#ed

It (trying to keep the law) grants you the power to judge others and feel superior to them. You believe you are living to a higher standard than those you judge. Enforcing rules, especially in its more subtle expressions like responsibility and expectation, is a vain attempt to create certainly out of uncertainty. And contrary to what you might think, I have a great fondness for uncertainty. Rules cannot bring freedom; they only have the power to accuse. ↗

— Wm. Paul Young

#control #control-freaks #god #law #law-and-gospel

My God! How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy! ↗

— Thomas Jefferson

#founding-fathers #freedom #liberty #thomas-jefferson #freedom

Freedom is never given; it is won. ↗

— A. Philip Randolph

#given #never #won

Responsibility I believe accrues through privilege. People like you and me have an unbelievable amount of privilege and therefore we have a huge amount of responsibility. We live in free societies where we are not afraid of the police; we have extraordinary wealth available to us by global standards. If you have those things, then you have the kind of responsibility that a person does not have if he or she is slaving seventy hours a week to put food on the table; a responsibility at the very least to inform yourself about power. Beyond that, it is a question of whether you believe in moral certainties or not. ↗

— Noam Chomsky

#moral-absolutism #morality #police #privilege #responsibility

If there is no laughter, Jesus has gone somewhere else. If there is no joy and freedom, it is not a church: it is simply a crowd of melancholy people basking in a religious neurosis. If there is no celebration, there is no real worship. ↗

— Steve Brown

#joy #laughter #religion #worship #freedom

You mean you're comparing our lives to a sonnet? A strict form, but freedom within it? Yes. Mrs. Whatsit said. You're given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. What you say is completely up to you. ↗

— Madeleine L'Engle

#freedom

Cowardice is the most terrible of vices. ↗

— Mikhail Bulgakov

#creativity #freedom #writer #freedom

This love was a torment, and he resented bitterly the subjugation in which it held him; he was a prisoner and he longed for freedom. Sometimes he awoke in the morning and felt nothing; his soul leaped, for he thought he was free; he loved no longer; but in a little while, as he grew wide awake, the pain settled in his heart, and he knew that he was not cured yet. ↗

— W. Somerset Maugham

#freedom

Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere. Our support goes to those who struggle to gain those rights and keep them. Our strength is our unity of purpose. To that high concept there can be no end save victory. ↗

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

#truth #freedom

It's lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made or only just happened. ↗

— Mark Twain

#huck-finn #loveliness #raft #self-worth #stars