#lit

In einem maßlosen Staat [...] gibt es vielleicht ein wenig mehr Sicherheit, aber ganz sicher sehr viel weniger Freiheit. ↗

— Heribert Prantl

#präventionsstaat #security #totalitarianism #freedom

Your personal declaration of will is the first step in a seemingly impossible journey. ↗

— Bryant McGill

#free-will #freedom #individuality #intelligence #proud

Wenn wir uns der Verfolgung des freien Geistes während der Diktatur besinnen, werden wir die Freiheit jedes Gedankens und jeder Kritik schützen, so sehr sie sich auch gegen uns selbst richten mag." [Ansprache am 8. Mai 1985 in der Gedenkstunde im Plenarsaal des Deutschen Bundestages] ↗

— Richard von Weizsäcker

#democracy #dictatorship #freedom #persecution #politics

It’s a path that grows government, restricts freedom and liberty and compromises those values, those Judeo-Christian, Western civilization values that made us such a great and exceptional nation in the first place. ↗

— Paul Ryan

#politics-of-the-united-states #freedom

I doubt that my sense of personal freedom is any stronger than anybody else's. I'm happy to respect authority when it's genuine authority, based on moral or intellectual or even technical superiority. I'm eager to follow a hero if we can find one. But I tend to resist or evade any kind of authority based merely on the power to coerce. Government, for example. The Army tried to train us to salute the uniform, not the man. Failed. I will salute the man, maybe, if I think he's worthy of it, but I don't salute uniforms anymore. ↗

— Edward Abbey

#coerce #government #military #respect-for-authority #salute

Now she understood a few things: that the American academy, which one might have thought the place to defend freedom of speech, had been the seat and soul of abrogating freedom of speech, if the first assault on its freedom can be said to be restricting, or handcuffing speech. The day she heard “redneck” on NPR, she turned NPR off, not because broadcasters were still using the term, but because she knew one day they would not be. In fact, she had a vision of the quiet moment backstage at a Boston studio when a good, surprised correspondent was let go for saying “redneck” the last time it would be said. ↗

— Padgett Powell

#political-correctness #truth #freedom

Unfortunately, I have dedicated great effort to the task of compiling this ‘sensitive words glossary,’ and I have mastered my filtering skills. I knew which words and sentences had to be cut, and I accepted the cutting as if that was the way it should be. In fact, I will often take it on myself to save time and cut a few words. I call this ‘castrated writing’ -—I am a proactive eunuch, I have already castrated myself before the surgeon raises his scalpel. ↗

— Murong Xuecun

#freedom-of-speech #freedom

I never knew I liked to be outside so much. I never knew I liked lochs and views and that, but I could seriously handle living in a cottage by the side of somewhere like this." The Panopticon ↗

— Jenn Fagan

#freedom #outdoors #self-awareness #vulnerability #freedom

What you shun enduring yourself, attempt not to impose on others. You shun slavery- beware enslaving others! If you can endure to do that, one would think you had been once upon a time a slave yourself. For vice has nothing in common with virtue, nor Freedom with slavery. ↗

— Epictetus

#morality #freedom

If religion is true, one must believe. And if one chooses not to believe, one’s choice is marked under the category of a refusal, and is thus never really free: it has the duress of a recoil.” With literary belief, however, “one is always free to choose not to believe.” This, Wood argues, is the freedom of literature; it is what constitutes its “reality. ↗

— James Wood

#literature #quarterly-conversation #religion #freedom