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Read through the most famous quotes by topic #freedom
The little boats cannot make much difference to the welfare of Gaza either way, since the materials being shipped are in such negligible quantity. The chief significance of the enterprise is therefore symbolic. And the symbolism, when examined even cursorily, doesn't seem too adorable. The intended beneficiary of the stunt is a ruling group with close ties to two of the most retrograde dictatorships in the Middle East, each of which has recently been up to its elbows in the blood of its own civilians. The same group also manages to maintain warm relations with, or at the very least to make cordial remarks about, both Hezbollah and al-Qaida. Meanwhile, a document that was once accurately described as a 'warrant for genocide' forms part of the declared political platform of the aforesaid group. There is something about this that fails to pass a smell test. ↗
#al-qaeda #antisemitism #dictatorship #freedom-flotilla-ii #gaza
If you buy an egg thinking it's a goose's egg, and when it hatches it is actually a bird of paradise; no manner of convincing and reproach will turn the bird of paradise into a goose. Even if you make it go to goose church and goose school and eat goose feeds and only hang out with geese! In the end, it will still belong to paradise. ↗
What am I to God? Nothing, a murky shadow. My passage on this earth is too rapid to leave any traces; it counts for nothing in space or in time. God really doesn't pay any attention to us, so even if he exists, it's as if he didn't. My form of atheism, however, leads inevitably to an acceptance of the inexplicable. Mystery is inseparable from chance, and our whole universe is a mystery. Since I reject the idea of a divine watchmaker (a notion even more mysterious than the mystery it supposedly explains), then I must consent to live in a kind of shadowy confusion. And insofar as no explication, even the simplest, works for everyone, I've chosen my mystery. At least it keeps my moral freedom intact. ↗
بيـدٍ أغلقُ أبوابَ جراحـي * ويدي الأخرى على باب الصبـاح نصل سفاح على حنجرتي * وعلى وجهي تهاويل الأضـاحـي قبضة الجبهة لا تـمهـلـنـي * لـحظة.. مــا بيـن ذبـح وانـذبـاح أنــا أوجـاع ملايـيـن صحت * فصحْت غضبة حـق مستبــاح من رخام الأمس دوى ألمي* يا سدود انتظري دَين اكتساحي أبذر الشمس على مستقبلي * واشج بالليل عن فضل وشاحي فاضربوا أوتاركم في وطني * إنها لعبة قش ورياح حرموا الدوح على بلبله * وأبيحوا لكمو غير المباح سأكيل الصاع بالصاعين لكم * ناقلاً ناري من ساح لساح مخلب الصقر أنا قلمته * أمس. فليكبر على حد سلاحي تتحدى زهرتي دبايةً * فاسحقوها، تزدهر كل بطاحي من محيطي لخليجي لم يزل * صاعداً يكتسح الموت جناحي وطني جنة عدني، وأنا * حارس الجنة من كف وقاح وأرى حولي رؤوساً أينعت * وانا قاطفها باسم جراحي غضبي يحرق من يشعله * غضبي القادم ريحاً بلقاح فافهموا يا سادتي، أخبركم * انني صاح، أعيد القول، صاح ألف هولاكو أنا أغرقتهم * في دياجيري، واطلعت صباحي ينتهي العدوان غيماً عابرا * وأنا أبقى، وحبي، وكفاحي. ↗
But most of all, as summer slanted to an end, he was learning to love idleness, idleness no longer as stretches of freedom reclaimed by stealth here and there from involuntary labour, surreptitious thefts to be enjoyed sitting on his heels before a flowerbed with the fork dangling from his fingers, but as a yielding up of himself to time, to a time flowing slowly like oil from horizon to horizon over the face of the world, washing over his body, circulating in his armpits and his groin, stirring his eyelids. He was neither pleased nor displeased when there was work to do; it was all the same. He could lie all afternoon with his eyes open, staring at the corrugations in the roof-iron and the tracings of rust; his mind would not wander, he would see nothing but the iron, the lines would not transform themselves into pattern or fantasy; he was himself, lying in his own house, the rust was merely rust, all that was moving was time, bearing him onward in its flow. ↗
The pollution of the outward environment we are witnessing is only the mirror and the consequence of the inward environment, to which we pay too little heed. I think that this is also the defect of the ecological movements. They crusade with an understandable and also legitimate passion against the pollution of the environment, whereas man's self-pollution of his soul continues to be treated as one of the rights of his freedom. There is a discrepancy here. We want to eliminate the measurable pollution, but we don't consider the pollution of man's soul and his creaturely form.... he must acknowledge himself as a creature and realise that there must be a sort of inner purity to his creatureliness: spiritual ecology, if you will." Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Salt of the Earth, Ignatius Press, 1997, pp. 230-231 ↗
Imagination sees the complete reality, - it is where past, present and future meet... Imagination is limited neither to the reality which is apparent - nor to one place. It lives everywhere. It is at a centre and feels the vibrations of all the circles within which east and west are virtually included. Imagination is the life of mental freedom. It realizes what everything is in its many aspects ... Imagination does not uplift: we don't want to be uplifted, we want to be more completely aware. ↗
My name," I tell Wilbur in the most dignified voice I can find, "Was inspired by Harriet Quimby, the first female American pilot and the first woman ever to cross the Channel in an aeroplane. My mother chose it to represent freedom and bravery and independence, and she gave it to me just before she died." There's a short pause while Wilbur looks appropriately moved. Then Dad says, "Who told you that?" "Annabel did." "Well, it's not true at all. You were named after Harriet the tortoise, the second longest living tortoise in the world." There's a silence while I stare at Dad and Annabel puts her head in her hands so abruptly that the pen starts to leak into her collar. "Richard," she moans quietly. "A tortoise?" I repeat in dismay. "I'm named after a tortoise? What the hell is a tortoise supposed to represent?" "Longevity? ↗
Summer was here again. Summer, summer, summer. I loved and hated summers. Summers had a logic all their own and they always brought something out in me. Summer was supposed to be about freedom and youth and no school and possibilities and adventure and exploration. Summer was a book of hope. That's why I loved and hated summers. Because they made me want to believe. ↗
