Reading Is Freedom Quotes

Read the right books and we can be as wild and worry-free as we've ever wanted to be. No law can stop us reading. ~ Carla H. Krueger

Reading is a solitary pursuit, even a lone passage to a separate world. Yet to read in public, amid strangers, gives it another dimension. Sometimes the city speaks to the page, or the page seems to open up to people passing by. An outdoor reader shares the pulse of a timeless urban conversation between the world and the written word. ~ Nina Bernstein

Your inspiration is better if it comes from many different sources and your sensibilities will transform all those influences and inspiration into your own visual world. It's like reading the book instead of watching the movie. ~ Peter Lindbergh

Just as the right to speak and the right to refrain from speaking are complementary components of a broader concept of individual freedom, so also the individual's freedom to choose his own creed is the counterpart of his right to refrain from accepting the creed established by the majority. ~ John Paul Stevens

Reading the [The Verso Book of Dissent] is like encountering the best version of our angry selves. ~ Jonathan Messinger

Politics is the most concentrated expression of economics. ~ Vladimir Lenin

It's not a good idea to cut back indiscriminately on what you read. The reason is that reading can save you time, because it gives you the opportunity to learn from other people's experience. ~ Kathryn Alesandrini

Rapid reading is not a difficult skill to learn. ~ Peter Kump

With no plan of escape in sight, I've been resigned to the life of a cosseted young lady of London society as Grandmama and I pay calls. We drink tea that is too weak and never hot enough for my liking. the ladies pass the time with gossip and hearsay. This is what they have in place of freedom - time and gossip. Their lives are small and careful. I do not wish to live this way. I should like to make my mark. To venture opinions that may not be polite or ever correct but are mine nonetheless. If I am to be hanged for anything, I should like to feel that I go to the fallows on my own strength. ~ Libba Bray

Space is infinite. To the mind that means freedom, liberation.' So wrote Arisko, our greatest turkle philosopher, in his most famous work, 'Thoughts In A Bathtub'," said Dottia, dreamily, in an inspired state. ~ Philip Dodd

Ali stares dreamily at the shadows of the garden. I wonder why he's the one who seems to be pining for something. I look intently at the dark sky as I consider his questions and finally I realise what 'home' means to me. Even with a roof over my head I'm still homeless in my heart. Bricks and mortar don't mean anything. I'm not sure if I want a real home right now, somewhere I belong. Not that one is on offer or available to someone like me. Some days, I long for the freedom of the streets, strange as it may sound to anyone who has never been homeless. My bedsit and the job are like a hamster's cage, giving me temporary shelter but making me go round and round in circles ~ A. Zukowski

The whole point of all this reading is to learn and grow. So, finally, talk about what you read. Think and reflect on the things you read. Process the ideas. Jot down the questions. Books stimulate thought, so take advantage of it and write it down. ~ Kevin D. Hendricks

America is a place where the freedom to be who you are shouldn't be a barrier to your ability to get a job and provide for your family. ~ Paul Singer

I don't think there's anything that I would really baulk at doing on-screen. I don't think so. I've got certain pet peeves about writing ... my pet peeve about reading scripts is when they give you a line reading and there'll be a line but next to your character's name it'll say 'very angry'. But I'm like: "Well, I'll decide that actually!" So, there's little things like that. That's a slight pet peeve. ~ Daniel Radcliffe

Life is very difficult. There's nothing to be ashamed of by reading self-help books. If you're stuck in a dark place it can be incredibly uplifting and hope providing to engage with those tools. So go out there and do it!! ~ Jim Dooley

After the writer's death, reading his journal is like receiving a long letter. ~ Jean Cocteau

When we have simplicity we have so much more freedom in every single aspect of our lives. Maybe it's a classic case of less is more? Less stress, less worries, more time, more happiness. ~ Evan Sutter

Instead of a dedicated room, my best trigger is the actual habit of reading over the texts from the day before. Marking. Changing. Fussing. This ritual amounts to a habit of trust. Trust that I can make it better. That if I keep trying, I will come closer to something true. ~ Mona Simpson

I think one of the things that attracted me about theater and the stage was the ability to escape reality. And that is what I do in my work as a writer, but in a different way. And the freedom to put your own existence on ice and become another person. ~ Jhumpa Lahiri

The pleasure of all reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books. ~ Katherine Mansfield

Reading a good book is an escape to an alternative life, writing a good book is the closest thing to actually living that life. ~ Chas Scott

Boswell, like Lecky (to get back to the point of this footnote), and Gibbon before him, loved footnotes. They knew that the outer surface of truth is not smooth, welling and gathering from paragraph to shapely paragraph, but is encrusted with a rough protective bark of citations, quotations marks, italics, and foreign languages, a whole variorum crust of "ibid.'s" and "compare's" and "see's" that are the shield for the pure flow of argument as it lives for a moment in one mind. They knew the anticipatory pleasure of sensing with peripheral vision, as they turned the page, gray silt of further example and qualification waiting in tiny type at the bottom. (They were aware, more generally, of the usefulness of tiny type in enhancing the glee of reading works of obscure scholarship: typographical density forces you to crouch like Robert Hooke or Henry Gray over the busyness and intricacy of recorded truth.) They liked deciding as they read whether they would bother to consult a certain footnote or not, and whether they would read it in context, or read it before the text it hung from, as an hors d'oeuvre. The muscles of the eye, they knew, want vertical itineraries; the rectus externus and internus grow dazed waggling back and forth in the Zs taught in grade school: the footnote functions as a switch, offering the model-railroader's satisfaction of catching the march of thought with a superscripted "1" and routing it, sometimes at length, through abandoned stations and submerged, ~ Nicholson Baker

Being traditional is a choice for me. South Indian families bring up their children with a sense of freedom, self-respect and self-value. We do whatever we have to with earnestness and honesty, including being uninhibited. Yet we hold onto our roots. ~ Vidya Balan

I'm trying to focus, telling myself these are just empty words, but I'm lying. Because somehow, just reading these words is too much; and the thought of her in pain is causing me an unbearable amount of agony. ~ Tahereh Mafi

I'd say that about 82 percent of what I write is bad, but don't go by me; I'm as bad a judge as I am a writer. Look, if it were all good, you'd be paying twice as much for this book. So relax, read it, and if you don't enjoy it, remember that you're saving money. ~ George Burns

For Barth, the image of God is not some faculty, some "thing" that God possesses and has also given to humans, but rather a triune pattern of activity. Barth writes, "And this obedience of Jesus is the clear reflection of the unity of the Father and the Son by the bond of the Spirit in the being of the eternal God Himself, who is the fullness of all freedom."5 This eternal obedience of the Son to the Father in the Spirit is incarnated in Jesus Christ; therefore, this pattern of activity is not a principle or a rule, but rather a Way. ~ Leanne Van Dyk

What modern feminists demand is special treatment and equality of outcome, not equality of opportunity. It is also about freedom without consequences. Sadly, nothing has done more to lower the esteem in which women are held as has modern feminism. ~ Louis DeBroux

This is your first lesson." He went from Arkûl to Arkûl, taking spears, belt knives and shortswords from their corpses. When he was finished, he tossed the weapons into the crowd.
"A man without a weapon is a subject," he said to them as they snatched up the new tools. "A man with a weapon is a citizen! ~ S.G. Night

My whole thing is that I want to explore why you read books, what's the purpose of reading, and maybe that it's not that cool to hate something just because it's popular. ~ Josh Radnor

When I take up a book I have read before, I know what to expect; the satisfaction is not lessened by being anticipated. I shake hands with, and look our old tried and valued friend in the face,
compare notes and chat the hour away. ~ William Hazlitt

No genuine equality, no real freedom, no true manhood or womanhood can exist on any foundation save that of pecuniary independence. As a right over a man's subsistence is a power over his moral being, so a right over a woman's subsistence enslaves her will, degrades her pride and vitiates her whole moral nature. ~ Susan B. Anthony

Ayahuasca can heal, but it an also be used to kill,' Carlos continues to translate for Juan ... The key is remaining humble, being a servant of ayahuasca, not a master. 'Give yourself to the benefit of others, to God,' Juan says, his eyes daring over us, reading our energies. 'You must have a purpose to help other people, a desire to hep others. If you have a pure heart, a humble mind, and faith in your soul
then the Science will open up to you and show you its wonders. ~ Rak Razam

Authors have a greater right than any copyright, though it is generally unacknowledged or disregarded. They have a right to the reader's civility. There are favorable hours for reading a book, as for writing it, and to these the author has a claim. Yet many people think that when they buy a book they buy with it the right to abuse the author. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Still. Four words.
And I didn't realize it until a couple of days ago, when someone wrote in to my blog:
Dear Neil,
If you could choose a quote - either by you or another author - to be inscribed on the wall of a public library children's area, what would it be?
Thanks!
Lynn
I pondered a bit. I'd said a lot about books and kids' reading over the years, and other people had said things pithier and wiser than I ever could. And then it hit me, and this is what I wrote:
I'm not sure I'd put a quote up, if it was me, and I had a library wall to deface. I think I'd just remind people of the power of stories, and why they exist in the first place. I'd put up the four words that anyone telling a story wants to hear. The ones that show that it's working, and that pages will be turned:
... and then what happened? ~ Neil Gaiman

This is worrisome, not only because he is reading a translation from the original Hebrew or Greek that has already involved a great deal of interpretation, but also because it is such a short distance between believing you possess an error-free message from God and believing that you are an error-free messenger of God. ~ Barbara Brown Taylor

Life is not given to us that we might live idly without work. No, our life is a struggle and a journey. Goof should struggle with evil; truth should struggle with falsehood; freedom should struggle with slavery; love should struggle with hatred. Life is movement, a walk along the way of life to the fulfillment of those ideas which illuminate us, both in our intellect and in our hearts, with divine light. ~ Giuseppe Mazzini

Man is either governed by his own laws - freedom - or the laws of another - slavery. Are you willing to become slaves? Will you give up your freedom, your life and your property without a single struggle? No man has a right to rule over his fellow creatures. ~ Alexander Hamilton

A book is indeed dead until a reader brings it into life by reading it. ~ Aman Jassal

To me spirituality needs an honest individuality. It does not allow any kind of dependence. It creates a freedom for itself, whatever the cost. It is never in the crowd but alone, because the crowd has never found any truth. The truth has been found only in people's aloneness. ~ Rajneesh

Easy reading is damn hard writing. But if it's right, it's easy. It's the other way round, too. If it's slovenly written, then it's hard to read. It doesn't give the reader what the careful writer can give the reader. ~ Maya Angelou

If someone puts you through hell, don't be mad or bitter about it, because the thing that will free you from that hell is forgiveness. ~ Jeanette Coron

Certain American uses of deconstruction, Derrida has observed, work to ensure 'an institutional closure' which serves the dominant political and economic interests of American society. Derrida is clearly out to do more than develop new techniques of reading: deconstruction is for him an ultimately political practice, an attempt to dismantle the logic by which a particular system of thought, and behind that a whole system of political structures and social institutions, maintains its force. He is not seeking, absurdly, to deny the existence of relatively determinate truths, meanings, identities, intentions, historical continuities; he is seeking rather to see such things as the effects of a wider and deeper history of language, of the unconscious, of social institutions and practices. ~ Terry Eagleton

If you have a long-term goal in your life, all your activities become a part of that goal. You can keep yourself engaged for several hours and even days when you are reading an interesting book. When you are writing your new book, you can be busy for a year. When you want to transform the society, help the needy, educate the poor children, your goal can keep you engaged fruitfully for life. The greater is your goal, the higher is your energy level for achieving the goal and the less time you have to get bored. ~ Awdhesh Singh

The freedom to convert is fundamental to freedom of religion. ~ Bob Inglis