Table Of Freedom Quotes

Since I was a child, I've liked telling stories. Maybe because my father's a director, I grew up loving stories. I'm not good at spinning them at a dinner table because I do go on a bit, but I love writing them, and directing is just a way of editing the story. ~ Mary Stuart Masterson

So who told you that you had a chip on your shoulder?"
"Never mind." I shoved a piece of lasagna int my mouth so I couldn't answer.
"It was a cute guy, wasn't it?" Kelly said. "Those types pf statements only bother you if cute guys say them."
I didn't answer, and I didn't look at them.
"Must have been a really cute guy." Aleeta said.
Kelly leaned forward. "Who was it, and do you like him?"
I took another bite of lasagna.
"She likes him." Aleeta said with a smile.
"Ryan Geno?" Kelly asked. "Arnold Carrillo?"
"Colton Taft." Aleeta said as though sure she was right.
Kelly nodded. "Which means we're really talking about Bryant, aren't we?"
Aleeta leaned closer to the table and lowered her voice. "Charlotte likes Bryant?"
"No," I said quickly.
"No," Kelly repeated, "She doesn't like him, which is why Colton thinks she has a chip on her shoulder." She turned to me then, wearing a triumphant smile. "I'm right, aren't I?"
I shuffled pieces of lasagna around my plate. "I should stop hanging out with smart people. ~ Janette Rallison

In the life of the individual man, virtue is the sole good; such things as health, happiness, possessions, are of no account. Since virtue resides in the will, everything really good or bad in a man's life depends only upon himself. He may become poor, but what of it? He can still be virtuous. A tyrant may put him in prison, but he can still persevere in living in harmony with Nature. He may be sentenced to death, but he can die nobly, like Socrates. Therefore every man has perfect freedom, provided he emancipates himself from mundane desires. Stoicism ~ Piper Kerman

In a sense, the well-meaning or the ill-meaning American who asks: "What more will the Negro want?" or "When will he be satisfied?" or "What will it take to make these demonstrations cease?" is asking the Negro to purchase something that already belongs to him by every concept of law, justice and our Judaeo-Christian heritage. Moreover, he is asking the Negro to accept half the loaf and to pay for that half by waiting willingly for the other half to be distributed in crumbs over a hard and protracted winter of injustice. I would like to ask those people who seek to apportion to us the rights they have always enjoyed whether they believe that the framers of the Declaration of Independence intended that liberty should be divided into installments, doled out on a deferred-payment plan. Did not nature create birth as a single process? Is not freedom the negation of servitude? Does not one have to end totally for the other to begin? ~ Martin Luther King Jr.

If you believe in democracy, are you not thereby obliged to accept, without discrimination, the fall-outs that come with a democratic choice, even if this means the termination of the democratic process itself? ~ Wole Soyinka

The notion of freedom could make even peace and order seem oppressive, generate the suspicion of some hidden purpose, some vast deceit, some unspecified crime being perpetrated beyond human ken. That was a generous way of looking at it; the alternative was to acknowledge that humans were intrinsically conflicted, cursed with acquisitive addictions of the spirit. ~ Steven Erikson

She faced Chaol. The wind ripped a few strands of hair from her braid, and she tucked them behind her ears.
"No matter what happens," she said quietly, "I want to thank you."
Chaol tilted his head to the side. "For what?" Her eyes stung, but she blamed it on the fierce wind and blinked away the dampness.
"For making my freedom mean something." He didn't say anything; he just took the fingers of her right hand and held them in his, his thumb brushing the ring she wore.
"Let the second duel commence," the king boomed, waving a hand toward the veranda. Chaol squeezed her hand, his skin warm in the frigid air.
"Give him hell," he said. ~ Sarah J. Maas

The 3D world allows you to engage even more with a film because you're somehow drawn into the landscape or the universe of that scene. Even when it's two people talking at a table, you feel like you're a third party. ~ Ridley Scott

We come to the table not because we are holy, but because we are in need of His holiness. We come to the table not because we are strong, but because we are weak and in need of His strength. ~ Jonathan Martin

That's what mountains do, they taunt you, lure you to the freedom of the wilderness, and it is fucking exhilarating. ~ Shannon Mullen

He remembered learning in one of his social studies classes
that in the Old West, when Native Americans were thrown into jail, they sometimes dropped dead.
The theory was that someone so used to the freedom of space couldn't handle the confinement, but
Peter had another interpretation. When the only company you had was yourself, and when you
didn't want to socialize, there was only one way to leave the room. ~ Jodi Picoult

That's really bad," concluded the host, "say what you will, but there's something evil lurking in men who avoid wine, games, the society of delightful women, table talk. Such people are either gravely ill or secretly hate those around them. True, exceptions are possible. Among those who have sat down with me at the banqueting table, there have sometimes been some astonishing scoundrels! And so, I'm listening to why you're here. ~ Mikhail Bulgakov

The table seemed to have risen a little toward the sky like a mechanical dancing platform, giving the people around it a sense of being alone with each other in the dark universe, nourished by its only food, warmed by its only lights. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

What manner of men had lived in those days...who had so eagerly surrendered their sovereignty for a lie and a delusion? Why had they been so anxious to believe that the government could solve problems for them which had been pridefully solved, many times over, by their fathers? Had their characters become so weak and debased, so craven and emasculated, that offers of government dole had become more important than their liberty and their humanity? Had they not know that power delegated to the government becomes the club of tyrants? They must have known. They had their own history to remember, and the history of five thousand years. Yet, they had willingly and knowingly, with all this knowledge, declared themselves unfit to manage their own affairs and had placed their lives, which belonged to God only, in the hands of sinister men who had long plotted to enslave them, by wars, by "directives," by "emergencies." In the name of the American people, the American people had been made captive. ~ Taylor Caldwell

Because of who I am, when I sit at a poker table, I meet people who engage me in conversation, not only about poker, but also about the movie business and about the world of celebrities. ~ James Woods

She tilts her head so slightly that I am pulled deeper into her gaze, as though she's trying to tell me something or maybe trying to pull something out of me, and in doing so, she's drawing me in. her glare probes deep, and I'm incapable of looking away. Her pale eyes search mine and hold me hostage.
Not until she changes her focus to my neck do I blow out a breath from the freedom of her release. "Holy shit," I whisper. ~ J.B. Salsbury

To be a liberal is to care about more than one's own belly or roof. It is to care about the rights of all men and women to live and breathe freely. Freely, do you hear me? This is not oppression. Stop saying that black is white and night is day. Freedom is not slavery! So stop with the Orwellian double talk and start working to help more than yourself. Lining your own pockets is the opposite of helping this world! ~ Robert Peate

She has always said that talking makes everyone feel better. He says talking is the equivalent of grooming. The tongue and fingers are governed by the same parts of the brain. He marvels at how close they can be some nights on the phone and how words really are the equal of touch. Bakelite pressed hard against his ear.

She says it's not just the freedom from him and from their daughter. I feel some sort of opening. I saw things so clearly today.

He thinks about the solitary figure in every religion, the monks, saints and shamans in every tradition who walk out into wilderness on their own and find revelation.

It's what solitude does to a social animal he says.

People talk of recognizing something greater than themselves when they're alone because we finally have to realize how helpless we are as individuals. There's a freedom, a sense of wonder in feeling for a moment that we don't have to please anyone or adjust to the needs of others. And there's a fear in realizing how small we are, how much those distant others normally insulate us from seeing the limits of our mostly incompetent bodies. When we're on our own we seek solutions and speculate and fictionalize because that's what we do when we're confronted with survival. That's revelation.

Maybe she says, I'm just saying I'd like to eat less meat. We could have fish. ~ Colin McAdam

was Goldman's ideas that were dangerous: her ideal of a just and beautiful society inspired struggles for social change, and her uncompromising presence in public life exposed the hypocrisies of allegedly democratic governance. She had a unique ability to generate coalitions among liberal and radical groups, and among immigrants and native-born citizens, by articulating their common struggles for freedom of speech (including freedom to organize the workplace), right to a fair trial, availability of birth control, right to travel, and an overall spirit of individual freedom. Looking back at Goldman's time from within this gaze, the authorities look extreme, if not paranoid and even ridiculous, for their fervent efforts to silence her rather than simply accept her words as a protected form of speech in American society. ~ Kathy E. Ferguson

Having the right to choose determines whether women will find an equal place at life's table, whether children will be truly valued, and whether everyone's personal liberties, privacy, and bodily integrity will be safeguarded against the ideology of the right. ~ Gloria Feldt

The movement of nonviolent non-co-operation has nothing in common with the historical struggles for freedom in the West. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

[William] Coxe expresses ... both the pedestrian's advantage of complete freedom of movement, and the inspiring effect of the combination of continual change of scene with maximum time for appreciation that characterises the mobile gaze of the pedestrian traveller. If not a peripatetic by profession, Coxe is clearly one by choice. ~ Robin Jarvis

For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew--or a Quaker--or a Unitarian--or a Baptist. It was Virginia's harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that helped lead to Jefferson's statute of religious freedom. Today I may be the victim- -but tomorrow it may be you--until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped at a time of great national peril.

Finally, I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end--where all men and all churches are treated as equal--where every man has the same right to attend or not attend the church of his choice--where there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic vote, no bloc voting of any kind--and where Catholics, Protestants and Jews, at both the lay and pastoral level, will refrain from those attitudes of disdain and division which have so often marred their works in the past, and promote instead the American ideal of brotherhood.

That is the kind of America in which I believe. And it represents the kind of Presidency in which I believe--a great office that must neither be humbled by making it the instrument of any one religious group nor tarnished by arbitrarily withholding its occupancy from the members of any one religious group. I believe in a President whose religious views are his own private affair, neither imposed by him upon the nation or imposed by the nation upon him as a ~ John F. Kennedy

I may not agree with you, but I will defend to the death your right to make an ass of yourself. ~ Oscar Wilde

Today, you have neuroscientists working on a genetic, behavioural or cognitive level, and then you have informaticians, chemists and mathematicians. They all have their own understanding of how the brain functions and is structured. How do you get them all around the same table? ~ Henry Markram

A public-school system, if it means the providing of free education for those who desire it, is a noteworthy and beneficent achievement of modern times; but when once it becomes monopolistic it is the most perfect instrument for tyranny which has yet been devised. Freedom of thought in the middle ages was combated by the Inquisition, but the modern method is far more effective.' (1923) ~ J. Gresham Machen

I sat at a lunch table with a professor of premonotheistic spirituality, plus several women from some of the tribes in this state that has more Native Americans than any other. All agreed that the paradigm of human organization had been the circle, not the pyramid or hierarchy - and it could be again.

I'd never known there was a paradigm that linked instead of ranked. It was as if I'd been assuming opposition - and suddenly found myself in a welcoming world; like putting one's foot down for a steep stair and discovering level ground.

Still, when a Laguna law student from New Mexico complained that her courses didn't cite the Iroquois Confederacy as the model for the U.S. Constitution - or explain that this still existing Confederacy was the oldest continuing democracy in the world - I thought she was being romantic. But I read about the Constitutional Convention and discovered that Benjamin Franklin had indeed cited the Iroquois Confederacy as a model. He was well aware of its success in unifying vast areas of the United States and Canada by bringing together Native nations for mutual decisions but also allowing autonomy in local ones. He hoped the Constitution could do the same for the thirteen states. That's why he invited two Iroquois men to Philadelphia as advisers. Among their first questions was said to be: Where are the women? ~ Gloria Steinem

The thought of being completely dependent disturbs people till the moment their eyes are opened to reality. ~ Auliq Ice

Individual liberty is not an asset of civilization. It was greatest before there was any civilization, though admittedly even then it was largely worthless, because the individual was hardly in a position to defend it. With the development of civilization it underwent restrictions, and justice requires that no one shall be spared these restrictions. Whatever makes itself felt in a human community as an urge for freedom may amount to a revolt against an existing injustice, thus favouring a further advance of civilization and remaining compatible with it. But it may spring from what remains of the original personality, still untamed by civilization, and so become a basis for hostility to civilization. The urge for freedom is thus directed against particular forms and claims of civilization, or against civilization as a whole. It does not seem as though any influence can induce human beings to change their nature and become like termites; they will probably always defend their claim to individual freedom against the will of the mass. ~ Sigmund Freud

Becoming a fashion designer is agreeing with the fact that what you experience or what you see as free is also connected to a system. Does that mean giving up your freedom? I still don't know the answer. There's a very different kind of psychology going on in the fashion scene than in art. ~ Raf Simons

With a host of proposals on the table and a President examining new ideas for health reform, we have an obligation to give real reform our best shot. ~ Ron Wyden

I love the idea of farm to table and farmer's markets. I enjoy a meal more if I know I'm eating something that's good quality and good for me. ~ Haylie Duff

Personal identity seems like it's just such an American archetype, from Holly Golightly re-inventing herself in 'Breakfast At Tiffany's' to Jay Gatsby in 'The Great Gatsby.' It seems like the sort of archetypal American issue. If you're given the freedom to be anything, or be anyone, what do you do with it? ~ Chuck Palahniuk

People used to think that learning to read evidenced human progress; they still celebrate the decline of illiteracy as a great victory; they condemn countries with a large proportion of illiterates; they think that reading is a road to freedom. All this is debatable, for the important thing is not to be able to read, but to understand what one reads, to reflect on and judge what one reads. Outside of that, reading has no meaning (and even destroys certain automatic qualities of memory and observation). But to talk about critical faculties and discernment is to talk about something far above primary education and to consider a very small minority. The vast majority of people, perhaps 90 percent, know how to read, but do not exercise their intelligence beyond this. They attribute authority and eminent value to the printed word, or, conversely, reject it altogether. As these people do not possess enough knowledge to reflect and discern, they believe - or disbelieve - in toto what they read. And as such people, moreover, will select the easiest, not the hardest, reading matter, they are precisely on the level at which the printed word can seize and convince them without opposition. They are perfectly adapted to propaganda. ~ Jacques Ellul

Local differences in the prices of commodities whose natures are technologically identical are to be explained on the one hand by differences in the cost of preparing them for consumption (expenses of transport, cost of retailing etc.) and on the other hand by the physical and legal obstacles that restrict the mobility of commodities and human beings. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

Everything has been degraded by what the sensory overload and the supposed freedom-of-choice technology has brought to us, and, in short, by the democratization of the arts. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

The issue, perhaps, boils down to one of how perceptions or misperceptions of racial difference impact various 'individuals', or groups of 'individuals', experience of freedom in America. Some would argue that it goes beyond hampering their "pursuit of happiness" to outright obliterating it. ~ Aberjhani

Renée and I met at a bar called the Eastern Standard in Charlottesville, Virginia. I had just moved there to study English in grad school. Renée was a fiction writer in the MFA program. I was sitting with my poet friend Chris in a table in the back, when I fell under the spell of Renée's bourbon-baked voice. The bartender put on Big Star's Radio City. Renée was the only other person in the room who perked up. We started talking about how much we loved Big Star. It turned out we had the same favorite Big Star song – the acoustic ballad Thirteen. She'd never heard their third album, Sister Lovers. So naturally, I told her the same thing I'd told every other woman I'd ever fallen for: "I'll make you a tape! ~ Rob Sheffield