#ed

The basic trouble with the modern world … is the intellectual fallacy that freedom and compulsion are opposites. To solve the gigantic problems crushing the world today, we must clarify our mental confusion. We must acquire a philosophical perspective. In essence, freedom and compulsion are one. Let me give you a simple illustration. Traffic lights restrain your freedom to cross a street whenever you wish. But this restraint gives you the freedom from being run over by a truck. If you were assigned to a job and prohibited from leaving it, it would restrain the freedom of your career. But it would give you freedom from the fear of unemployment. Whenever a new compulsion is forced upon us, we automatically gain a new freedom. The two are inseparable. Only by accepting total compulsion can we achieve total freedom. ↗

— Ayn Rand

#freedom

The source of our suffering has been our timidity. We have been afraid to think....Let us dare to read, think, speak, write. ↗

— David McCullough

#government #john-adams #liberty #mccullough #politics-freedom-liberty

Freedom cannot be labeled nor won nor envied. Only when one doesn't realize what freedom is, is one truly free. ↗

— D.J. Niko

#freedom

As if one could do what one wanted with one's own body! ↗

— Louis Aragon

#desire #freedom #freedom

If we knew how to find the lost, we would know how to rediscover the parts of our minds left behind in battle. ↗

— Margarita Engle

#poetry #the-surrender-tree #war #freedom

Man is guaranteed only those rights which he can defend. ↗

— Jack McCoy

#humanity #law #mccoy #order #rights

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

#freedom #liberty #perfection #freedom

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! ↗

— Sri H.W.L. Poonja

#love #spirit #will #freedom

Freedom, privileges, options, must constantly be exercised, even at the risk of inconvenience. Otherwise they fall into desuetude and become unfashionable, unorthodox—finally irregulationary. ↗

— Jack Vance

#freedom

To what extent does anybody control his destiny? Life is very much like falling of the edge of a cliff. You have complete freedom to make all the choices you want to take on your way down. My characters choose to yearn and not lose hope even when the odds are completely against them. It doesn't make the landing at the end of that fall any less painful but, somehow, it helps them keep a little dignity their bone broken body. ↗

— Etgar Keret

#free-will #hope #humor #writing #freedom