Inner Freedom Quotes

Emotional versatility is the art of making peace with the entire emotional spectrum by honing your capacity to channel various feelings along creative and constructive lines. It is not about controlling or condemning your feelings. It's about conducting your feelings in a self-edifying way. ~ T.K. Coleman

The great mission of our day is not conquering the sea or space, disease or tyranny. The grand quest which calls to the hero in every one of us is to become fully alive--to stand up and claim our birthright, which is inner freedom, love and radiant purpose. By fulfilling this, we transform the world. ~ Jacob Nordby

The community knows that the fundamental questions of life can only be looked at in a spirit of peace and inner freedom. Nobody can force anyone else to love and to walk to freedom. Militants for a cause will tend to be organized for a struggle which they hope to win; they will seek to impose their way aggressively. Frequently they seek outward change more than inward change.

. . . As long as there are fears and prejudices in the human heart, there will be war and bitter injustice. It is only when hearts are healed, and become loving and open, that the great political problems will be solved. . . . As fears and prejudices diminish, and trust in God and others grows, the community can radiate and witness to a style and quality of life which will bring a solution to the troubles of our world.

The response to war is to live like brothers and sisters. The response to injustice is to share. The response to despair is a limitless trust and hope. The response to prejudice and hatred is forgiveness. To work for community is to work for humanity. To work for peace in community, through acceptance of others as they are, and through constant forgiveness, is to work for peace in the world and for true political solutions; it is to work for the Kingdom of God. ~ Jean Vanier

Our feelings are not there to be cast out or conquered. They're there to be engaged and expressed with imagination and intelligence. ~ T.K. Coleman

Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity to become molded into the form of the typical inmate. ~ Viktor E. Frankl

Life is not accomplishing some special work but attaining to a degree of consciousness and inner freedom which is beyond all works and attainments. ~ Thomas Merton

Forgiveness is a choice you can make to free yourself from the shackles of your past, from pain, hurt and resentment. Forgiveness is your road to inner freedom. It does not mean that you need to forget, deny or condone what has transpired. You choose to forgive because forgiveness is the only way to transcend painful experiences and to attain inner peace and freedom. Transcending Abuse & Betrayal. ~ Sasha Samy

We must recognize that our frustrations are largely due to the fact that we have not learned how to "dance" to a large part of the emotional spectrum. Being emotionally versatile is like being a good dancer. Just as dancers must challenge themselves to master new moves with their bodies, we must challenge ourselves to learn new forms of psychological choreography. ~ T.K. Coleman

Suddenly, literature, politics, and analysis came together, and I began to think more inclusively about the emotional imprisonment of mind and spirit to which all human beings are heir. In the course of analytic time, it became apparent that -- with or without the burden of social justice -- the effort required to attain any semblance of inner freedom was extraordinary.

Great literature, I then realized, is a record not of the achievement, but of the effort. ~ Vivian Gornick

Where there is no inner freedom, there is no life. ~ Radhanath Swami

I don't mind what happens. That is the essence of inner freedom.
It is a timeless spiritual truth: release attachment to outcomes,
deep inside yourself, you'll feel good no matter what. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

To experience conflicts knowingly, though it may be distressing, can be an invaluable asset. The more we face our own conflicts and seek out our own solutions, the more inner freedom and strength we will gain. Only when we are willing to bear the brunt can we approximate the ideal of being the captain of our ship. Spurious tranquillity rooted in inner dullness is anything but enviable. It is bound to make us weak and an easy prey to any kind of influence. ~ Karen Horney

Divine life is basically the inner freedom to choose the right and the good spontaneously. ~ Thomas Keating

I have achieved an inner freedom. ~ Dmitri Mendeleev

Lenny Breau was a genius - inspired and really loose. I loved how he used the guitar as an extension of his inner freedom, because, obviously, on the outside there were a lot of trainwrecks going on. But when you listen to him play, you hear what kind of guy he really is ~ Steve Vai

Where true inner freedom is, there is God. And where God is, there we want to be. ~ Henri Nouwen

There is no authentic inner freedom that does not, sooner or later, also affect and change human history. ~ Rollo May

Chess holds its master in its own bonds, shackling the mind and brain so that the inner freedom of the very strongest must suffer. ~ Albert Einstein

Liberty is more precious than money or office; and we should be vigilant lest we purchase wealth or place at the price of inner freedom. ~ John Lancaster Spalding

To the other person, who looks at me from the outside, I seem an object, a thing; my subjectivity with its inner freedom escapes his gaze. Hence, his tendency is always to convert me into the object he sees. The gaze of the other penetrates the depths of my existence, freezes and congeals it. It is this, according to Sartre, that turns love and particularly sexual love into a perpetual tension and indeed warfare. The lover wishes to possess the beloved, by the freedom of the beloved (which is his or her human essence) cannot be possessed; hence, the lover tends to reduce the beloved to an object for the sake of possessing it. Love is menaced always by a perpetual oscillation between sadism and masochism: In sadism I reduce the other to a mere lump, to be beaten and manipulated as I choose, while in masochism I offer myself as an object, but in an attempt to entrap the other and undermine his freedom. ~ William Barrett

I became acquainted with those martyrs whose behavior in camp, whose suffering and death, bore witness to the fact that the last inner freedom cannot be lost. ~ Viktor E. Frankl

A play that takes as its burden the meaning of self-consciousness may hint that inner freedom can be attained only when the protagonist can separate his genius for expanding consciousness from his own passion for theatricality. ~ Harold Bloom

Create inner freedom through witnessing. Sannyas is only for the inner freedom. And live out of inner freedom. ~ Rajneesh

Dostoevski said once, "There is only one thing I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings." These words frequently came to my mind after I became acquainted with those martyrs whose behavior in camp, whose suffering and death, bore witness to the fact that the last inner freedom cannot be lost. It can be said that they were worthy of the their sufferings; the way they bore their suffering was a genuine inner achievement. It is this spiritual freedom - which cannot be taken away - that makes life meaningful and purposeful. ~ Viktor E. Frankl

I asked everyone I met what 'freedom' meant. Fathers and children had very different answers. Those who were born in the USSR and those born after its collapse do not share a common experience - it's like they're from different planets. For the fathers, freedom is the absence of fear;[...] For the children: freedom is love; inner freedom is an absolute value. Freedom is when you're not afraid of your own desires; ~ Svetlana Alexievich

Inner-freedom is less about feeling good and more about learning to develop a healthy and harmonious relationship with the variety of emotional states you're likely to occupy over the course of a lifetime. ~ T.K. Coleman

I want you to have this feeling too - it is my moral responsibility to help you achieve this inner freedom. ~ Dmitri Mendeleev

Secret thoughts are only half free: they fly undisturbed in the skies of the inner freedom, but they can never leave them. ~ Fausto Cercignani

Problems assault us to the degree they preoccupy us. The key to release, rest, and inner freedom is not the elimination of all external difficulties. It is letting go of our pattern of reactions to those difficulties. ~ Hugh Prather

What is national freedom if not a people's inner freedom to cultivate its abilities along the beaten path of its history? ~ Ahad Ha'am

Genuine inner freedom is the ultimate aim of life. It is the unspoken goal of every thought you have and every action you take. ~ David Simon

External freedom has probably never existed, but neither have I ever known anyone who knew inner freedom. ~ Marlen Haushofer

To attain true inner freedom, you must be able to objectively watch your problems instead of being lost in them ... Once you've made the commitment to free yourself of the scared person inside, you will notice that there is a clear decision point at which your growth takes place. ~ Michael A. Singer

If the man in the concentration camp did not struggle against this in a last effort to save his self-respect, he lost the feeling of being an individual, a being with a mind, with inner freedom and personal value. He thought of himself then as only a part of an enormous mass of people; his existence descended to the level of animal life. ~ Viktor E. Frankl

For life is immortal youthfulness, and it hates age that tries to clog its movements - age that belongs not to life in truth, but follows it as the shadow follows the lamp.

Our life, like a river, strikes its banks not to find itself closed in by them, but to realise anew every moment that it has its unending opening towards the sea. It is a poem that strikes its metre at every step not to be silenced by its rigid regulations, but to give expression every moment to the inner freedom of its harmony. ~ Rabindranath Tagore

Mental and emotional freedom is not the denial of truth - it's the recognition that truth isn't something we need to run from or be afraid of. ~ T.K. Coleman

Having everything is just an expression of complete inner freedom. ~ Deepak Chopra

Happiness is like a genre of music that nearly everyone knows how to dance to. Happiness has a very simple tempo, catchy phrasing, and memorable lyrics. It's the song at the wedding that makes everyone excited to run to the dance floor. ~ T.K. Coleman

Let us find inner freedom in each lucky moment that we encounter, like a sun-basking butterfly that finds peace on a cherry blossom petal. ("I seek you") ~ Erik Pevernagie

Detachment, properly understood, means freedom, inner freedom. And, although it is not a word Jesus used, detachment expresses very well an important element in his spirituality: the ability to let go. In the Christian tradition this has been spoken of as "purity of heart" or as the process of becoming "poor in spirit. ~ Albert Nolan

Inner slavery is even worse than outward slavery; and inner freedom is even better than outward freedom. ~ Kathryn Lindskoog

the true choice is between losing it all and creating what we are about to lose: only this could eventually save us, in a profound sense . . . The possible awakening of the bomb is not simply 'let's do all in our power to prevent it before it's too late', but rather 'let's first build this totality (unity, community, freedom) that we are about to lose through the bomb. ~ Alenka Zupančič

Your task?
To work with all the passion of your being to acquire an inner light. ~ Rumi

Work is a four letter word. It conjures up the same image the world over getting up in the morning to do something you don't want to do, day in day out. After a few months work, or years, depending on the person's primeval yearning for freedom, you feel like a robot: alarm clock, get up, wash, catch the train, work, go home, watch TV, go to bed. In that one sentence I've probably just described the daily routine of 95% of the working population of England. It's the same in every other developed country in the world. Routine is the cause of most marriage break ups and social discontent. ~ John Harris

If India won her freedom through truth and non-violence, India would not only point the way to all the exploited Asiatic nations, she would become a torch-bearer for the Negro races. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Do jungle animals understand the true nature of the trees among which they have their daily being? In the parent-forest, amid those mighty trunks, we shelter and play; but whether the trees are healthy or corroded, whether they harbour demons or good spirites, we cannot say. Nor do we know the greatest secret of all: that one day we, too, will become as arboreal as they. And the trees, whose leaves we eat, whose bark we gnaw, remember sadly that they were animals once, they climbed like squirrels and bounded like deer, until one day they paused, and their legs grew down into the earth and stuck there, spreading, and vegetation sprouted from their swaying heads. They remember this as a fact; but the lived reality of their fauna years, the how-it-felt of that chaotic freedom is beyond recapture. They remember it as a rustle in their leaves. ~ Salman Rushdie

The most significant dimension of freedom is the freedom from one's own ego - in other words, from the feeling that I am the center of everything ~ Wojciech Kurtyka

It has been said in this courtroom that only a human being can be free. It seems to me that only someone who wishes for freedom can be free. I wish for freedom. ~ Isaac Asimov

To be free ... to walk the good American earth as equal citizens, to live without fear, to enjoy the fruits of our toil, to give our children every opportunity in life
that dream which we have held so long in our hearts is today the destiny that we hold in our hands. ~ Paul Robeson

The real you, the inner you, loves and adores you; but you cut off that power when you think badly of yourself. ~ Sue Fitzmaurice

You have to be the right type for calm waters. For some, dead calm is inner peace, for others it's the doldrums. ~ Daniel Glattauer

How contrary an animal is man, who most treasures what he refuses or abandons! The soldier who has chosen war for his profession in the midst of battle longs for peace, and in the security of peace hungers for the clash of sword and the chaos of the bloody field; the slave who sets himself against his unchosen servitude and by his industry purchases his freedom, then binds himself to a patron more cruel and demanding than his master was; the lover who abandons his mistress lives thereafter in his dream of her imagined perfection. ~ John Edward Williams

I believe in, and will to the best of my ability fight for, equal rights and freedom of opinion for everyone, regardless of colour, religion, nationality, orientation - you know the rest. ~ Binyavanga Wainaina

God dwells in you. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Want to control a people? Teach them to think of themselves as victims. Tell them they have an enemy, and that enemy is responsible for all their woes. It doesn't have to be a real enemy; it doesn't even have to make sense. Just tell it to them often enough, and they will come to believe it. Once they do, you can rob them of their money, time, and freedom, so long as you keep their eyes fixed on the 'enemy' you have created for them. ~ Aaron Lee Yeager

Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one. ~ A.J. Liebling

After analyzing our current crisis and studying well-established
historical precedents, I must conclude that the global bankers have
only three possible cards left to play.
The first is admitting culpability and working to restore the
American economic engine to its free-market potential. History has
taught us that the ruling class rarely admits error and never concedes
power.
The second is to foment so much civil unrest and fear that the
general population will be clamoring for a global dictator who will
provide them food, shelter, and security in exchange for their individual
freedom and sovereignty. I see the emerging militancy of the
labor union movement playing right into this scenario.
The final play is global conflict where they can try and control
the outcome by means of funding both sides. ~ Ziad K. Abdelnour

The Constitution has a good share of deliberately open-ended guarantees, like rights to due process of law, equal protection of the law, and freedom from unreasonable searches. ~ David Souter

Call it freedom, it's based on control. Everybody connected together, impossible anybody should ever get lost, ever again. Take the next step, connect it to these cell phones, you've got a total Web of surveillance, inescapable. You remember the comics in the Daily News? Dick Tracy's wrist radio? It'll be everywhere, the rubes'll all be begging to wear one, handcuffs of the future. Terrific. What they dream about at the Pentagon, worldwide martial law. ~ Thomas Pynchon

I called her Mrs. Bennington at her insistence. When I'd referred to her as Ms. Bennington, she'd nearly bitten my head off. She was not one of your liberated women. She liked being a wife and mother. I was glad for her, it meant more freedom for the rest of us. ~ Laurell K. Hamilton

I am alone in this white, garden-rimmed street. Alone and free. But this freedom is rather like death. ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

Sometimes we have to push people aside, distance ourselves from others to remain happy. There are people that will try to place you in the darkness they live in, so there not alone. Their objectives so simple, as transparent as the life they live. You'll walk pass them without a care, smiling when it's time to leave. ~ Ron Baratono

Focus is a matter of deciding what things you're not going to do. ~ John Carmack

We are all poor in the face of God's majesty. Not all of us realise it. ~ Radhe Maa

She'll be more than fine, she'll be fierce. ~ Nicola Noble

Comfort is bondage; it promises faux relief. Discomfort and unfamiliarity are gifts that provide a type of freedom that bouys, broadens, and always benefits me in the long term. ~ Knox McCoy

Love is divinity of life. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

I love the freedom of having my own space and my own place and doing things on my terms, and not really having to think about anybody else's schedule. ~ Danielle Fishel

It's all very well for us to sit here in the west with our high incomes and cushy lives, and say it's immoral to violate the sovereignty of another state. But if the effect of that is to bring people in that country economic and political freedom, to raise their standard of living, to increase their life expectancy, then don't rule it out. ~ Niall Ferguson

Purpose and passion - purpose is what will guide you to your best self and the passion will keep you there. ~ Nikki Rowe

A free man is not a slave who has escaped his master; such a man is but a runaway slave who may be caught and returned to servitude. A free man, though he may be overpowered, may be killed, cannot be reduced to servitude; something in him asserts freedom as an inviolable right.
It is not negotiable.
He does not *ask* that others respect his right, he *requires* it; and it is ultimately his willingness to die for this freedom which forms the basis of his demand that others respect it. ~ Allen Wheelis

I'm telling Palestinians, "Don't use violence." We're going to use the civilized means of international law to achieve our goals, our independence, our freedom. ~ Saeb Erekat

Your inner peace has nothing to do with your dramas of your life. ~ Susan Jeffers

Freedom is saying I want to do this Not that ~ Jerry Weintraub

Freedom in society is gauged by our success in getting what we want and conditioned by status and power, by race, class and gender. In the internal world of the psyche, however, freedom means something very different. It is the ability to opt for our long-term physical and spiritual well-being as opposed to our immediate urges. Absent that ability, any talk of 'free will' or 'choice' becomes nearly meaningless. ~ Gabor Mate

Keep clear of the dupes that talk democracy and the dogs that talk revolution, drunk with talk, liars and believers. I believe in my tusks. Long live freedom and damn the ideologies, said the gamey black-maned wild boar tusking the turf on Mal Paso Mountain. ~ Robinson Jeffers

The flight from study and awareness is much too common in a world that throws too many confusing pictures to the individual. For the sake of our democracy, based on freedom and individualism, we have to bring ourselves back to study again and again. Otherwise, we can become easy victims of a well-planned verbal attack on our minds and our consciences. ~ Joost Meerloo

I'm doing the absolute opposite of giving myself away. As far as I'm concerned, I'll be completely visible. If the painting sells, I'll be in Paris, hanging on a wall. If anything, I'm being selfish. It's perfect; all the freedom of creation, with none of the fuss. ~ Jessie Burton

If your aims are lofty, your achievements are bound to be great. ~ Radhe Maa

The power to gossip is more democratically distributed than power, property, and income, and, certainly, than the freedom to speak openly. ~ James C. Scott

Of the freedom to be wild and untrammeled. Of the ache she felt in her soul sometimes to be connected to nothing, answerable to nothing, bound by nothing. ~ Cassandra Clare