughs: A Report From The Bunker
Regarding the need to pray, the anarch is again no different from anyone else. But he does not like to attach himself. He does not squander his best energies. He accepts no substitute for his gold. He knows his freedom, and also what it is worth its weight in. The equation balances when he is offered something credible. The result is ONE.There can be no doubt that gods have appeared, not only in ancient times but even late in history; they feasted with us and fought at our sides. But what good is the splendor of bygone banquets to a starving man? What good is the clinking of gold that a poor man hears through the wall of time? The gods must be called.The anarch lets all this be; he can bide his time. He has his ethos, but not morals. He recognizes lawfulness, but not the law; he despises rules. Whenever ethos goes into shalts and shalt-nots, it is already corrupted. Still, it can harmonize with them, depending on location and circumstances, briefly or at length, just as I harmonize here with the tyrant for as long as I like.One error of the anarchists is their belief that human nature is intrinsically good. They thereby castrate society, just as the theologians ("God is goodness") castrate the Good Lord.
— Ernst Jünger, Eumeswil
In the plains the grass grows tall, since there is no one to cut it. There is no one to water it either.
— Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration
For what avail the plough or sail, or land or life, if freedom fail?
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
From every mountain side Let Freedom ring.
— Samuel F. Smith
The TSA must think we're mushrooms. You know, the way they are trying to keep us in the dark, and the way they keep feeding us a fertilizing agent that comes from the south end of a north-bound cow.
— Douglas Wilson
I will not debate with you Dark Elf. By the swords of the Noldor alone are your sunless woods defended. Your freedom to wander there wild you owe to my kin and but for them long since you would have laboured in thraldom in the pits of Angband. And here I am King and whether you will it or will it not my doom is law. This choice is given to you: abide here or to die here and so also for your son.
— J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion
Freedom...is the act of releasing ourselves from the bondage of that which keeps us from living the life we were meant to live.
— Kelli Wilson, The Clutter Breakthrough: Your Five-Step Solution to Freedom from Clutter Forever
The more the level of insecurity is reduced, the more the level of faith will grow.
— Victor Manuel Rivera, In Search of True Freedom
I was very lucky to be offered a lovely piece of property to build a career on. I started building a house on it, but it wasn't necessarily a house I would want to live in. So I ripped down that house, and I worked with these great lumberjacks to build a really cool cabin—a place I want to drink whiskey in and hang out until the sun rises.
— Vanessa Carlton
Freedom keeps us soaring, but quarreling destroys our ability to fly.
— Victor Manuel Rivera, In Search of True Freedom
Let us not rest until we are free to live in dignity in the land of our birth.
— Mark Mathabane, Kaffir Boy: An Autobiography
Freedom is saying I want to do this Not that
— Jerry Weintraub, When I Stop Talking, You'll Know I'm Dead: Useful Stories from a Persuasive Man
The Sunlight on the GardenThe sunlight on the gardenHardens and grows cold,We cannot cage the minuteWithin its nets of gold,When all is toldWe cannot beg for pardon.Our freedom as free lancesAdvances towards its end;The earth compels, upon itSonnets and birds descend;And soon, my friend,We shall have no time for dances.The sky was good for flyingDefying the church bellsAnd every evil ironSiren and what it tells:The earth compels,We are dying, Egypt, dyingAnd not expecting pardon,Hardened in heart anew,But glad to have sat underThunder and rain with you,And grateful tooFor sunlight on the garden.
— Louis MacNeice, Collected Poems 1925-1948
Mistaking insolence for freedom has always been the hallmark of the slave.
— Wilhelm Reich, Listen, Little Man!
We have buried the putrid corpse of liberty
— Benito Mussolini
It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction - to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens.
— George Washington
One avoids Creolisms. Some families completely forbid Creole and mothers ridicule their children for speaking it.
— Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks
What keeps earth air breathable? Not oxygen alone. The earth is a freer place to breathe in, every time you love without calculating a return -- every time you make your drudgeries and routines still more inefficient by stopping to experience the shock of beauty wherever it unpredictably flickers.
— Peter Viereck, Unadjusted Man in the Age of Overadjustment: Where History and Literature Intersect
Today a great shot for freedom was heard. I think it stands a chance of being heard forever. It marls a turning point in the history of the Jewish people. The beginning of the return to a statues of dignity we have not known for two thousand years. Yes, today was the first step back. My battle is done. Now I turn the command over to the soldiers. 
— Leon Uris
Tyranny anywhere is a threat to freedom everywhere.
— Alex Storozynski, The Peasant Prince: Thaddeus Kosciuszko and the Age of Revolution
Repression is a seamless garment; a society which is authoritarian in its social and sexual codes, which crushes its women beneath the intolerable burdens of honour and propriety, breeds repressions of other kinds as well.
— Salman Rushdie, Shame
Form your own autonomous group, answering to no power but your own, and chase down freedom for yourselves, if your representatives will not do if for you- since they cannot do it for you.
— CrimethInc., Expect Resistance: A Field Manual
The first principle of a free society is an untrammeled flow of words in an open forum."(Adlai E. Stevenson, 1900-1965, American Lawyer, Politician)
— Adlai E. Stevenson II
We feel free when we escape - even if it be but from the frying pan to the fire.
— Eric Hoffer
Religion, a mediaeval form of unreason, when combined with modern weaponry becomes a real threat to our freedoms. This religious totalitarianism has caused a deadly mutation in the heart of Islam and we see the tragic consequences in Paris today. I stand with Charlie Hebdo, as we all must, to defend the art of satire, which has always been a force for liberty and against tyranny, dishonesty and stupidity. ‘Respect for religion’ has become a code phrase meaning ‘fear of religion.’ Religions, like all other ideas, deserve criticism, satire, and, yes, our fearless disres
— Salman Rushdie
It was not the goal that really concerned us, the journey was the thing. Who ever reaches any goal? From what journey can we return? We know of the poverty about us, of the work and worry, but we know of a degree of freedom, of a stunted beauty. We have warm open days and sunshine in Carolina. Much is denied us. But we have, we have. And an attitude is more powerful than any circumstance.
— Ben Robertson, Red Hills and Cotton
We have been told to ask about everything: Will it leave us free?
— Ben Robertson, Red Hills and Cotton
The principles of the Bible are the groundwork of human freedom.
— Horace Greeley
That's what America's all about, man, if it's about anything. You can choose your own name.
— Michael Ventura, Night Time Losing Time
The human beings at the helm of the new nation [USA], whatever their limitations [slave owners, anti-democracy], were truly revolutionary. The theory of liberty born in that era, the seed of the idea, was perfect.More important, the idea itself carried within it the moral power to correct the contradictions in its execution that were obvious from the very birth of the new nation.
— Naomi Wolf, Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries
Freedom is not archived by satisfying desire, but by eliminating it.
— Epictetus, Discourses and Selected Writings
If you want to see philosophy in action, pay a visit to a robo-rat laboratory. A robo-rat is a run-ofthe-mill rat with a twist: scientists have implanted electrodes into the sensory and reward areas in the rat’s brain. This enables the scientists to manoeuvre the rat by remote control. After short training sessions, researchers have managed not only to make the rats turn left or right, but also to climb ladders, sniff around garbage piles, and do things that rats normally dislike, such as jumping from great heights. Armies and corporations show keen interest in the robo-rats, hoping they could prove useful in many tasks and situations. For example, robo-rats could help detect survivors trapped under collapsed buildings, locate bombs and booby traps, and map underground tunnels and caves. Animal-welfare activists have voiced concern about the suffering such experiments inflict on the rats. Professor Sanjiv Talwar of the State University of New York, one of the leading robo-rat researchers, has dismissed these concerns, arguing that the rats actually enjoy the experiments. After all, explains Talwar, the rats ‘work for pleasure’ and when the electrodes stimulate the reward centre in their brain, ‘the rat feels Nirvana’.To the best of our understanding, the rat doesn’t feel that somebody else controls her, and she doesn’t feel that she is being coerced to do something against her will. When Professor Talwar presses the remote control, the rat wants to move to the left, which is why she moves to the left. When the professor presses another switch, the rat wants to climb a ladder, which is why she climbs the ladder. After all, the rat’s desires are nothing but a pattern of firing neurons. What does it matter whether the neurons are firing because they are stimulated by other neurons, or because they are stimulated by transplanted electrodes connected to Professor Talwar’s remote control? If you asked the rat about it, she might well have told you, ‘Sure I have free will! Look, I want to turn left – and I turn left. I want to climb a ladder – and I climb a ladder. Doesn’t that prove that I have free will?
— Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow
Freedom, you see, is having events go in accordance with our will, never contrary to it.
— Epictetus, Discourses and Selected Writings
Man, what are you talking about? Me in chains? You may fetter my leg but my will, not even Zeus himself can overpower.
— Epictetus, The Discourses
Freedom is to live with dignity
— Manal Al-Sharif, Daring to Drive: A Saudi Woman’s Awakening
Let's not grow with our roots in the ground.
— Criss Jami, Venus in Arms
My airplane is quiet, and for a moment still an alien, still a stranger to the ground, I am home.
— Richard Bach, Stranger to the Ground
Freedom comes when you see the built-in contradiction of trying to manipulate something that is going right to begin with.... Stop trying to steer the river.
— Deepak Chopra, Golf for Enlightenment: The Seven Lessons for the Game of Life
Artists, by their free expressions, encourage others to be free. This is the quality that makes works of art enduring.
— Marty Rubin
Off goes the head of the king, and tyranny gives way to freedom. The change seems abysmal. Then, bit by bit, the face of freedom hardens, and by and by it is the old face of tyranny. Then another cycle, and another. But under the play of all these opposites there is something fundamental and permanent — the basic delusion that men may be governed and yet be free.
— H.L. Mencken, The American Credo: A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind
-The little comfort of love?-Is that comfort so little?-Caged birds accept each other but flight is what they long for.
— Tennessee Williams
Moreover, in the system of criminal punishment in the libertarian world, the emphasis would never be, as it is now, on "society's" jailing the criminal; the emphasis would necessarily be on compelling the criminal to make restitution to the victim of his crime. The present system, in which the victim is not recompensed but instead has to pay taxes to support the incarceration of his own attacker — would be evident nonsense in a world that focuses on the defense of property rights and therefore on the victim of crime.
— Murray N. Rothbard
Against what is stupid, nonsensical, erroneous, and evil, [classical] liberalism fights with the weapons of the mind, and not with brute force and repression.
— Ludwig von Mises, Liberalism
No man will ever be whole and dignified and free except in the knowledge that the men around him are whole and dignified and free, and that the world itself is free of contempt and misuse.
— Wendell Berry, The Hidden Wound
O hell! to choose love by another's eye.
— William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream
May our land be a land of liberty, the seat of virtue, the asylum of the oppressed, a name and a praise in the whole Earth, until the last shock of time shall bury the empires of the whole world in one common undistinguished ruin!
— Joseph Warren
While America will always, I think, feel foreign to me, New York City is my home. This is where I can construct my own identity freely and reject labels imposed on me.
— Raquel Cepeda, Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina
But you can live in the most democratic country on earth, and if you're lazy, obtuse or servile within yourself, you're not free.
— Ignazio Silone, Bread and Wine
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants
—  it is the creed of slaves.
Be very attentive towards the child’s evolving World of Senses that needs Stability, Routine, & Structure, World of Emotions that needs Love, Freedom & Creativity and World of Thoughts that needs Discrimination as an Ability to choose Right Thinking, Emotions, Behaviour.
— Nataša Nuit Pantović, Conscious Parenting: Mindful Living Course for Parents
God knew man would evolve. People think some of the Old Testament laws are absurd now because we live in a very different culture, a different time period. They had their problems and we have ours. God is constant but man is not, and he foreknew the ever-changing world his people would have to deal with; therefore, and if there is indeed an omniscient God, a Christ-like figure would be our only rational, possible connection to a constant, holy God throughout the evolution of culture and social law. The only answer that makes sense when it comes to relevance regarding religions and time periods is Christ, and the chances are slim that men could have invented it.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
Freedom from likes and dislikes, the sudden sense of identification, the spirit of comedy.
— John Cage, M: Writings '67-'72
I dig and plough at your command,' I replied, 'but you will not tell me how to shit.
— Maria McCann, As Meat Loves Salt
I kept walking. Have you ever done that? Just walk. Just walk and have no idea where you're going? It wasn't a good feeling, but not a bad one either. I felt caged and free at the same time, like it was only myself that wouldn't allow me to feel either great or miserable.
— Markus Zusak, Underdog
There are turning points in everyone's life when we have to fight, even if we have to do it by ourselves and in public.
— Junius Williams, Unfinished Agenda: Urban Politics in the Era of Black Power
We tend to think that refusing to exalt Christ is staying true to our self-will and personal freedom when really we are condemning ourselves. Sure, we can pretend to stay true to ourselves, but if you want to talk about reality, all of that is completely trivial if this life is an island and He's the only pilot with a plane and a flight plan.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
I understood that centuries of chains and lashes will not kill the spirit of man nor the sense of truth within him.
— Ayn Rand, Anthem
So long as we are brave enough to accept the consequences of our actions, no one can take away our freedom of choice.
— Mike  Norton
Honestly, I cannot understand what people mean when they talk about the freedom of the human will. I have a feeling, for instance, that I will something or other; but what relation this has with freedom I cannot understand at all. I feel that I will to light my pipe and I do it; but how can I connect this up with the idea of freedom? What is behind the act of willing to light the pipe? Another act of willing? Schopenhauer once said: Der Mensch kann was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will (Man can do what he will but he cannot will what he wills).
— Albert Einstein
I take criticism so seriously as to believe that, even in the midst of a battle in which one is unmistakably on one side against another, there should be criticism, because there must be critical consciousness if there are to be issues, problems, values, even lives to be fought for... Criticism must think of itself as life-enhancing and constitutively opposed to every form of tyranny, domination, and abuse; its social goals are noncoercive knowledge produced in the interests of human freedom.
— Edward Said
Now for a good twelve-hour sleep, I told myself. Twelve solid hours. Let birds sing, let people go to work. Somewhere out there, a volcano might blow, Israeli commandos might decimate a Palestinian village. I couldn't stop it. I was going to sleep.
— Haruki Murakami, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
It is not in becoming a whore that a woman becomes an outlaw in this man's world; it is in the possession of herself, the ownership and effective control of her own body, her seperateness and distinctness, the integrity of her body as hers, not his. Prostitution may be against the written law, but no prostitute has defied the prerogatives or power of men as a class through prostitution. No prostitute provides any model for freedom or action in a world of freedom that can be used with intelligence and integrity by a woman; the model exists to entice counterfeit female sexual revolutionaries, gullible liberated girls, and to serve the men who enjoy them.
— Andrea Dworkin
Questions that will free you might have answers that will imprison you again.
— Nema Al-Araby
The worst possible outlook is indifference that says, “I can’t do anything about it; I’ll just get by.” Behaving like that deprives you of one of the essentials of being human: the capacity and the freedom to feel outraged. That freedom is indispensable, as is the political involvement that goes with it.
— Stéphane Hessel, Indignez-vous !
Jean-Jacques Rousseau defined civilization as when people build fences. A very perceptive observation. And it’s true—all civilization is the product of a fenced-in lack of freedom. The Australian Aborigines are the exception, though. They managed to maintain a fenceless civilization until the seventeenth century. They’re dyed-in-the-wool free. They go where they want, when they want, doing what they want. Their lives are a literal journey. Walkabout is a perfect metaphor for their lives. When the English came and built fences to pen in their cattle, the Aborigines couldn’t fathom it. And, ignorant to the end of the principle at work, they were classified as dangerous and antisocial and were driven away, to the outback. So I want you to be careful. The people who build high, strong fences are the ones who survive the best. You deny that reality only at the risk of being driven into the wilderness yourself.
— Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
Nature smiles at the union of freedom and equality in our utopias. For freedom and equality are sworn and everlasting enemies, and when one prevails the other dies.
— Will Durant
When we awaken to our truth, we realize we are free.
— Kristi Bowman, Journey to One: A Woman's Story of Emotional Healing and Spiritual Awakening
How do you stop those who will stop at nothing?
— Battle in Seattle Film
Political figures who talk a lot about liberty and freedom invariably turn out to mean the freedom to not pay taxes and discriminate based on race; freedom to hold different ideas and express them, not so much.
— Paul Krugman
We have to show these men and women freedom by enslaving them, and show them courage by frightening them.
— Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
We return to face our superiors, our kindred, our friends--- those whom we obey, and those whom we love; but even they who have neither, the most free, lonely, irresponsible and bereft of ties, --- even those for whom home holds no dear face, no familiar voice, --- even they have to meet the spirit that dwells within the land, under its sky, in its air, in its valleys, and on its rises, in its fields, in its waters and its tress--- a mute friend, judge, and inspirer. Say what you like, to get its joy, to breathe its peace, to face its truth, one must return with a clear conscience. All this may seem to you sheer sentimentalism; and indeed very few of us have the will or capacity to look consciously under the surface of familiar emotions.There are the girls we love, the men we look up to, the tenderness, the friendships, the opportunities, the pleasures! But the fact remains that you must touch your reward with clean hands, lest it turn to dead leaves, to thorns, in your grasp.
— Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim
Tonight he would do anything in the world for her.Tomorrow he would begin to set her free.
— Mary Balogh, The Temporary Wife
In here I'm the guy who can get things for you... outside all you need is the Yellow Pages. I don't think I could make it.
— Stephen King, Different Seasons
My ideas aren't afraid of height.
— Leena Ahmad Almashat, Harmony Letters
No person can do this or that to keep another from being truly free. We are always free. Even if imprisoned.
— Leigh LaValle, The Runaway Countess
Without Freedom or Liberty, creativity can not exist.
— Richard Diaz
Outside, among your fellows, among strangers, you must perceive appearances, a hundred things you cannot do; but inside, the terrible freedom!
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Freedom: both so priceless and so expensive.
— Patricia Duncker, Sisters And Strangers: An Introduction To Contemporary Feminist Fiction
Freedom cannot be labeled nor won nor envied. Only when one doesn't realize what freedom is, is one truly free.
— D.J. Niko, The Tenth Saint
I remained a socialist for several years, even after my rejection of Marxism; and if there could be such a thing as socialism combined with individual liberty, I would be a socialist still. For nothing could be better than living a modest, simple, and free life in an egalitarian society. It took some time before I recognized this as no more than a beautiful dream; that freedom is more important than equality; that the attempt to realize equality endangers freedom; and that, if freedom is lost, there will not even be equality among the unfree.
— Karl R. Popper, Unended Quest: An Intellectual Autobiography
It might seem to you that living in the woods on a riverbank would remove you from the modern world. But not if the river is navigable, as ours is. On pretty weekends in the summer, this riverbank is the very verge of the modern world. It is a seat in the front row, you might say. On those weekends, the river is disquieted from morning to night by people resting from their work.This resting involves traveling at great speed, first on the road and then on the river. The people are in an emergency to relax. They long for the peace and quiet of the great outdoors. Their eyes are hungry for the scenes of nature. They go very fast in their boats. They stir the river like a spoon in a cup of coffee. They play their radios loud enough to hear above the noise of their motors. They look neither left nor right. They don't slow down for - or maybe even see - an old man in a rowboat raising his lines...I watch and I wonder and I think. I think of the old slavery, and of the way The Economy has now improved upon it. The new slavery has improved upon the old by giving the new slaves the illusion that they are free. The Economy does not take people's freedom by force, which would be against its principles, for it is very humane. It buys their freedom, pays for it, and then persuades its money back again with shoddy goods and the promise of freedom.
— Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow
I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!
— Barry M. Goldwater
There is something akin to freedom in having a lover who has no control over you, except that which he gains by kindness and attachment
— Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Conquering any difficulty always gives one a secret joy, for it means pushing back a boundary line and adding to one's liberty.
— Henri-Frédéric Amiel
By today’s standards King George III was a very mild tyrant indeed. He taxed his American colonists at a rate of only pennies per annum. His actual impact on their personal lives was trivial. He had arbitrary power over them in law and in principle but in fact it was seldom exercised. If you compare his rule with that of today’s U.S. Government you have to wonder why we celebrate our independence..
— Joseph Sobran
In alien lands I keep the bodyOf ancient native rites and things:I gladly free a little birdieAt celebration of the spring.I'm now free for consolation,And thankful to almighty Lord:At least, to one of his creationsI've given freedom in this world!
— Alexander Pushkin, Collected Narrative and Lyrical Poetry
Freedom is not an individual effort.Yours comes only when you grant others theirs
— Sergio Aragonés, The Groo Chronicles, book 5
The Open Road goes to the used-car lot.
— Louis Simpson, People Live Here: Selected Poems 1948-1983
It is better to die fighting than to die on your knees.
— Emiliano Zapata
A match as a penBlood on the floor as inkThe forgotten gauze cover as paperBut what should I write?I might just manage my addressThis ink is strange
—  it clotsI write you from a prisonin Greece
While significant strides have been made in the pursuit of life expectancy, healthcare, educational opportunities, and constitutional protections for women, the Supreme Court, in particular, still wrestles with their status, as evidenced by their problems in pursuing equal opportunity in education and employment, reproductive freedom, the military, and violence against women.
— David E. Wilkins, The Legal Universe: Observations of the Foundations of American Law
What drove us crazy wasn't necessarily the sexual freedom his critic claimed he was unleashing, but freedom, period. Freedom to be yourself, to express yourself, to wear what you wanted to wear, to look the way you wanted to look, to have your own style, your own talk.
— Larry Geller, Joel Spector, Patricia Romanowski
From the will of a freedom-fighter, Farzad Kamangar:"Is it possible to be a teacher and not show the path to the sea to the little fish of the country? Is it possible to carry the heavy burden of being a teacher and be responsible for spreading the seeds of knowledge and still be silent? Is it possible to see the lumps in the throats of the students and witness their thin and malnourished faces and keep quiet? … I cannot imagine witnessing the pain and poverty of the people of this land and fail to give our hearts to the river and the sea, to the roar and the flood.
— Samad Behrangi
Divorced?''Separated.'He tested his thumb against the pricks of the rose. 'Women. They say you got all the freedom. Then you give them their freedom, and they don't want it.' ("Novelty")
— John Crowley, American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from the 1940's Until Now
True freedom only exists in art.The problem is you have to be incredibly good.No,I am putting it wrong:You don't so much have to be outstanding,what you really need are connections,if you don't want to be dependent on all kinds of government foundations who will impose their ideas and restrictions on you in turn.It can be touch and go in the beginning:It takes guts to let go of everything.But you make it,you're free.
— Esther Verhoef, Close-up
Poverty frees them from ordinary standards of behaviour, just as money frees people from work.
— George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London
But I still wonder how it was possible, in those graceless years of transition, long ago, that men did not see whither they were going, and went on, in blindness and cowardice, to their fate. I wonder, for it is hard for me to conceive how men who knew the word "I," could give it up and not know what they lost. But such has been the story, for I have lived in the City of the damned, and I know what horror men permitted to be brought upon them.
— Ayn Rand, Anthem
Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
Let your will burn in this fire so that it takes you nowhere else. Let your self be burned in this fire of eternity, love and peace. Don't be afraid of this fire, it is love itself. This desire for freedom is the fire of love!
— H.W.L. Poonja, The Truth Is
The real struggle for us is for the citizen to cease to be the property of the state.
— Adam Michnik
The last achievement of the serious admirer is to stop immediately putting to work the energies aroused by, filling up the space opened by, what is admired. Thereby talented admirers give themselves permission to breathe, to breathe more deeply. But for that it is necessary to go beyond avidity; to identify with something beyond achievement, beyond the gathering of power.
— Susan Sontag, Under the Sign of Saturn: Essays
Liberty is to faction what air is to fire...
— James Madison, The Federalist Papers
[T]he state should not impose a preferred way of life, but should leave its citizens as free as possible to choose their own values and ends, consistent with a similar liberty for others.
— Michael J. Sandel, Liberalism and Its Critics
The highest and most fruitful form of human freedom is found in accepting, even more than in dominating. We show the greatness of our freedom when we transform reality, but still more when we accept it trustingly as it is given to us day after day. It is natural and easy to go along with pleasant situations that arise without our choosing them. It becomes a problem, obviously, when things are unpleasant, go against us, or make us suffer. But it is precisely then that, in order to become truly free, we are often called to choose to accept what we did not want, and even what we would not have wanted at any price. There is a paradoxical law of human life here: one cannot become truly free unless one accepts not always being free!To achieve true interior freedom we must train ourselves to accept, peacefully and willingly, plenty of things that seem to contradict our freedom. This means consenting to our personal limitations, our weaknesses, our powerlessness, this or that situation that life imposes on us, and so on. We find it difficult to do this, because we feel a natural revulsion for situations we cannot control. But the fact is that the situations that really make us grow are precisely those we do not control.
— Jacques Philippe, Interior Freedom
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
— Dwight D. Eisenhower