Freedom In Chains Quotes

True freedom is a freedom with clear boundaries. True freedom understands the real essence of do's and don'ts. A freedom without restrictions that brings comfort is a freedom in chains. ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Don't interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties. ~ Abraham Lincoln

I still describe myself as a Christian, and my love of God and my relationship with God is fundamental, but its manifestations in my life and the practices of it are constantly changing. I find incredible freedom in my faith. ~ Sufjan Stevens

In the two centuries that have passed since 1776, millions upon millions of Americans have worked and taken up arms, when necessary, to make [the American] dream a reality. We can be proud of what they have accomplished. Today, we are the world's oldest republic. We are at peace. Our nation and our way of life endure. And we are free. ~ Gerald R. Ford

To be frank, it sometimes seems that the American idea of freedom has more to do with my freedom to do what I want than your freedom to do what you want. I think that, in Europe, we're probably better at understanding how to balance those competing claims, though not a lot. ~ Douglas Adams

That policy which aims at raising the objective exchange-value of money is called, after the most important means at its disposal, restrictionism or deflationism. This nomenclature does not really embrace all the policies that aim at an increase in the value of money. The aim of restrictionism may also be attained by not increasing the quantity of money when the demand for it increases, or by not increasing it enough. This method has quite often been adopted as a way of increasing the value of money in face of the problems of a depreciated credit-money standard. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

But either way, the fruit of turning to God - before we sin, after we've sinned, even right there in the middle of our sin - is where Christians go to experience the flavors of God-fearing honor, gratitude, dependence, worship, confidence, trust, freedom, revival. Even those sins from our past that have been the most regrettable, the most difficult to move beyond - the ones we'd give anything if we could go back and do over again - Christ is able to redeem and rewrite even those into masterful sequels and come-from-behind victories. He takes what's given us fits for so long and gives us instead a reason to celebrate what He's done. To celebrate our redemption. To celebrate our Redeemer. ~ Matt Chandler

Courage is required not only in a person's occasional crucial decision for his own freedom, but in the little hour-to-hour decisions which place the bricks in the structure of his building of himself into a person who acts with freedom and responsibility. ~ Rollo May

The free expression of the hopes and aspirations of a people is the greatest and only safety in a sane society. ~ Emma Goldman

Conservatives take the opposite approach. They start from the idea that self-discipline is fundamental. A lack of property to conservatives indicates a lack of discipline, and hence a lack of morality. Therefore, giving people things they haven't earned creates dependency, which traps people in welfare programs and poverty and thus robs them of their freedom. Not only that, but the taxes that pay for programs like Social Security and universal health care infringe on the freedom of the taxpayer, since taking his money is imposing on his freedom. What ~ George Lakoff

If you think love can be anything why do we decide to ignore how others think love should be?

Why is there laws about love, if it can be anything?

Why in some countries is it illegal to marry your own kind if love can be anything?

My point is people hear what they want, say what they want, watch what they want, but they can't love how they want. The only thing free about the U.S.A is freedom of speech. We can't love in any way we want at all. ~ Leah

Lately, it had been an endless procession of long, black nights and gray mornings, when her sense of failure swept over her like a five-hundred-pound wave; and she was scared. But it wasn't death that she feared. She had looked down into that black pit of death and had wanted to jump in, once too often. As a matter of fact, the thought began to appeal to her more and more.

She even knew how she would kill herself. It would be with a silver bullet. As round and as smooth as an ice-cold blue martini. She would place the gun in the freezer for a few hours before she did it, so it would feel frosty and cold against her head. She could almost feel the ice-cold bullet shooting through her hot, troubled brain, freezing the pain for good. The sound of the gun blast would be the last sound she would ever hear. And then... nothing. Maybe just the silent sound that a bird might hear, flying in the clean, cool air, high above the earth. The sweet, pure air of freedom.

No, it wasn't death she was afraid of. It was this life of hers that was beginning to remind her of that gray intensive care waiting room. ~ Fannie Flagg

It is precisely our egoism, our self-centeredness and self-love that cause all our difficulties, our lack of freedom in suffering, our disappointments and our anguish of soul and body. ~ Tito Colliander

the necessity to protect you
overcame me
i love you too much
to remain quiet as you weep
watch me rise to kiss the poison
out of you
i will resist the temptation
of my tired feet
and keep marching
with tomorrow in one hand
and a fist in theother
i will carry you to freedom

- love letter to the world ~ Rupi Kaur

Hiding your hurt only intensifies it. Problems grow in the dark and become bigger and bigger, but when exposed to the light of truth, they shrink. You are only as sick as your secrets. So take off your mask, stop pretending you're perfect, and walk into freedom. ~ Rick Warren

You say that freedom of utterance is not for time of stress, and I reply with the sad truth that only in time of stress is freedom of utterance in danger? Only when free utterance is suppressed is it needed, and when it is needed it is most vital to justice. ~ William Allen White

Be careful, they'll fall in love with your freedom and then try to cage you. ~ Nitya Prakash

[T]he rule of law does more than ensure freedom from high-handed action by rulers. It ensures justice between man and man however humble the one and however powerful the other. A man with five dollars in the bank can call to account the corporation with five billion dollars in assets-and the two will be heard as equals before the law. ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

This was excitement, and desire, and pleasure. Nothing mattered while you were with a man. Nothing but the man, or men in this case.
This was freedom. This was forgetting. ~ Marshall Thornton

Imagine that
a country that's supposed to be a democracy, supposed to be for freedom and all of that kind of stuff when they want to draft you and put you in the army and send you to Saigon to fight for them
and then you've got to turn around and all night long discuss how you're going to just get a right to register and vote without being murdered. Why, that's the most hypocritical government since the world began! ~ Malcolm X

Any intervention, such as that of the German Reichsbank in the Spring of 1923, in which only a small part of the increasing note-expansion was recovered by the banks through the sale of foreign bills, would necessarily be unsuccessful. Led by the idea of opposing speculation, inflationistic governments have allowed themselves to become involved in measures whose meaning is hardly intelligible. Thus at one time the importation of notes, then their exportation, then again both their exportation and importation, have been prohibited. Exporters have been forbidden to sell for their own country's notes, importers to buy with them. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

Considering that we are born with this condition, that is, that we can become whatever we choose to become, we need to understand that we must take earnest care about this, so that it will never be said to our disadvantage that we were born to a privileged position but failed to realize it and became animals and senseless beasts.... Above all, we should not make that freedom of choice God gave us into something harmful, for it was intended to be to our advantage. Let a holy ambition enter into our souls; let us not be content with mediocrity, but rather strive after the highest and expend all our strength in achieving it.

Let us disdain earthly things, and despise the things of heaven, and, judging little of what is in the world, fly to the court beyond the world and next to God. In that court, as the mystic writings tell us, are the Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones in the foremost places; let us not even yield place to them, the highest of the angelic orders, and not be content with a lower place, imitate them in all their glory and dignity. If we choose to, we will not be second to them in anything. ~ Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola

You don't get something for nothing You can't have freedom for free You won't get wise with the sleep still in your eyes No matter what your dreams might be ~ Bradley J. Birzer

All songwriters are links in a chain. ~ Pete Seeger

You have sensible women here [in England] but then, they are very devils
censorious, uncharitable, sarcastic
the women in Scotland have twice
thrice their freedom, with all their virtue
and are very conversable and agreeable
their educations are more finished. ~ Fanny Burney

The room was two-tiered,
its marble balconies filled with rams and water nymphs in fancy
dress; a kaleidoscope of colours swayed in time to the beat of
hypnotic music. A concerto of absent musicians, it played only in
her mind. The numerous chandeliers with sculptured metal frames
hung down from chains, with endless fireflies attached. At the far
end stretched a grand staircase, dressed with a plush velvet carpet
in deep cerise, and ceiling paintings edged with gold embossed
dado rails clung to the walls.
Then Eve honed in on herself and saw that she wore a crushed
white taffeta A-line gown that fit her trim figure like a glove. Her
butterfly mask with floral patterns embroidered in red and gold
silk sat against her pale skin, her reflection like that of a porcelain
doll. A matching shawl rested softly on her shoulders. Everything
was so beautiful that she almost totally lost herself in the mirror's
reflection."

(little snippet from our book) ~ L. Wells

Find the cost of freedom, buried in the ground
Mother earth will swallow you
Lay your body down ~ Stephen Stills

One's freedom is one's love and one's love
is one's undoing, it's all in the dictionary... ~ Duncan McNaughton

Let there be freedom for the Indians, wherever they may be in the American Continent or elsewhere in the world, because while they are alive, a glow of hope will be alive as well as a true concept of life. ~ Rigoberta Menchu

The system has already anticipated the freedom seeking mechanism in humans. ~ Bryant McGill

There's freedom in hitting bottom ~ Anne Lamott

This is the supreme anguish of the soul; it realizes itself as itself, as thing separate from that which is not itself, from God. In this spasm there are two ways: if fear and pride are left in the soul, it shuts itself up, like a warlock in a tower, gnashing its teeth with agony. "I am I," it cried, "I will not lose myself," and in that state damned, it is slowly torn by the claws of circumstance disintegrated bitterly, for all its struggles, throughout ages and ages, its rags to be cast piecemeal upon the dungheap without the city. But the soul that has understood the blessedness of that resignation which grasps the universe and devours it, which is without hope or fear, without faith or doubt, without hate or love, dissolves itself ineffable into the abounding bliss of God. It cries with Shelley, as the "chains of lead about its flight of fire" drop molten from its limbs: "I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire," and in that last outbreaking is made one with the primal and final breath, the Holy Spirit of God.
Such must be the climax of any retirement to the Desert on the part of any aspirant of the Mysteries who has the spark of that fire in him. ~ Aleister Crowley

Looking back at that moment, I understand that I had lived in books so long, in my narrow university setting, that I had become compressed by them internally. Suddenly, in this echoing house of Byzantium-one of the wonders of history-my spirit leaped out of its confines. I knew in that instant that, whatever happened, I could never go back to my old constraints. I wanted to follow life upward, to expand with it outward, the way this enormous interior swelled upward and outward. My heart swelled with it... ~ Elizabeth Kostova

Hence Augustine defined the highest state of human freedom not as "being able not to sin" (posse non peccare) but as "being unable to sin" (non posse peccare): a condition that reflects the infinite goodness of God, who, because nothing can hinder him in the perfect realization of his own nature, is "incapable" of evil and so is infinitely free.
That, ~ David Bentley Hart

It was the excitement, the richness of the whole experience, the mixture of pleasure and danger and freedom and the sun. You know, when we came back here, for a long while I still went on living in Euphoria inside my head. Outwardly I returned to my old routine. I got up in the morning, put on a tweed suit, read the Guardian over breakfast, walked into the University, gave the same old tutorials on the same old texts... and all the while I was leading a completely different life inside my head. Inside my head, I had decided not to come back to England, so I was waking up in Plotinus, sitting in the sun in my happi-coat, looking out over the Bay, putting on Levis and a sports shirt, reading the Euphoric Times over breakfast, and wondering what would happen today, would there be a protest, a demonstration, would my class have to fight their way through teargas and picket lines or should we meet off-campus in somebody's apartment, sitting on the floor surrounded by posters and leaflets and paperbacks about encounter groups and avant garde theatre and Viet Nam. ~ David Lodge

Ladies and gentlemen, it is time for us to change the mindset which has tended to create ad hoc solutions for the political madness and social farce. In fact, our age of tragedy which has been represented by the so-called "Marxists" in the Sinhalese community and "liberalists" in Tamil community since the 70s to the late 90s, has been replaced by the age of farce. ~ Nilantha Ilangamuwa

Seek only light and freedom and do not immerse yourself too deeply in the worldly mire. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

Sometimes I think I live in a gap between two worlds, one world that I have to wake up to, be adherent of the rules and live in a place that is dictated by others. A place I sometimes feel the fear of aging and dying before I have figured out what it is I am here to do.
That other world is sweet, fresh and misty, inviting adventure into the unknown, melding ancient wisdom with new discovery; the sunlight turning into moonlight and the spell of eternal life is never broken.
Perhaps in that gap I should repair the forgotten bridge from one side to the other, but truth be told, I don't want to. I don't want to because I don't have the energy to fix what is broken within. I am a wild, wandering nomad, I belong everywhere and nowhere all at the same time, and in that gap between worlds, I am free. ~ Riitta Klint

So let us replace the word with a true description. People in our societies own things, their labour included, and can trade those things freely with others. They can buy, sell, accumulate, save, share and give. They can enjoy all that their freely exercised labour can secure for them and even, if they choose, do nothing and still survive. You can take away the freedom to buy and sell; you can compel people to work on terms that they would not freely accept; you can confiscate property or forbid this or that form of it. But if those are the alternatives to 'capitalism' there is, now, no real alternative save slavery. ~ Roger Scruton