#thought

What if all I'd ever known was how it had been for the past three years - me being an unwanted outsider in my own family? I might have turned out like Aphrodite, and I might still be letting my parents control me because I was hoping desperately that I would be good enough, make them proud, so that some day they would really love me. ↗

— P.C. Cast

#thoughtful #family

When we are babies...we need an authoritative figure to guide and take care of us. We ask no questions about that authority and imagine that the small circumference of family life is the limit of the universe...As we mature, our horizon expands and we begin to question. This continues until we either throw over our creators--our parents--for good and take their place as the creative force in our lives or find replacements for them because the terror and responsibility are too great. People go one way or the other, and this accounts for all of the great personal and political divides throughout history. ↗

— Charlotte Rogan

#family

To create a new belief is easy but to understand and improve someone's concept and to develop it for good is difficult. ↗

— Vikram Roy

#freedom-of-thought #freedom

Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts. ↗

— Daniel Patrick Moynihan

#freedom #freedom-of-thought #freedom

I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations. ↗

— James Madison

#constitution #freedom-of-speech #freedom-of-thought #politics #freedom

You see these dictators on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police ... yet in their hearts there is unspoken fear. They are afraid of words and thoughts: words spoken abroad, thoughts stirring at home -- all the more powerful because forbidden -- terrify them. A little mouse of thought appears in the room, and even the mightiest potentates are thrown into panic. ↗

— Winston Churchill

#dictatorship #fear #freedom #government #independent-thought

Whenever we hear an opinion and believe it, we make an agreement, and it becomes part of our belief system. ↗

— Miguel Ruiz

#independent-thought #spell #freedom

Socrates: Have you noticed on our journey how often the citizens of this new land remind each other it is a free country? Plato: I have, and think it odd they do this. Socrates: How so, Plato? Plato: It is like reminding a baker he is a baker, or a sculptor he is a sculptor. Socrates: You mean to say if someone is convinced of their trade, they have no need to be reminded. Plato: That is correct. Socrates: I agree. If these citizens were convinced of their freedom, they would not need reminders. ↗

— E.A. Bucchianeri

#civil-liberty #free-country #freedom #freedom-of-thought #gadfly

A Rule: Life without Islam is a naked tree, Birds without trees can never feel free. ↗

— Leena Ahmad Almashat

#fly #freedom #freedom-of-choice #freedom-of-religion #freedom-of-thought

Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us." [The One Un-American Act, Speech to the Author's Guild Council in New York, on receiving the 1951 Lauterbach Award (December 3, 1952)] ↗

— William O. Douglas

#first-amendment #freedom #freedom-of-speech #freedom-of-thought #liberty