c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
What are we all chasing? Nella wonders. To live, of course. To be unbound from the invisible ropes that Johannes spoke of in his study. Or to be happy in them, at least.
— Jessie Burton, The Miniaturist
the truth is not supposed to free you from the truth, just from everything else
— Thylias Moss, Slave Moth: A Narrative in Verse
The fall of the Berlin Wall on 11/9/89 unleashed forces that ultimately liberated all the captive peoples of the Soviet Empire
— Thomas L. Friedman, The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century
The illusion of free will, of freedom, is a useful tool you know. Let people think they are free and present them with a danger to their so-called freedom, a fear. It’s amazing how much you can get them to deal with just as long as you tell them they’re still free.
— Jordon Greene, They'll Call It Treason
This was something they could not take from us - the freedom to imagine, to create new worlds beyond this one.
— Laura McVeigh, Under the Almond Tree
Given these differences between the sexes, the sexual revolution was the biggest joke men ever played on women. By convincing them that the old rules didn’t apply and that two could play the predator game, men enticed women to do what men have always wanted women to do. But what a price was paid for the new “freedom.” And predictably, women were the ones who got stuck with the bill.
— James C. Dobson, Life on the Edge: The Next Generation's Guide to a Meaningful Future
However much you love them, you must let everything and everybody that desperately long for their freedom to be free!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
You stop revisiting memories when you outgrow the people you made them with.
— Nikki Rowe
Every sacrifice is another colour of your Rainbow!
— Cass van Krah
True revolutionary change begins by first challenging yourself -- not the world. Until you own your story and the complexities of your experience, no matter how much you may strain against it, you will still be enslaved -- if not by your oppressor, by your past.
— Sil Lai Abrams, Black Lotus: A Woman’s Search for Racial Identity
Why did every human concern clog itself up in a tangle of routines, formalities, disciplines, imperatives? Why couldn’t one be free? Really free? Guarding one’s freedom, wasn’t freedom at all. Why couldn’t one win one’s freedom for good and all, and get on with life?
— H.G. Wells, The Holy Terror
I'm not quite sure what freedom is, but i know damn well what it ain't. How have we gotten so silly, i wonder.
— Assata Shakur, Assata: An Autobiography
Freedom was a drug, one that grabbed hold of you the second it entered your bloodstream. It made you giddy and reckless if you didn’t know how to channel it. 
— Elle Kennedy, Claimed
Freedom was a drug, one that grabbed hold of you the second it entered your bloodstream. It made you giddy and reckless if you didn’t know how to channel it.
— Elle Kennedy, Claimed
And she wanted to be free. It wasn't Mr. Brumley she wanted; he was but a means — if indeed he was a means — to an end. The person she wanted, the person she had always wanted — was herself. Could Mr. Brumley give her that? Would Mr. Brumley give her that? Was it conceivable he would carry sacrifice to such a pitch as that?...
— H.G. Wells, The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman
With mathematics we stand precisely at that intersection of bondage and freedom that is the essence of the human itself.
— Hermann Weyl, Levels of Infinity: Selected Writings on Mathematics and Philosophy
My mother smoked two packs of cigarettes a day. Before she smoked her first cigarette, she was free to choose whether or not she would smoke. After awhile, her freedom reverted to Satan—so it would seem. The choice was no longer hers—so it would seem. Her mind and body were attacked with nicotine cravings that got so bad she would sometimes sacavage through garbage cans for butts when she’d run short on full cigarettes.	I watched, baffled at how something so small and so disgusting to me could have such power over my mother. That’s the thing about addiction—it binds us one choice at a time. That’s also the good news about addition—you can unravel the hold it has on you—one choice at a time.
— Toni Sorenson
She had learnt many things since the days of her first rebellion, and she knew now that this matter of the man friend and nothing else in the world is the central issue in the emancipation of women. The difficulty of him is latent in every other restriction of which women complain. The complete emancipation of women will come with complete emancipation of humanity from jealousy — and no sooner. All other emancipations are shams until a woman may go about as freely with this man as with that, and nothing remains for emancipation when she can.
— H.G. Wells, The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman
We have to respect freedom only when it is intended for freedom, not when it strays, flees itself, and resigns itself. A freedom which is interested only in denying freedom must be denied. And it is not true that the recognition of the freedom of others limits my own freedom: to be free is not to have the power to do anything you like; it is to be able to surpass the given toward an open future; the existence of others as a freedom defines my situation and is even the condition of my own freedom. I am oppressed if I am thrown into prison, but not if I am kept from throwing my neighbor into prison.
— Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity
Only later did he remember his pride-and the shattering cost of an illusive sense of freedom.
— Francine Rivers, A Voice in the Wind
Agile does not mean laissez-faire, flexibility and freedom are based on the well-defined principles.
— Pearl Zhu, Digital Agility: The Rocky Road from Doing Agile to Being Agile
I create a home that is a safe and nurturing place for me, where I am free to gather myself.
— Maureen Brady, Daybreak: Meditations For Women Survivors Of Sexual Abuse
You're going to turn it into a fascist corporate theme park where the few people who can still afford the price of admission no longer have an ounce of freedom.
— Ernest Cline, Ready Player One
There is far more happiness in a life that is your own than a life in which you are handed the lines to say and shown the gestures to make. Do not ever be ambitious.
— Ken Liu, The Grace of Kings
Whoever isn’t in a cage is free,You can stroll, fly or go deep down in the sea,Being in limits is never a choice,Curtailment never made moments of joys.
— Sahil Sachdeva
What good's a black face if it means I'm just someone else's property? Why give me these arms and legs just to carry someone else's load, not my own?
— Stacey  Lee, Under a Painted Sky
You will never be free as long as there remains one Russian soldier in Poland and your freedom will always be threatened as long as Russia interferes in your affairs.
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Considerations On The Government Of Poland
Freedom is a terrible burden, much too heavy for the weak man to bear.
— Robert Ferrigno, Heart of the Assassin
Examine your beliefs and break free.
— Maria Erving
Freedom isn't a hope for those who live in a cage.
— Eyden I., Woman's Book: Only For Men
She had not understood what it had been like for him to live his entire life underground, chained and beaten and crippled—until then. Until she heard that noise of undiluted, unyielding joy.Until she echoed it, tipping her head back to the clouds around them.They sailed over a sea of clouds, and Abraxos dipped his claws in them before tilting to race up a wind-carved column of cloud. Higher and higher, until they reached its peak and he flung out his wings in the freezing, thin sky, stopping the world entirely for a heartbeat.And Manon, because no one was watching, because she did not care, flung out her arms as well and savored the freefall, the wind now a song in her ears, in her shriveled heart.
— Sarah J. Maas, Heir of Fire
Whenever someone starts talking about 'fair competition' or indeed, about 'fairness' in general, it is time to keep a sharp eye on your wallet, for it is about to be picked.
— Murray N. Rothbard
Zen gives you tremendous dignity. There is no authority anywhere. Freedom is utter and ultimate.
— Osho, Zen: The Path of Paradox
I think we each come out of the womb with some unique way of looking at the world and if we don't express it, we loose faith in ourselves.
— Gloria Steinem, Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem
It's the duty of every man to free himself. Never accept to live an underdog's life in god’s world.
— Bangambiki Habyarimana, Pearls Of Eternity
What i know from history is this: Those who do not appreciate their freedom and aren't prepared to protect it, will lose it.
— Christina Engela, The Time Saving Agency
Every revolution starts with the aim to help the poor, but when the poor get it they forget who they were and become the new oppressors. The cycle goes on forever
— Bangambiki Habyarimana, Pearls Of Eternity
When I was a student, there wasn't a single thing we did that was unrelated to others. It was all for the Emperor, or parents, or the country, or society—everything was other-centered, which means that all educated men were hypocrites. When society changed, this hypocrisy ceased to work, and as a result, self-centeredness was gradually imported into thought and action, and egoism became enormously over-developed. Instead of the old hypocrites, now all we've got are out-and-out rogues. Do you see what I mean by that?
— Sōseki Natsume, Sanshirō
Freedom is being whole on my own and not needing somebody else to complete me.
— Christina Engela, Demonspawn
Let no one ever intimidate you, you are standing on no one's ground. But again, some have claimed the earth as their own and usurped power from the rest of us. But they are usurpers; power belongs to every one of us. Seek it as much as possible. There is no shame in that. In fact it's a necessity. Either you have power or you are trampled to death in the stampede to get to the top
— Bangambiki Habyarimana, Pearls Of Eternity
You are no longer responsible. You are no longer allowed to give a shit. Nobody can need you ever again. Go.
— Hannah Moskowitz, Teeth
Because freedom and liberty and equality are as vital as breath, we only notice their absence when we are left gasping when the colors of diversity and individual liberty are drained from the world around us.
— Christina Engela, Bugspray
To be secure everywhere is the mark of sophistication. To be unshakeable is the mark of courage. To be permanently in love with every person is the mark of masculinity or femininity. To forgive is the mark of strength. To govern our senses and passions is the mark of freedom.
— Eknath Easwaran, Passage Meditation: Bringing the Deep Wisdom of the Heart into Daily Life
It seems that the price of having freedom is having to constantly fight to keep it.
— Christina Engela, Fearotica: An Anthology of Erotic Horror
When you follow your thoughts you follow a ghost.
— Bert McCoy
Freedom isn't hard to lose - but it's a hard thing to win back once it's been lost.
— Christina Engela, Black Sunrise
Freedom means either be mindful or do not mind.
— Aditya Ajmera
You need your speace to strech your wings.You will learn in the due time to fly higher.
— K.J. Kilton, Trophy Life
Independence that has declared its ‘independence’ from the sure and certain compass of sound morals is nothing more than rogue greed having scantily dressed itself in the garb of independence while running off the cliff of anarchy.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
One day I shall sit down and ponder!I shall ponder over how I used to wanderBut I shall never wander anymoreA day is coming! Oh yes a day is coming! A day is coming when I shall see redemptionNo more wandering! Oh yes! No more wandering! A day is surely comingOne day I shall sit down and remember!I shall remember how arduous the journey wasBut I shall never see an arduous journey anymoreA day is coming! Oh yes a day is coming! A day is coming when there shall never be a journey to takeNo more journeys! Oh yes! No more journeys! A day is surely comingOne day I shall sit down and count the footprints!I shall count the footprints of the tyrants and the oppressorsBut I shall never see tyranny and oppression anymoreA day is coming! Oh yes a day is coming! A day is coming when I shall see redemptionNor more tyranny! Oh yes! No more oppression! A day is surely comingOne day I shall sit down and think about the rejections.I shall remember the rejections from people far and nearBut I shall never experience their rejections anymoreA day is coming! Oh yes a day is coming! A day is coming when I shall never see rejectionNo more rejections! Oh yes! No more rejections! A day is surely comingOne day I shall come to an understanding!I shall come to understand the things that were far from my understandingAnd they shall never be far from my understanding anymore A day is coming! Oh yes a day is coming! A day is coming when I shall have an understandingAn understanding! Oh yes! An understanding! A day is surely coming
— Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
We see that happiness is not comfort. Happiness is the freedom to choose one's own way.
— Chris Matakas, The Tao of Jiu Jitsu
The United States is a giant island of freedom, achievement, wealth, and prosperity in a world hostile to our values.
— Phyllis Schlafly
Self-questioning is the road to personal liberation and spiritual enlightenment. Self-questioning spurs the mind to consider new opportunities to arrive at truth.
— Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls
Don't you dare feel guilty for letting those who dim your light, go. Not everyone you meet deserves to be a character in your story.
— Nikki Rowe
Timidity is the silent acceptance of bondage
— Constance Friday
The populace consists of individuals and free men, while the state is made up of numbers. When the state dominates, killing becomes abstract. Servitude began with the shepherds; in the river valleys it attained perfection with canals and dikes. Its model was the slavery in mines and mills. Since then, the ruses for concealing chains have been refined.
— Ernst Jünger, Eumeswil
I want a world where men live free from fear and coercion.
— Naguib Mahfouz, Palace of Desire
Some birds are not meant to be caged, that's all. Their feathers are too bright, their songs too sweet and wild.
— Stephen King, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption: A Story from Different Seasons
What's freedom for? To know eternity.
— Theodore Roethke
What would it be like if I were free, not enslaved by my conditioning?
— Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
More often than not others will project their own insecurities onto you when they are intimidated by your light. Don't listen to them, it's a reflection of the war they're battling within.
— Nikki Rowe
Didn't know where I was going. Didn't care where I ended up. I knew I'd be okay though.
— Darnell Lamont Walker
Tom Paine generally took a critical stance when dealing with religion and the church, but in 1775, in an essay entitled, "Thoughts on Defensive War" he wrote as follows: "In the barbarous ages of the world, men in genernal had no liberty. the strong governed the weak a will; till the coming of Christ there was no sucht thing as political freedom in any part of the world... The Romans held the world in slavery and were themselves slaves of their emperors... Wherefore political as well as spiritual freedom is the gift of God through Christ
— Edmund A. Opitz, The Libertarian Theology of Freedom
We take to the breeze, we go as we please.
— E.B. White, Charlotte's Web
The freer a society is, the more it leaves the family alone.
— Peter Hitchens, The Abolition of Britain: From Winston Churchill to Princess Diana
Always take some of the play, fun, freedom and wonder of the weekend into your week & your work
— Rasheed Ogunlaru
Legalize the right to choose wrong.Legalize individual liberty.
— A.E. Samaan
To embrace the message of Christmas is to throw off my hedonistic rebellion and bow before the chafing reality that I can't save myself, and in that very act to be suddenly taken aback in that I've stumbled upon the very freedom I've longed for in the very place I'd least expected it.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
Freedom is being allowed to think your own thoughts and live your own life.
— John F. Kennedy
The World will not Change unless You Change the World.
— Taitusi Williams Savou
Awestruck, Flora stared at the dishevelled sisters with their blazing faces and radiant ragged wings, who smelled of no kin but the wild high air.
— Laline Paull, The Bees
The search for liberation is a rejection of the responsibilities of freedom in favor of a release into the irresponsibility of rights. And a right is irresponsible because it is a legally entrenched liberty that does not contain within itself the limitations instinctive in a free society.
— Kenneth Minogue, The Servile Mind: How Democracy Erodes the Moral Life
Freedom is something that should not be washed away in time leaving the essence alone in time.
— Sarvesh Murthi .D.D
Silence gives you freedom to talk with yourself fearlessly
— Rohit Bhardwaj, Thoughtsshare for Everyday Life: Insights into Everyday life
Silence gives you freedom to talk yourself fearlessly
— Ar Rohit bhardwaj
Sanity and sense becomes a prison.
— Darnell Lamont Walker
The wind is blowing. Don’t bend if you want to please him.
— Ljupka Cvetanova, The New Land
Still there are people who grasp freedom at once, who don't doubt, don't hesitate—but accept themselves as the measure of themselves and of everything, and who don't seem to show any dread. In some cases there are people who have the strength to do it and the innate wisdom to understand what the price is. In other cases they are people who have no idea what they're doing, who choose freedom out of ignorance and lack of understanding—they know nothing about any price, and they go under when the price is demanded. It means ruin to choose to think for oneself if one can't think.
— Jens Bjørneboe, Moment of Freedom: The Heiligenberg Manuscript
I'm not saying that owning a house makes life into some kind of blissful paradise
—  simply that it makes the difference between freedom and enslavement.
Drifting with things is a habit it takes almost dying to break.
— Marge Piercy, Dance the Eagle to Sleep
LIVE like someone, somewhere is always monitoring your existence, 'because they are - some wise who are living know all too well that freedom and rest are truly deeded in the mental realm of those blessed to take up residence there - for there is no monitoring system needed from the grave...
— Tracey Bond, Spirit Fed Entrepreneur: Growing Your Business with a Fearless Mindset
There will be so much more in between. So much uncertainty. I don't know if we'll survive the catacombs, let alone the rest of it. But it doesn't matter. For now, these steps are enough. These first few precious steps into darkness. Into the unknown. Into freedom.
— Sabaa Tahir, An Ember in the Ashes
But once I could look back on it in a calmer frame of mind, it struck me that his motive was surely not so simple and straightforward. Had it resulted from a fatal collision between reality and ideals? Perhaps—but this was still not quite it. Eventually, I began to wonder whether it was not the same unbearable loneliness that I now felt that had brought K to his decision.
— Sōseki Natsume, Kokoro
The 'thin blue line' is nothing more than the no snitching policy found in any other criminal gang.
— Dane Whalen
The social contract known as 'The Constitution' has been null and void since the last person who signed it, died. Even then, it was only ever applicable to the men who signed it. That's how contracts work.
— Dane Whalen
Few people understood the exceptional role the civil rights movement had on the white boys and girls of the South. Bill Clinton would never have become who he was without the shining example of Martin Luther King. The same is true of Jimmy Carter and Fritz Hollings and Richard and Joe Riley. Imagine this: you’re a little white kid and you watch firehoses turned on people who don’t seem to be hurting anyone, and fierce dogs being tuned on young men who carry signs about freedom. We white kids grew up watching movies and TV and guess what we had learned to do? We had learned to tell the good guys from the bad guys.
— Pat Conroy, A Lowcountry Heart: Reflections on a Writing Life
You're back where you swore yourself you wouldn't beThe familiar shackles you can't tell from your own skinYour head's under water when you learned to swimOn a road to hell, congratulations, you're free...
— Sanhita Baruah
A person must escape artificial constraints and unfold the myth of their own being. There is only one path for a thinking person in life, and that is to assume the role of a compassionate observer. I can only achieve personal freedom – liberty of the mind, body, and soul – by stop worrying about how other people perceive me and no longer judge myself in terms of fame and fortune.
— Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls
It is this, not the spirits, that frightens us; shall we never be free, even after we die?
— Emilie Autumn, The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls
The capacity to solve Life's problems is based on our abilities to learn to think above and not below the problems.
— Auliq Ice
The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread.
— Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
Sometimes I think I would rather just remember it in my head, all those streets and the places I loved. The way it smelled of car exhaust and sweet fruit. The thickness of the heat. The sound of dogs barking in alleyways. That's the Panama I want to hold on to. Because a place can do many things against you, and if it's your home or if it was your home at one time, you still love it. That's how it works.
— Cristina Henriquez, The Book of Unknown Americans
What is peculiar and novel to our age is that the principal goal of politics in every advanced society is not, strictly speaking, a political one, that is today, it is not concerned with human beings as persons and citizens, but with human bodies. ... In all technologically advanced countries today, whatever political label they give themselves, their policies have, essentially, the same goal: to guarantee to every member of society, as a psychophysical organism, the right to physical and mental health.
— W.H. Auden
A free man is not a slave who has escaped his master; such a man is but a runaway slave who may be caught and returned to servitude. A free man, though he may be overpowered, may be killed, cannot be reduced to servitude; something in him asserts freedom as an inviolable right.It is not negotiable.He does not *ask* that others respect his right, he *requires* it; and it is ultimately his willingness to die for this freedom which forms the basis of his demand that others respect it.
— Allen Wheelis, The Moralist
More often than not, a statist's argument against Anarchism boils down to an unwillingness to take control and responsibility for their own lives, actions, and communities. The sad truth is that the human animal has been domesticated to the point where it actually fears Liberty.
— Dane Whalen
Indeed, Dr Haxhausen fought to preserve his freedom with very good reason, for he required a great deal of it—freedom, not reason—to pursue his plans for the future.
— Thomas Ligotti, Noctuary
It is precisely when their interior worlds change shape that Bezukhov and Bolkonsky are confirmed as individuals; that they surprise; that they make themselves different; that their freedom catches fire, and with it the identity of their selves; these are moments of poetry: they experience them with such intensity that the whole world rushes forward to meet them with an intoxicating parade of wondrous details. In Tolstoy, man is the more himself, the more an individual, when he has the strength, the imagination, the intelligence, to transform himself.By contrast, the people I see changing their attitude toward Lenin, Europe, and so on expose their nonindividuality. This change is neither their own creation nor their own invention, not caprice or surprise or thought or madness; it has no poetry; it is nothing but a very prosaic adjustment to the changing spirit of History. That is why they don't even notice it; in the final analysis, they always stay the same: always in the right, always thinking what, in their milieu, a person is supposed to think; they change not in order to draw closer to some essential self but in order to merge with everyone else; changing lets them stay unchanged.Another way of expressing it: they change their mind in accordance with the invisible tribunal that is also changing its mind; their change is thus simply a bet on what the tribunal will proclaim to be the truth tomorrow.
— Milan Kundera, Testaments Betrayed: An Essay in Nine Parts
Proletarians of the world, look into the depths of your own beings, seek out the truth and realise it yourselves: you will find it nowhere else.
— Peter Arshinov, History of the Makhnovist Movement, 1918-21
Anxiety is the price tag on human freedom
— Louis Menand
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. --Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759
— Wendy Goerl
Each year, more responsibility and freedom (they are companions) must be given to the child so that the final release in early adulthood is merely a small, final release of authority.
— James C. Dobson, Life on the Edge: A Young Adult's Guide to a Meaningful Future
If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. Were an opinion a personal possession of no value except to the owner, if to be obstructed in the enjoyment of it were simply a private injury, it would make some difference whether the injury was inflicted only on a few persons or on many. But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race, posterity as well as the existing generation-- those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it.
— J.S. Mill
True freedom is the ability to respond consciously, in the most beneficial way, to whatever life throws at you.
— John Bruna
If I were a seagullI wouldn't have to stick aroundIf people argued- I would fly off,swerve, wheel, dip, scream.a thousand wings of company if I have friendstwo strong wings of my ownIf I don't
— Caroline B. Cooney, Losing Christina Collection
We wanted to be free and owe this freedom to nobody.
— Jan Stanisław Jankowski
It was a wonderful feeling, a sense of release and boundless freedom that he had never known before. He was beyond the reach of all the things that had weighed him down and hemmed him in.
— Michael Ende, The Neverending Story
This is a party that used to embrace freedom but now they've abandoned the principles of Thomas Jefferson and adopted the tactics of Joseph Stalin.' he says. And he, (Eric O'Keefe) notes that those tactics are even aimed at fellow Democrats who don't fall in line.
— Kimberly Strassel
He was nineteen years old, homeless and rootless, with no family and no purpose in life.
— Ken Follett, The Pillars of the Earth
Once the woman decided to get free, she had also decided to stay free... The older Jo =got, the more he understood about the woman he called Ma. The more he understood that sometimes staying free required unimaginable sacrifice.
— Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing
A little black child fighting in her sleep against an opponent she couldn't name come morning because in the light that opponent just looked like the world around her. Intangible evil. Unspeakable unfairness. Beulah ran in her sleep, ran like she'd stolen something, when really she had done nothing other than expect the peace, the clarity, that came with dreaming. Yes, Jo thought, this was where it started, but when, where, did it end?
— Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing
Love the ones who understand you and forget the ones that don't.
— Nikki Rowe
You can't call your life your own: and in return you have safety, if it's worth having at the price you pay.
— Richard Adams, Watership Down
But do you imagine there’s a certain type of person in the world who conforms to the idea of a ‘bad person'? You’ll never find someone who fits that mold neatly, you know. On the whole, all people are good, or at least they’re normal. The frightening thing is that they can suddenly turn bad when it comes to the crunch. That’s why you have to be careful.
— Sōseki Natsume, Kokoro
For the first time I began to perceive that true sympathy cannot be switched on and off like an electric current, that anyone that identifies himself with the fate of another is robbed to some extent of his own freedom.
— Stefan Zweig, Beware of Pity
I don't care for the colour of your skin, I care for the size of your heart behind it.
— Nikki Rowe
Mr. Prince, would you like to know the most significant event in the history of freedom?""The American Revolution?""A defensible choice, a close second even, but not mine. I would choose the moment when the Roman plebians required the patricians to write down the twelve tables of the law and put them where everyone could see them -- thereby proclaimed the law supreme over the politicians. The rule of law is the essence of freedom.
— Jerry Pournelle, The Prince
The greatest desire is the desire to be free. The greatest freedom is the freedom to desire.
— R.A.Delmonico
But...well, Reg, tomorrow the sun will come up again, and I'm pretty sure that whatever happens we won't have found Freedom, and there won't be a whole lot of Justice, and I'm damn sure we won't have found Truth. But it's just possible that I might get a hard-boiled egg.
— Terry Pratchett, Night Watch
We are a little land. And little lands on the borders of a great empire were always hateful to the lords of the great empire. He longs to blot them out, gobble them up.
— C.S. Lewis, The Horse and His Boy
Freedom is the inherent state of nature. A bird is free until you clip its wings and put it in a cage. Just because you pick up its shit, give it food and water, and let it do as it pleases within the confines of its cage does not make it any less a captive. Even if the cage was made of pure gold, the ornate bars would serve the same purpose.
— Dane Whalen
Where wilderness can still be found, the ancientness of the land and the nobility of man's struggle emerge. Wilderness is vastly different from the clutter and clatter of much of our civilized world. In wilderness one experiences exhilaration and joy. In freedom and simplicity, in its vitality and immense variety, happiness may not only be pursued; it is ofttimes found.
— Harvey Broome, Out Under Sky Of Great Smokies: A Personal Journal
Freedom is taken for granted by the free and longed for by those who never had it. But for those who have lost it, the loss burns like the hottest flame.
— S.W. Lothian, Subway | Palliatopia
It's ok to do your own thing for a while sometimes the call of the soul is a much more enticing path then one of a drunken phone call from your pals, call it the 21st century or whatever you wish but most live for the weekend untying the knots & ropes of slavery from during the week with no drive nor purpose to become something more than a pay check & a good time every 5 days.
— Nikki Rowe
Even the self-assured truth-finders and self-proclaimed freedom-fighters reject Truth. As admirable as such endeavors may be, they still only really want it so long as it to some extent confirms what they had already presumed to be true.
— Criss Jami
Freedom of expression is more than a fashion statement.
— Miss Vera
Anarchy and Liberty are synonymous. Anything less is merely gradient levels of slavery.
— Dane Whalen
But, as your saints teach and we have always known, attachment enslaves you. Only those free from it see the world as it really is and have power over themselves and all things.
— Lian Hearn, Autumn Princess, Dragon Child
Poetry never makes any money, and so there's no pressure to appeal to an audience. That makes a lot of things about being a poet difficult, but it also means freedom to write whatever you want to write, however you want to write it.
— Garth Greenwell
I just want to live in a way that either wakes people up or shakes people up. Whether I have opened a wound or opened a heart, I have touched a life and helped bring a change.
— Nikki Rowe
Art is my cure to all this madness, sadness and loss of belonging in the world & through it I'll walk myself home.
— Nikki Rowe
Liberty and Freedom are complex concepts. They go back to religious ideas of Free Will and are related to the Ruler Mystique implicit in absolute monarchs. Without absolute monarchs patterned after the Old Gods and ruling by the grace of a belief in religious indulgence, Liberty and Freedom would never have gained their present meaning. These ideals owe their very existence to past examples of oppression. And the forces that maintain such ideas will erode unless renewed by dramatic teaching or new oppressions. This is the most basic key to my life.
— Frank Herbert, Heretics of Dune
How bittersweet is it to realize that we are the creators of our realities and that we have allowed others to do the creating for us for so many years? So much time wasted…so much guilt, regret and bitterness. It can be easier to numb that pain than face it. Yet once we face our pain and take responsibility, we gain the freedom to move forward and unleash our Divine Potential. We also gain the freedom to move forward and respond to life with Divinity; thus, we alter the very fabric of the collective realities experienced on our planet.
— Alaric Hutchinson, Living Peace
Ma'am," he said, reaching for the door. He held it open, his posture as erect and sturdy as a pole.I eyed the man's uniform, the pins and badges that signified his military rank and position. At that moment I felt opposing forces wash over me, clashing internally like a cold and warm front meeting in the air.At first I was hit by a burning sense of respect and gratitude. How privileged a person I was to have this soldier unbar the way for me, maintaining a clear path that I might advance unhindered. The symbolism marked by his actions did strike me with remarkable intensity. How many virtual doors would be shut in my face if not for dutiful soldiers like him?As I went to step forward, my feet nearly faltered as if they felt unworthy. It was I who ought to be holding open the door for this gentleman—this representative of great heroes present and past who did fight and sacrifice and continue to do so to keep doors open, paths free and clear for all of humanity.I moved through the entrance and thanked him."Yes, ma'am," he said.How strange that I should feel such pride while passing through his open door.
— Richelle E. Goodrich, Slaying Dragons
The call for political freedom took place long ago. The call for freedom of speech is also a thing of the past. Freedom is not a word to be used exclusively for phenomena such as this which are so easily given outward manifestation. I believe that we young men of the new age have encountered the moment in time when we must call for that great freedom, the freedom of the mind.
— Sōseki Natsume, Sanshirō
If you have lived your life in such a way that no one has ever found you obnoxious then you have my condolences for you have never really lived.
— Rock Cowles
I used to love the storms when I was younger,'' Grump said. "I would climb the cypresses and leap into the sky and roar at the thunder. There's nothing like flying into the rain and embracing the wind. It's true freedom.
— Aaron Burdett, Grump & Rose
God Give Us PeaceWithout Peace We Are Without Freedom
— Ellen J. Barrier
The purpose of the state is really freedom.
— Baruch Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise
Don’t sit at home and wait for mango tree to bring mangoes to you wherever you are. It won’t happen. If you are truly hungry for change, go out of your comfort zone and change the world.
— Israelmore Ayivor, 101 Keys To Everyday Passion
The mother of goodwill is freewill, if untainted by evil.
— Christian Hunt, The Dawn of Grace
A forced kindness deserves no thanks
— Thomas Fuller
And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.
— Thomas Jefferson
To work best democracy needs a diversity of thoughts, ideas and expression. This is only possible with freedom and civility.
— Kevin Stirtz
Rare are the handful of principles that incessantly drive us to stand even when we face the stark realization that we will likely perish in the standing. And rarer still is the person who will surrender all to protect such principles. Yet, the rudimentary principles of freedom and liberty pristinely untarnished by greed and selfishness took captive the hearts of simple people and raised this nation up from untamed wilderness and unchecked tyranny. And let us all be warned that without renewed adherence to these principles, we will rapidly return this nation to untamed wilderness and unchecked tyranny.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
I'm convinced that the greatest lover of freedom & liberty is God almighty himself. He gave us free will, the greatest liberty of all.
— Justin Steckbauer
It is at the precise moment that I take something for granted that I have placed myself in the precarious position of losing that very thing. And if that thing I risk losing is liberty, taking it for granted is foolishness of the most foolish sort.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
One of the disadvantages to having a choice is the inevitability to hang oneself on freedoms rope.
— Donna Lynn Hope
In our desire to impose form on the world and our lives we have lost the capacity to see the form that is already there; and in that lies not liberation but alienation, the cutting off of things as they really are.
— Colin E. Gunton
Complete freedom is as much curse as boon; freedom within strict and well-defined confines is, to me, ideal.
— David Byrne, How Music Works
... He is strong and pain is worse to the strong, incapacity is worse.
— Robinson Jeffers, The Selected Poetry
If anything I urge you to live bravely and beyond your own comfort zone.
— Nikki Rowe
Freedom had been hunted round the globe; reason was considered as rebellion; and the slavery of fear had made men afraid to think. But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing.
— Thomas Paine
Rain drips from the skyI hope it rains forever If that's what it takes to wash you away from meAnd when I'm cleanI'll finally be free.
— Jasmine Sandozz
On the whole the modern world has been conditioned to have a chip on its shoulder against devoutly religious people. I disagree with this in some instances - particularly in, believe it or not, matters of integrity. Deep down I often rather believe the man who honestly thinks - or better yet even, prefers - that he has an omnipotent Judge breathing down his neck, holding his every word and his every move accountable, than the man who much like his modern peers, and ironically enough, claims or wishes to bask in complete independence. As it appears actually, the former is more free of guilt than the latter.
— Criss Jami
Chaos,leave me never,keep me wildand keep me freeso that mybrokenness will be,the only beautythe world will see.
— Robert M. Drake, Black Butterfly
I have been in the land of Faerie for years and it is a place where mortal blood is turned to fire. It is a place of beauty and terror beyond what can be imagined here. I have ridden with the Wild Hunt. I have carved a clear path of freedom among the stars and outrun the wind. And no I am asked to walk upon the earth again.
— Cassandra Clare, Lady Midnight
You know that feeling of invincibility you sometimes get, especially when young and testing yourself - well that could be because actually know deep down that we are indeed eternal. We come into this world to live a life, to experience it, from somewhere else, some other plane, but we are programmed by all around us to deny or forget this - until one day we may remember again. That feeling of blissful reconnection with our source can be invoked through nature, beautiful writing or art or music, any detailed craft or work of discovery or personal dedication, meditation or other mentally balancing practice, or even through religious experience if there is a pure communion (not a pretence of it). But we should not yearn to return too soon, we should accept that we have come here for the duration of each life, and revel in the chance to learn and grow on this splendid planet. We can draw a deep sense of being-ness. peace, and love from this connection, which will sustain us through any trial. Once nurtured, this becomes stronger than any other connection, so of course our relationships here are most joyful when they allow us the personal freedom to spend time developing and celebrating that connection. Our deepest friendships form with those we can share such time and experiences with - discussing, meditating, immersing ourselves in nature, or creating our music, art, written or other works. Our journeys here are voyages of discovery, opening out the wonders within and all around. What better companions could we have than those who are able to fully share in such delights with us?
— Jay Woodman
It is the consumers who make poor people rich and rich people poor.
— Ludwig von Mises
If science could comprehend all phenomena so that eventually in a thoroughly rational society human beings became as predictable as cogs in a machine, then man, driven by this need to know and assert his freedom, would rise up and smash the machine. What the reformers of the Enlightenment, dreaming of a perfect organization of society, had overlooked, Dostoevski saw all too plainly with the novelist's eye: namely, that as modern society becomes more organized and hence more bureaucratized it piles up at its joints petty figures like that of the Underground Man, who beneath their nondescript surface are monsters of frustration and resentment.
— William Barrett
The happiness of America is intimately connected with the happiness of all mankind; she is destined to become the safe and venerable asylum of virtue, of honesty, of tolerance, and quality and of peaceful liberty.
— Marquis De Lafayette
I would take my beloved Najma to my country so that she would taste secularism and true freedom. How wrong I was! How wrong we all were! Unfortunately, you truly miss what you have had all along and taken for granted (in this case the spirit of secularism and true freedom) only once you actually lose it.
— Vivek Pereira, Indians in Pakistan
The chaos doesn't end, you kinda' just become the calm.
— Nikki Rowe
The embrace of essential beastliness, made scientific and respectable by a reading of Darwin that may or may not have done justice to his intentions, thrilled and enthralled Western thought in certain quarters and in fact still does enthrall persons and groups that experience live in society as a barely tolerable constraint on a kind of freedom they consider a birthright. This freedom appears to have most of the essential features of a war of each against all, whether a hot war that compels them to go armed to Starbucks or to church or a cold war that makes a virtue of craftiness and guile, the ability to loot and wreck the national economy without getting caught.
— Marilynne Robinson, When I Was a Child I Read Books
Is liberty your compass needle? Do you live by it? Do you seek it out equally for yourself as for others? Is it your creed? Do you observe its tenets and principles? Are you truly free?
— A.E. Samaan
When national ideals are confined to insignificant issues reflective primarily of a personal choice, there lies a problem of distorted priorities.
— Moutasem Algharati
What separates Rand from Marx is that the latter saw the true flourishing of individual creativity as best accomplished through collaboration and association with others in a collective drive to abolish the barriers of scarcity and material necessity beyond which, Marx held, the true realm of individual freedom could begin.
— David Harvey, Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism
Dismantle your wounds so you stop living your life by them.
— Nikki Rowe
What is in the minds of the majority the society is unmindful of.
— Amit Abraham
To be an American is to be accosted by bigotry and enmity for the rights that you were told to appreciate.
— Tennessee West
We first become aware of freedom or its opposite in our intercourse with others, not in the intercourse with ourselves.
— Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future
A common understanding is the pivot and a common way to bond the disintegrated
— Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
And maybe a few days of freedom would be better than a lifetime spent as a slave.
— Becky Allen, Bound by Blood and Sand
When man penetrates the mysteries of Nature, the "facts of Nature" become transparent symbols, revealing the "divine energies" and the "angelic" state which fallen man has lost, and which he may recover only for a moment, as when he is enraptured by the beauty of music or of a lovely face. At such moments man forgets his limited self, his individualistic dream, and participates in the cosmic dream, thus becoming freed from the prison of his own carnal soul.
— Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Science  Civilization in Islam
Do not let anyone to cage your freedom. Fight for your Freedom and dignity
— Mohammed Sekouty
this free-man's prison known as life.
— Vanessa Ronan, The Last Days of Summer
All alone in an unfamiliar place, like some solitary explorer who's lost his compass and his map. Is this what it means to be free?
— Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
Nonsense has taken up residence in the heart of public debate and also in the academy. This nonsense is part of the huge fund of unreason on which the plans and schemes of optimists draw for their vitality. Nonsense confiscates meaning. It thereby puts truth and falsehood, reason and unreason, light and darkness on an equal footing. It is a blow cast in defence of intellectual freedom, as the optimists construe it, namely the freedom to believe anything at all, provided you feel better for it.
— Roger Scruton, The Uses of Pessimism: And the Danger of False Hope
That’s true freedom for a person. Not money, but time.
— Meir Shalev, A Pigeon and a Boy
Don’t be afraid anymore. Not of anyone. Not of anything. Nothing. Ever again. Listen to me: not ever again.
— Marguerite Duras, The North China Lover
As long as government has the power to regulate business, business will control government by funding the candidate that legislates in their favor. A free-market thwarts lobbying by taking the power that corporations seek away from government! The only sure way to prevent the rich from buying unfair government influence is to stop allowing government to use physical force against peaceful people. Whenever government is allowed to favor one group over another, the rich will always win, since they can "buy" more favors, overtly or covertly, than the poor.
— Mary J. Ruwart
...Society needs to open its collective mind to all ideas and ideologies. It needs to give its people the chance to listen to the opinions of others, and then examine them critically instead of rejecting them prematurely. Such a creative dialogue based on positive critical thinking can enhance and develop ideas.
— Raif Badawi, 1000 Lashes: Because I Say What I Think
It’s about freedom, joy, and wisdom. It’s all about divine love.
— Harold Klemp, Spiritual Wisdom on Life after Death
If I have become so pathetically dulled that I hold freedom as my right and the privileges of liberty as my due, I can stand beside the stilled graves of a thousand soldiers fallen in defense of freedom and not feel a thing. And my most solemn prayer is that I will never be this.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
The right to express out thoughts, however, means something only if we are able to have thoughts of our own; freedom from external authority is a lasting gain only if the inner psychological conditions are such that we are able to establish our own individuality.
— Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom