#is

I believe that the duel between Christianity and atheism is the most important in the world. I further believe that the struggle between individualism and collectivism is the same struggle reproduced on another level. ↗

— William F. Buckley

#christianity #collectivism #individualism #freedom

This was a freedom essential to the health even of a character so little susceptible of morbid influences as that of Phoebe. The old house [with dry rot in its structure and perhaps also in its inhabitants];...it was not good to breathe no other atmosphere that that. ↗

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

#freedom

Hvis du tar til orde for at Europa en gang skal bli fritt for muslimer, tar du samtidig til orde, i beste fall, for en tvangsdeportering av mer enn femti millioner mennesker vekk fra det europeiske kontinentet. I verste fall tar du til orde for voldshandlinger mot en religiøs gruppering som allerede er sterkt utsatt for fordommer og hets. Hvis målet ditt er at islam skal utryddes fra Europa, kan du ikke samtidig påstå at du er fredelig sjel som aldri har hatt som formål å skade noen. Du må skjønne at politikken du forfekter faktisk handler om mennesker. Og du må tåle å bli møtt med motargumenter. At noen motsier argumentene dine betyr ikke at du knebles. Det betyr at du deltar i debatten. ↗

— Trine Skei Grande

#extremism #free-speech #freedom-of-speech #genocide #islam

Vi har noen rettigheter, plikter og verdier vi tar som en selvfølge. Men også selvfølgelighetene må begrunnes og forsvares. De oppleste og vedtatte sannhetene har godt av å bli utfordret, ikke minst for å gi oss anledning til å lese dem opp og vedta dem på nytt. ↗

— Trine Skei Grande

#critical-thinking #free-speech #freedom-of-speech #liberalism #liberty

Whatever else humanism is, it is emphatically not a movement towards freedom and expansion. It is the impulse of men who feel themselves simple, rustic, and immature, towards sophistication, urbanity, and ripeness. In a word, it is the most complete opposite we can find to the Romantic desire for the primitive and the spontaneous. ↗

— C.S. Lewis

#freedom

The social system of capital separates most people from the conditions of existence. This compels the vast majority to accept the mediations of work and commodity consumption in order to maintain a minimal existence at the expense of their lives, desires and dreams, of their individuality. The artificial economic scarcity imposed by capital leads to a competition that is often promoted in the United States as the basis of "individualism" in spite of the fact that it creates nearly identical mediocre existences in which life is subsumed in survival... If all individuals are indeed to be free to create their lives and relations as they desire, it is necessary to create a world in which equality of access to the means and conditions of existence is reality. This requires the total destruction of economy—the end of property, commodity exchange and work. Thus we see that the generalized realization of individual freedom goes hand-in-hands with the best aspects of the anarcho-communist ideal and can only be achieved through a revolutionary transformation. ↗

— Wolfi Landstreicher Individualism and Communism

#communism #egoism #individualism #dreams

...only the one who knows and practices the iconoclastic fury of destruction can possess the joy born of freedom, of that unique freedom fertilized by sorrow. I rise up against the reality of the outer world for the triumph of the reality of my inner world. I reject society for the triumph of the I. I reject the stability of every rule, every custom, every morality, for the affirmation of every willful instinct, all free emotionality, every passion and every fantasy. I mock at every duty and every right so I can sing free will. I scorn the future to suffer and enjoy my good and my bad in the present. I despise humanity because it is not my humanity. I hate tyrants and I detest slaves. I don't want and I don't grant solidarity, because I am convinced that it is a new chain, and because I believe with Ibsen that the one who is most alone is the strongest one. This is my Nihilism. ↗

— Renzo Novatore

#egoism #nihilism #freedom

Political liberty,” what are we to understand by that? Perhaps the individual’s independence of the State and its laws? No; on the contrary, the individual’s subjection in the State and to the State’s laws... Political liberty means that the polis, the State, is free; freedom of religion that religion is free, as freedom of conscience signifies that conscience is free; not, therefore, that I am free from the State, from religion, from conscience, or that I am rid of them. It does not mean my liberty, but the liberty of a power that rules and subjugates me; it means that one of my despots, like State, religion, conscience, is free. State, religion, conscience, these despots, make me a slave, and their liberty is my slavery. ↗

— Max Stirner

#egoism #freedom

Life is a movement, a constant movement in relationship; and thought, trying to capture that movement in terms of the past, as memory, is afraid of life. ↗

— Jiddu Krishnamurti

#freedom #life #memory #movement #past

Frederick Douglass called Republicans the ‘Party of freedom and progress,’ and the first Republican president was Abraham Lincoln, the author of the Emancipation Proclamation. It was the Republicans in Congress who authored the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments giving former slaves citizenship, voting rights, and due process of law. The Democrats on the other hand were the Party of Jim Crow. It was Democrats who defended the rights of slave owners. It was the Republican President Dwight Eisenhower who championed the Civil Rights Act of 1957, but it was Democrats in the Senate who filibustered the bill. ↗

— Elbert Guillory

#democrats #eisenhower #emancipation-proclamation #jim-crow #lincoln