44 Quotations Found

Freedom is inherently risky, which is the reason for rules and limits in the first place.

Author: Ellen Willis | Source: The Atlantic | Subjects: Concepts, Freedom | Liberty, Life & Society

I’ve always thought of freedom as an activity, not a condition. There’s a tendency, especially in our culture, to think of freedom as “freedom from.” To be free is to not be tyrannized by some outside power, and that’s fine, but it’s incomplete. You can be free of tyranny, but if you’re destitute, if you’re abandoned, if you don’t have agency because your most immediate … [ Read more ]

Author: Sean Illing | Source: Vox | Subjects: Concepts, Freedom | Liberty, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy

For most of human history, freedom had to be at least suffered for if not died for. That raised its value to something almost sacred. In modern democracies, however, an ethos of public sacrifice is rarely needed because freedom and survival are more or less guaranteed. […] The idea that we can enjoy the benefits of society while owing nothing in return is literally infantile. … [ Read more ]

Author: Sebastian Junger | Source: Vox | Subjects: Concepts, Freedom | Liberty, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy

Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.

Author: Jean-Paul Sartre | Subjects: Concepts, Freedom | Liberty, Life & Society

We tend to take every precaution to safeguard our material possessions because we know what they cost. But at the same time we neglect things which are much more precious because they don’t come with price tags attached: The real value of things like our eyesight or relationships or freedom can be hidden to us, because money is not changing hands.

Author: Peter D. Kaufman | Subjects: Concepts, Freedom | Liberty, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior

Inseparable from the question of freedom is the nature of the imagination — that ultimate frontier of our freedom of thought.

Author: Maria Popova | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Concepts, Creativity and Innovation, Freedom | Liberty

The truly free individual is free only to the extent of his own self-mastery. While those who will not govern themselves are condemned to find masters to govern over them.

Author: Steven Pressfield | Subjects: Concepts, Freedom | Liberty, Personal Improvement

In 1858, Abraham Lincoln, then a candidate for the Senate, warned that arguments limiting American equality to white men and excluding black Americans were the same arguments “that kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world…. Turn in whatever way you will—whether it come from the mouth of a King, an excuse for enslaving the people of his country, or … [ Read more ]

Authors: Abraham Lincoln, Heather Cox Richardson | Subjects: Concepts, Freedom | Liberty, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy, Race Relations

I am a determinist. As such, I do not believe in free will… I believe with Schopenhauer: We can do what we wish, but we can only wish what we must. Practically, I am, nevertheless, compelled to act is if freedom of the will existed. If I wish to live in a civilized community, I must act as if man is a responsible being.

Author: Albert Einstein | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Concepts, Freedom | Liberty, Life & Society, Philosophy

The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the minds of other men and women; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which weighs their interests alongside its own without bias; the spirit of liberty remembers that not even a sparrow falls to earth unheeded; the … [ Read more ]

Author: Learned Hand | Subjects: Concepts, Freedom | Liberty, Religion

Our greatest happiness does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed us, but is always the result of a good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits.

Author: Thomas Jefferson | Subjects: Concepts, Freedom | Liberty, Life & Society, Personal Improvement

Nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom.

Author: James Baldwin | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Concepts, Freedom | Liberty

And yet, within these narrow parameters of being, nothing appeals to us more than the notion of freedom — the feeling that we are free, that intoxicating illusion with which we blunt the hard fact that we are not. The more abstract and ideological the realm, the more vehemently we can insist that moral choice in specific situations within narrow parameters proves a totality of … [ Read more ]

Author: Maria Popova | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Concepts, Freedom | Liberty, Love

The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning, but without understanding.

Author: Louis Brandeis | Subjects: Concepts, Freedom | Liberty, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy

Man’s brain lives in the 20th century; the heart of most men lives still in the Stone Age. The majority of men have not yet acquired the maturity to be independent, to be rational, to be objective. They need myths and idols to endure the fact that man is all by himself, that there is no authority which gives meaning to life except man himself. … [ Read more ]

Author: Erich Fromm | Subjects: Concepts, Freedom | Liberty, Insight, Life & Society, Psychology | Behavior

Freedom gives no one license to change a heritage that belongs to the ages.

Author: Sigurd F. Olson | Subjects: Concepts, Freedom | Liberty, Life & Society

The love of power and the love of liberty are in eternal antagonism. Where there is least liberty, the passion for power is the most ardent and unscrupulous.

Author: John Stuart Mill | Source: Farnam Street | Subjects: Concepts, Freedom | Liberty, Insight, Life & Society, Power

Unless someone truly has the power to say no, they never truly have the power to say yes.

Author: Dan Millman | Subjects: Concepts, Freedom | Liberty, Insight, Life & Society

Doing what you like is freedom. Liking what you do is happiness.

Author: Unknown | Subjects: Concepts, Freedom | Liberty, Happiness, Insight, Life & Society, Psychology | Behavior

Lo supe siempre. No hay nadie que aguante la libertad ajena; a nadie le gusta vivir con una persona libre. Si eres libre, ése es el precio que tienes que pagar: la soledad.
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I always knew. There is no one who can endure the freedom of others; nobody likes to live with a free person. If you are free, that is the price you have to … [ Read more ]

Author: Chavela Vargas | Subjects: Concepts, Freedom | Liberty, Life & Society, Relationships