Freedom From The Known Quotes

Only the mind that has emptied itself of the known is creative. That is creation. What it creates has nothing to do with it. Freedom from the known is the state of a mind that is in creation. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

The only freedom is the freedom from the known. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

If you are lucky and work very hard, you may someday get to experience freedom from the known. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

A man who knows that he is silent, who knows that he loves, does not know what love is or what silence is. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

The greatest freedom in this world is a sense of self detached from appearances so that we may sacrifice today's comforts for tomorrow's opportunities. ~ Vironika Tugaleva

The essential characteristic of Western civilization that distinguishes it from the arrested and petrified civilizations of the East was and is its concern for freedom from the state. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

Finally, spurred by the appetite to which he was indifferent, he took any one, read the printing on the parti-colored label of paper. He held the soup can like a skull; and at once he did not want it. The soup was made from celery. Mr. Lecky put it back. He stood in mild misery, harassed again by the plague of a will impotent in its restored freedom.
If the mind cannot direct, it can be cunning to protect its ease. Mr. Lecky now proposed a fantastic pact to himself. He shut his eyes. He reached again and took a can. Eyes still shut, he ripped the label from it, crumpled and threw away the paper. Now he could not tell what he had until he opened it. ~ James Gould Cozzens

Love is not something we must try hard to do, love comes naturally, it is trusting that love is enough - That is the hard thing to do. It sounds simple, but even when the simple answer is right in front of us, since the feeling is complicated, we often pass up the right answer to look for a complicated answer to match it.
In the 1300s somewhere between seventy-five and two-hundred million people died from the black plague, which was a bacteria carried by fleas. Fleas are not a new problem, and the cure has been widely known long before the 1300s. It was simply to shave your hair off, wear clothes made from something coarse like goat hair, and to cover your skin in ash. The fleas lay eggs that stick to our hair, and with the hair gone, there is nowhere for the eggs to stick. The ash has the chemical hydroxide, which is enough to make the skin unlivable for the fleas.
Everyone knew that anyone with a shaved head and ash on their skin meant that they knew they had fleas. To avoid the shame, many people would rather put up with the fleas, as long as other people didn't think they had them. Maybe the quote before Mark Twain coined his was, "It's better to keep your hair and appear free from fleas than shave your head and remove all doubt."
Besides itching and inflammation, fleas were fine… sort of… that is, until those fleas got infected with the plague, and spread that deadly infection. Instead of shaving their heads, people tried any other thing, and about half o ~ Michael Brent Jones

Economic growth springs not chiefly from incentives - carrots and sticks, rewards and punishments for workers and entrepreneurs. The incentive theory of capitalism allows its critics to depict it as an inhumane scheme of clever manipulation of human needs and hungers scarcely superior to the more benign forms of slavery. Wealth actually springs from the expansion of information and learning, profits and creativity that enhance the human qualities of its beneficiaries as it enriches them. Workers' learning increasingly compensates for their labor, which imparts knowledge as it extracts work. Joining knowledge and power, capitalism focuses on the entropy of human minds and the benefits of freedom. Thus it is the most humane of all economic systems. ~ George Gilder

Next to her, in the place where we were born, I was only a decoration, that is, I bore witness to Lila's merits. Those who had known us from birth attributed to her, to the force of her attraction, the fact that the neighborhood could have on its streets an esteemed person like me. ~ Elena Ferrante

He possessed the six attributes of the adventurer
a memory for names and faces, with the aptitude for altering his own; the gift of tongues; inexhaustible invention; secrecy; the talent for falling into conversation with strangers; and that freedom from conscience that springs from a contempt for the dozing rich he preyed upon. ~ Thornton Wilder

One must expect a war between U.S.A. and U.S.S.R. which will begin with the total destruction of London. I think the war will last 30 years, and leave a world without civilised people, from which everything will have to build afresh-a process taking say 500 years. Stated just one month after the Hiroshima atomic explosion. Russell became one of the best-known antinuclear activists of his era. ~ Bertrand Russell

The Bible, of course, gives us good and right teaching on everything from sex to parenting to money to morals. All good things. Wonderful things. God's design and desire for all of life. But our ability to walk in these truths with freedom and joy - and our church's ability to lead people into this ongoing, abundant-life experience for themselves - is dependent on something else: an accurate and deep understanding of the gospel. That is our Mississippi. Without a proper understanding of the gospel, people will miss the big biblical picture and all the joyful freedom that comes from living it. They will run from God in shame at their failures instead of running toward Him because of His mercy and grace. ~ Matt Chandler

Art is like fruit, and every tree is known by its fruit. Fruit reveals a lot about the tree from which it falls. ~ M. Gungor

Introducing a spelling test to a student by saying, 'Let's see how many words you know,' is different from saying, 'Let's see how many words you know already.' It is only one word, but the already suggests that any words the child knows are ahead of expectation and, most important, that there is nothing permanent about what is known and not known. ~ Peter Johnston

You said that love could not be feigned and could not be stolen" she said passionately. "And now you say I am to be your queen. And yet you imprison me and give me no freedom. You know what it is like to be caged, It is a death. You tell me I cannot hide from you and yet you punish me for hiding.You say you do not want me to fear you and you treat me like I am a slave. Forgive me my Lord"-and here she bowed her head sadly, contrite and meek-"I don not understand why you are punishing me for something you say I cannot do. I do not understand your love, if this is the love you offer me. ~ Alison Croggon

I talk about things from the perspective of the consumer - mostly because that's what I am. A guy going out and buying things and sharing that experience with the viewer. Nothing should change that, but if it ever does, I'll absolutely make it known. ~ Marques Brownlee

In bed that night, in the darkness, with the illuminated dial of her alarm clock glowing from the bedside table, she asked herself whether one could force oneself to like somebody, or whether one could merely create conditions for affection to come into existence and hope that it did, spontaneously. Open then our hearts - these words came into her mind, dredged from somewhere in her memory, from some unknown context. If one opened one's heart, then friendship, and love, too, might alight and make their presence known. It was the act of opening that came first; that was the important thing, the first thing. But who was it who said, Open then our hearts? Where did that come from? ~ Alexander McCall Smith

But figure his thought, when Death is now clutching at his own heart-strings, unlooked for, inexorable! Yes, poor Louis, Death has found thee. No palace walls or life-guards, gorgeous tapestries or gilt buckram of stiffest ceremonial could keep him out; but he is here, here at thy very life-breath, and will extinguish it. Thou, whose whole existence hitherto was a chimera and scenic show, at length becomest a reality: sumptuous Versailles bursts asunder, like a dream, into void Immensity; Time is done, and all the scaffolding of Time falls wrecked with hideous clangour round thy soul: the pale Kingdoms yawn open; there must thou enter, naked, all unking'd, and await what is appointed thee! Unhappy man, there as thou turnest, in dull agony, on thy bed of weariness, what a thought is thine! Purgatory and Hell-fire, now all-too possible, in the prospect; in the retrospect,--alas, what thing didst thou do that were not better undone; what mortal didst thou generously help; what sorrow hadst thou mercy on? Do the 'five hundred thousand' ghosts, who sank shamefully on so many battle-fields from Rossbach to Quebec, that thy Harlot might take revenge for an epigram,--crowd round thee in this hour? Thy foul Harem; the curses of mothers, the tears and infamy of daughters? Miserable man! thou 'hast done evil as thou couldst:' thy whole existence seems one hideous abortion and mistake of Nature; the use and meaning of thee not yet known. Wert thou a fabulous Griffin, devouring the works ~ Thomas Carlyle

Every person I've known has had an effect on me, as have people whom I've not met in the physical in this life, but whom I've met inwardly, teachers from other eras - Sri Ramana Maharshi, Sri Ramakrishna and Lao Tse. ~ Frederick Lenz

No circumstance in the world can ever prevent us from believing in God, from placing all our trust in him, from loving him with our whole heart, or from loving our neighbor. Faith, hope, and charity are absolutely free, because if they are rooted in us deeply enough, they are able to draw strength from whatever opposes them! If someone sought to prevent us from believing by persecuting us, we always would retain the option of forgiving our enemies and transforming the situation of oppression into one of greater love. If someone tried to silence our faith by killing us, our deaths would be the best possible proclamation of our faith! Love, and only love, can overcome evil by good and draw good out of evil. ~ Jacques Philippe

At all times sincere friends of freedom have been rare, and its triumphs have been due to minorities, that have prevailed by associating themselves with auxiliaries whose objects often differed from their own; and this association, which is always dangerous, has been sometimes disastrous, by giving to opponents just grounds of opposition, and by kindling dispute over the spoils in the hour of success. ~ John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

Power
Living in the earth-deposits of our history
Today a backhoe divulged out of a crumbling flank of earth
one bottle amber perfect a hundred-year-old
cure for fever or melancholy a tonic
for living on this earth in the winters of this climate.
Today I was reading about Marie Curie:
she must have known she suffered from radiation sickness
her body bombarded for years by the element
she had purified
It seems she denied to the end
the source of the cataracts on her eyes
the cracked and suppurating skin of her finger-ends
till she could no longer hold a test-tube or a pencil
She died a famous woman denying
her wounds
denying
her wounds came from the same source as her power. ~ Adrienne Rich

I stared out of the window at the bright-blue Swiss sky and I told him a story of two people. Two people who shouldn't have met, and who didn't like each other much when they did, but who found they were the only two people in the world who could possibly have understood each other. And I told him of the adventures they had, the places they had gone, and the things I had seen that I had never expected to. I conjured for him electric skies and iridescent seas and evenings full of laughter and silly jokes. I drew a world for him, a world far from a Swiss industrial estate, a world in which he was still somehow the person he had wanted to be. I drew the world he had created for me, full of wonder and possibility. I let him know a hurt had been mended in a way that he couldn't have known, and for that alone there would always be a piece of me indebted to him. And as I spoke I knew these would be the most important words I would ever say and that it was important that they were the right words, that they were not propaganda, an attempt to change his mind, but respectful of what Will had said. I told him something good... ~ Jojo Moyes

Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims, have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing. If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters."

"This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. In the light of these ideas, Negroes will be hunted at the North, and held and flogged at the South so long as they submit to those devilish outrages, and make no resistance, either moral or physical. Men may not get all they pay for in this world; but they must certainly pay for all they get. If we ever get free from the oppression ~ Frederick Douglass

The secret to freedom from enslaving patterns of sin is worship. You need worship. You need great worship. You need weeping worship. You need glorious worship. You need to sense God's greatness and to be moved it - moved to tears and moved to laughter - moved by who God is and what he has done for you. ~ Timothy Keller

The recipe for beauty is to have less illusion and more Soul, to retreat from the belief of pain or pleasure in the body into the unchanging calm and glorious freedom of spiritual harmony. ~ Mary Baker Eddy

There is no inverse relationship between freedom and security. Less of one does not lead to more of the other. People with no rights are not safe from terrorist attack. ~ Molly Ivins

To live a hard life was to make solid and impregnable every way in, until no openings remained and the soul hid in darkness, and no one else could hear its screams, its railing at injustice, its long, agonizing stretches of sadness. Hardness without created hardness within.

Sadness was, she well knew, not something that could be cured. It was not, in fact, a failing, not a flaw, not an illness of spirit. Sadness was never without reason, and to assert that it marked some kind of dysfunction did little more than prove ignorance or, worse, cowardly evasiveness in the one making the assertion. As if happiness was the only legitimate way of being. As if those failing at it needed to be locked away, made soporific with medications; as if the causes of sadness were merely traps and pitfalls in the proper climb to blissful contentment, things to be edged round or bridged, or leapt across on wings of false elation.

Scillara knew better. She had faced her own sadness often enough. Even when she discovered her first means of escaping it, in durhang, she'd known that such an escape was simply a flight from feelings that existed legitimately. She'd just been unable to permit herself any sympathy for such feelings, because to do so was to surrender to their truth.

Sadness belonged. As rightful as joy, love, grief and fear. All conditions of being.

Too often people mistook the sadness in others for self-pity, and in so doing revealed their own ha ~ Steven Erikson

I don't really remember making a decision. I don't remember thinking to myself, "Yes, I will do this," or, "No, I will not do that." They tell you what to do, and you do it. You don't reflect on it. You don't ponder its meaning. You don't explore its ambiguities or consider its consequences. These burdens are removed from you. In theory.
But you are still human. Eventually, you do reflect on it. The consequences make themselves known. The results of your actions persist. Eventually, you are struck by their meaning. At some point, an accounting is made. Eventually, if you are human, and sane, you examine what you have done. ~ Stephen Dau

2PE1.16 For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty. 2PE1.17 For he received from God the Father honour and glory, when there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. 2PE1.18 And this voice which came from heaven we heard, when we were with him in the holy mount. ~ Anonymous

Sammy could not have known that one day he would come to regard all the things that their loving each other had seemed to put at so much risk
his career in comic books, his relations with his family, his place in the world
as the walls of a prison, an airless, lightless keep from which there was no hope of escape. Sammy had long since ceased to value the security that he had once been so reluctant to imperil. ~ Michael Chabon

ref·u·gee noun: a person who flees for refuge or safety

We are, each of us, refugees
when we flee from burning buildings
into the arms of loving families.
When we flee from floods and earthquakes
to sleep on blue mats in community centres.
We are, each of us, refugees
when we flee from abusive relationships,
and shooters in cinemas
and shopping centres.

Sometimes it takes only a day
for our countries to persecute us
because of our creed, race, or sexual orientation.
Sometimes it takes only a minute
for the missiles to rain down
and leave our towns in ruin and destitution.

We are, each of us, refugees
longing for that amniotic tranquillity
dreaming of freedom and safety
when fences and barbed wires spring into walled gardens.

Lebanese, Sudanese, Libyan and Syrian,
Yemeni, Somali, Palestinian, and Ethiopian,
like our brothers and sisters,
we are, each of us, refugees.
The bombs fell in their cafés and squares
where once poetry, dancing, and laughter prevailed.
Only their olive trees remember music and merriment now
as their cities wail for departed children without a funeral.

We are, each of us, refugees.
Don't let stamped paper tell you differently.
We've been fleeing for centuries
because to stay means getting bullets in our heads
because to stay means being ~ Kamand Kojouri

There are 4 billion cell phones in use today. Many of them are in the hands of market vendors, rickshaw drivers, and others who've historically lacked access to education and opportunity. Information networks have become a great leveler, and we should use them together to help lift people out of poverty and give them a freedom from want. ~ Hillary Clinton

mouth as he spoke, and when he stopped, she looked up again, meeting his gaze. "It's strange," she said, "hearing words this way. These are the first real words I've heard." Blaise felt a chill go down his spine. Getting up from his chair, he began to pace, trying to keep his eyes off her nude body. He had been expecting something to appear. A magical object, a thing. He just hadn't known what form that thing would take. A mirror, perhaps, or a lamp. Maybe even something as unusual as the Life Capture Sphere that sat on his desk like a large round diamond. ~ Dima Zales

Our modern Western culture only recognises the first of these, freedom of desires. It then worships such a freedom by enshrining it at the forefront of national constituitions and bills of human rights. One can say that the underlying creed of most Western democracies is to protect their people's freedom to realise their desires, as far as this is possible. It is remarkable that in such countries people do not feel very free. The second kind of freedom, freedom from desires, is celebrated only in some religious communities. It celebrates contentment, peace that is free from desires. ~ Ajahn Brahm

Dom stood dumbfounded as Jane disappeared into the street. Then he hurried to catch up to her, to get some answers.
She knew. How the blazes did she know?
The answer to that was obvious. "So, Nancy told you the truth, did she?" he snapped as he fell into step beside her.
Jane didn't reply, just kept marching toward the inn like a Hussar bent on battle.
"When?" he demanded. "How long have you known?"
"For nine years, you…you conniving…lying--"
"Nine years? You knew all this time, and you didn't say anything?"
"Say anything!" She halted just short of the innyard entrance to glare at him. "How the devil was I to do that? You disappeared into the streets of London as surely as if you were a footpad or a pickpocket."
She planted her hands on her hips. "Oh, I read about your heroic exploits from time to time, but other than that, I neither heard nor saw anything of you until last year, when you showed up at George's town house. It was only pure chance that I happened to be at dinner with Nancy that day. As you'll recall, you didn't stay long. Nor did you behave as if you would welcome any confidences."
Remembering the cool reception he'd given her, he glanced away, unable to bear the accusation in her eyes. "No, I suppose I didn't."
"Besides," she said, "it hardly mattered that I knew the truth. I assumed that if you ever changed your mind about making a life with me, you would seek me out. Since you never did, you were clearly dete ~ Sabrina Jeffries

What did she say that has you so eager to take a beating?"
Bourne ignored the question, the explosion of pain in his cheek not doing its job, failing to take away all thought of what had happened earlier with his wife. Of how her blue eyes had flashed as she'd accused him of using her body to secure his interests. Of how she'd squared her shoulders and defended her own honor- something he should have done for her.
Of how she'd looked at him, truth and tears in her eyes, and told him that she'd missed him.
The words had taken his breath away- the idea that pure, perfect Penelope had thought of him, had worried about him.
Because he had missed her, too.
It had taken him years to forget- years that were erased in one moment of honesty, when she'd looked into his eyes and accused him of leaving her.
Of dishonoring her.
And there, in the pit of his stomach, still unmasked by the pain of Temple's beating, was the emotion he'd feared since the beginning of this charade.
Guilt.
She'd been right. He'd misused her. He'd treated her as less than she deserved. And she'd defended herself with strength and pride. Remarkably.
And even as he'd tried to let her go, to push her from him, he'd known that he wanted her. He didn't fool himself into thinking that the desire was new. He'd wanted her in Surrey, when she'd stood in the darkness with nothing but a lantern to protect her. But now... want had become something more serious. More visceral. ~ Sarah MacLean

But when he crested the hill, the sight that greeted him made him pause. At the bottom of the hill stood Celia in a riding habit, her gun pointed in his direction. He halted just as she spotted him.
After emptying the gun by firing it in the opposite direction, she set it on the ground facing away from them, picked up her skirts, and came up the hill with fire in her eyes. "Are you trying to get yourself killed?" she cried.
Only then did he notice the target that was set into the hill below him. So this was where she did her shooting practice. He should have known she'd have a secret spot for it.
"Pardon me for interrupting," he said dryly as she approached. "When I heard shots, I thought it was poachers."
"And you were going to confront them alone?" She planted her hands on her hips. "What if there were several, armed and ready to shoot?"
The very idea made him roll his eyes. "In my experience, poachers run when they see someone coming. They don't brandish guns." He couldn't resist taunting her. "You're the only person who does that, my lady."
At his use of her title, she stiffened. "Well, you could have been hurt all the same. You really mustn't sneak up on people like that. And what are you doing up so early, anyway?" Her eyes narrowed. "You can't be going to London-you're heading in the wrong direction."
"I'm off to High Wycombe. Apparently your old nurse lives there, so I'm going to question her about the events on the morning of your p ~ Sabrina Jeffries

When the law no longer protects you from the corrupt, but protects the corrupt from you – you know your nation is doomed. ~ Ayn Rand

[Daughter], I want to release you. IF you hate me or want to reject me, I understand. If you curse me, then want to atone, I also understand. I expect to be your home plate: kicked, scuffed, but always returned to. I expect to be the earth from which you spring.
But if I release you too much, what will you have to fight against?
You need my acceptance, but you may need my resistance more. I promise to stand firm while you come and go. I promise unwavering live while you experiment with hate. Hate is energy too -- sometimes brighter-burning energy than love. Hate is often the precondition for freedom.
No matter how I try to disappear, I fear I cast too big a shadow. I would erase that shadow if I could. but if I erased it, how would you know your own shadow? And with no shadow, how would you ever fly?
I want to release you from the fears that bound me, yet I know you can only release yourself. I stand here wearing my catcher's padding. I pray you won't need me to catch you if you fall. But I'm here waiting anyway.
Freedom is full of fear. But fear isn't the worst thing we face. Paralysis is. ~ Erica Jong

Growing up in the '50s and being in the '60s, in that revolutionary time space, I thought freedom was what I was looking for. Slowly but surely, it became clear that the last thing I was interested in was freedom. Because if you're going to be free, you have to be free from something. ~ Anthony Braxton

When Freedom from her mountain-height Unfurled her standard to the air, She tore the azure robe of night, And set the stars of glory there. She mingled with its gorgeous dyes The milky baldric of the skies, And striped its pure, celestial white With streakings of the morning light. Flag of the free heart's hope and home! By angel hands to valour given! Thy stars have lit the welkin dome, And all thy hues were born in heaven. Forever float that standard sheet! Where breathes the foe but falls before us, With Freedom's soil beneath our feet, And Freedom's banner streaming o'er us? ~ Joseph Rodman Drake

The reflection and experience of many years have led me to consider the holy writings not only as the most authentic and instructive in themselves, but as the clue to all other history. They tell us what man is, and they alone tell us why he is what he is: a contradictory creature that seeing and approving of what is good, pursues and performs what is evil. All of private and public life is there displayed ... From the same pure fountain of wisdom we learn that vice destroys freedom; that arbitrary power is founded on public immorality. ~ Gouverneur Morris

But also the constituency determines the vote of the representative. He is not only representative, but participant. Like can onlybe known by like. The reason why he knows about them is, that he is of them; he has just come out of nature, or from being a part of the thing. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

I made a sudden decision. "and my dog has followed me from town and cought up with us here. I left him with friends, but he must have chewed his rope. here, boy, come to heel."
I'll chew your heel off for you, Nighteyes offerd savagely, but he came, following me out into the cleared yard.
"Damn big dog," Nick observed. He leaned forward. "looks more than half a wolf to me."
"Some in Farrow have told me that. It's a buck breed. We use them for harding sheep."
You will pay for this. I promise you.
In answer I leaned down to pat his shoulder and then scratch his ears. Wag your tail, Nighteyes.
"He's a loyal old dog. I should have known he wouldn't be left behind."
The things i endure for you. He wagged his tail. Once. ~ Robin Hobb

[ ... ] it is a strange thing that most of the feeling we call religious, most of the mystical outcrying which is one of the most prized and used and desired reactions of our species, is really the understanding and the attempt to say that man is related to the whole thing, related inextricably to all reality, known and unknowable. This is a simple thing to say, but the profound feeling of it made a Jesus, a St. Augustine, a St. Francis, a Roger Bacon, a Charles Darwin, and an Einstein. Each of them in his own tempo and with his own voice discovered and reaffirmed with astonishment the knowledge that all things are one thing and that one thing is all things - plankton, a shimmering phosphorescence on the sea and the spinning planets and an expanding universe, all bound together by the elastic string of time. It is advisable to look from the tide pool to the stars and then back to the tide pool again. ~ John Steinbeck

It's a funny thing because Britain was in a terrible state in those days. It limped from crisis to crisis. It was known as the Sick Man of Europe. It was in every way poorer than now. Yet there were flower beds in roundabouts, libraries and post offices in every village, cottage hospitals in abundance, council housing for all who needed it. It was a country so comfortable and enlightened that hospitals maintained cricket pitches for their staff and mental patients lived in Victorian palaces. ~ Bill Bryson

Most of the scientists I have known well have felt - just as deeply as the non-scientists I have known well - that the individual condition of each is tragic. Each of us is alone: sometimes we escape from solitariness, through love or affection or perhaps creative moments, but those triumphs of life are pools of light we make for ourselves while the edge of the road is black: each of us dies alone. ~ C.P. Snow