#reed

I believe all Americans who believe in freedom, tolerance and human rights have a responsibility to oppose bigotry and prejudice based on sexual orientation. ↗

— Coretta Scott King

#based #believe #freedom #human #human rights

Never,” said he, as he ground his teeth, “never was anything at once so frail and so indomitable. A mere reed she feels in my hand!” (And he shook me with the force of his hold.) “I could bend her with my finger and thumb: and what good would it do if I bent, if I uptore, if I crushed her? Consider that eye: consider the resolute, wild, free thing looking out of it, defying me, with more than courage—with a stern triumph. Whatever I do with its cage, I cannot get at it—the savage, beautiful creature! If I tear, if I rend the slight prison, my outrage will only let the captive loose. Conqueror I might be of the house; but the inmate would escape to heaven before I could call myself possessor of its clay dwellingplace. And it is you, spirit—with will and energy, and virtue and purity— that I want: not alone your brittle frame. Of yourself you could come with soft flight and nestle against my heart, if you would: seized against your will, you will elude the grasp like an essence—you will vanish ere I inhale your fragrance. ↗

— Charlotte Brontë

#beauty

There is but one task for all -- One life for each to give. What stands if Freedom fall? ↗

— Rudyard Kipling

#sacrifice #freedom

So if you care to find me/ Look to the western sky/ As someone told me lately/ Everyone deserves the chance to fly!/ And if I'm flying solo/ At least I'm flying free/ Tell those who'd ground me/ Take a message back from me/ Tell them how I am defying gravity!/ I'm flying high defying gravity/ And soon I'll match them in renown./ And nobody in all of Oz/ No Wizard that there is or was/ Is ever gonna bring me down!/ ↗

— Stephen Schwartz

#freedom #inspirational #freedom

man is free, in so far as he has the power of contradicting himself and his essential nature. Man is free even from his freedom; that is, he can surrender his humanity ↗

— Paul Tillich

#freedom #freedom

There are no means of finding what either one person or many can do, but by trying - and no means by which anyone else can discover for them what it is for their happiness to do or leave undone ↗

— John Stuart Mill

#inspirational #john-stuart-mill #truth #freedom

Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: Freedom for slave owners. ↗

— Vladimir Lenin

#always #ancient #capitalist #capitalist society #freedom

This “freedom” put a proud people in chains And turned free men into slaves “Independence” made us weak And slaughtered us In the name of kindness This is democracy by the whip And the fear of chains With a whirlwind at its core ↗

— Abdul Salam Zaeef

#freedom

In the long years to come, not only will the people of this island but of the world, wherever the bird of freedom chirps in human hearts, look back to what we've done, and they will say 'do not despair, do not yield...march straightforward. ↗

— Winston Churchill

#perseverance #freedom

Italians know about human nature - they understand human nature perhaps better than anyone else does. They know that people are weak and greedy and lazy and dishonest and they just try to make the best of it; to work around it. ↗

— Donna Leon

#anyone #around #best #better #dishonest