#free

If this is truly the time that will decide, we have no business refusing people who feel the way we do. No right to decide that they must huddle in their homes waiting to see if they are still slaves or not when the summer ends. ↗

— Guy Gavriel Kay

#free-will #freedom #rebellion #business

They open their wings, flash patterns and color, fly from flower toflower. I, with the dark brittles and many feet of the former form, inchalong the ground. Sometimes all I want is two armfuls of air, a fistful of sky. ↗

— Nina Kiriki Hoffman

#change #flight #freedom #change

And, indeed, even in the most tumultuous times, the plebiscites of the people always proceeded peacefully when the senate did not interfere, and votes were given with large majorities. The citizens having only one interest, the people had only one will. At the other extreme of the cycle unanimity reappears. This is when citizens, lapsed into servitude, have no longer either freedom or will. Then fear and flattery change voting into acclamation; people no longer deliberate, they worship or they curse. ↗

— Rousseau

#change

When society involves the anarch in a conflict which in which he does not participate inwardly, it challenges him to launch an opposition. He will try to turn the lever with which society moves him. Society is then at his disposal, say, as a stage for grand spectacles that are devised for him. Everything changes; the fetter becomes fascinating, danger an adventure, a suspenseful task. ↗

— Ernst Jünger

#ernst-jünger #freedom #society #change

It was vision that dulled trust. It was vision that uplifted trust. Let them see how. ↗

— Ray McFarland

#freedom #reality #change

Government is nothing more than the combined force of society or the united power of the multitude for the peace, order, safety, good, and happiness of the people... There is no king or queen bee distinguished from all the others by size or figure or beauty and variety of colors in the human hive. No man has yet produced any revelation from heaven in his favor, any divine communication to govern his fellow men. Nature throws us all into the world equal and alike... The preservation of liberty depends upon the intellectual and moral character of the people. As long as knowledge and virtue are diffused generally among the body of a nation it is impossible they should be enslaved. Ambition is one of the more ungovernable passions of the human heart. The love of power is insatiable and uncontrollable... There is a danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living wth power to endanger public liberty. ↗

— David McCullough

#government #liberty #slavery #beauty

Freedom is not doing what we want, but what we should. ↗

— Victor Manuel Rivera

#freedom #leadership #freedom

Nobody who says, ‘I told you so’ has ever been, or will ever be, a hero. ↗

— Ursula K. Le Guin

#bravery #courage #curiousity #freedom #heroism

Language ... has created the word 'loneliness' to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word 'solitude' to express the glory of being alone. ↗

— Paul Tillich

#independence #language #loneliness #pain #paradox

For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst and to provide for it. ↗

— Patrick Henry

#freedom #honesty #revolution #self-examination #truth