Freedom Quotes - 100 quotes

 and all you got to do is think it through you can't have love if you're not free if you're not free to choose your love it's not love at the point of a sword you can't have virtue at the point of the sword you have to be able to choose it it's not charity when Elizabeth Warren takes this guy's money and gives it to this guy it's charity when you reach into your pocket and say I would have liked to go to the movies but here's five bucks go buy yourself a burger that's charity that hurts that's hard everything else is just degrading
- Andrew Klavan
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 There is no true love and there is no true virtue unless you're free to choose them.
- Andrew Klavan
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 But whatever else government officials may be called upon to do, we the people must never allow them to forget that their offices and powers exist to secure our fundamental freedoms and the conditions for exercising those freedoms.
- David A. Bednar
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 ...we must not become accustomed to sweeping assertions of governmental power.
- David A. Bednar
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 As human beings, we're no different than the human beings anywhere else in the world. And there have been [people] thousands of years on this planet longer than we have. [America] We're barely 250 years old and we have outdone everybody in almost everything that raises the standard of living in the history of the world. It's not because our DNA is different, not because we're special human beings. It's because of our freedom. It's because of the founding documents and those rights that we have, where they come from.
- Rush Limbaugh
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 Most Americans persist in believing that a government powerful enough to give you everything you want, will also, necessarily, be powerful enough to take away everything you have. Including your freedom.
- William Voegeli
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 If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

- Abraham Lincoln

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 In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free...

- Abraham Lincoln

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 And thus, from the force of circumstances, the basest principles of our nature, were either made to lie dormant, or to become the active agents in the advancement of the noblest cause — that of establishing and maintaining civil and religious liberty.

- Abraham Lincoln

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 You only have power over people so long as you don’t take everything away from them. But when you’ve robbed a man of everything he’s no longer in your power — he’s free again.

- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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 For a country to have a great writer is like having a second government. That is why no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones.

- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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 But most of the mainstream “tech media” seems more interested in reviewing Google’s latest smartphone than the company’s candid acknowledgment that the masters of the digital universe have largely abandoned the internet’s founding principles of freedom and openness.

- Allum Bokhari

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 A more likely explanation for the media turning a blind eye to the presentation is that they basically agree with it, and find nothing uncontroversial about its declaration that tech companies have abandoned the “American tradition” of free speech in favor of the “European tradition” of protecting everyone’s feelings.

- Allum Bokhari

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 Almost all of us would agree that some restrictions on free speech are necessary. But few of us would agree on what those restrictions should be. Being a good censor — or at least, a more consistent censor — is within Google’s grasp. But being a politically neutral one is probably impossible.

- Allum Bokhari

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 So the thing that really is poignant to me, and the thing that I want to get to is the fact that the Hong Kongers — desperate to preserve their freedom, under the gun with people being kidnapped and disappearing and laws creeping in there that are meant to erode their freedoms — are waving the American flag. And they're singing our "Star-Spangled Banner." They are waving the American flag. And this is — I mean this should move all of us.   This should touch every single one of us, and remind us that when people look for freedom, when they are afraid of oppression, when they strive to become the one thing that all great people have to be — which is free — and all individuals want to be, which is free. And the only thing that gives nobility to charity the only thing that gives nobility to faith in God, the only thing that gives nobility to a person is if he chooses those things freely. Right, if you choose to believe you — don't believe at the edge of a sword because that has no legitimacy.

- Andrew Klavan

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 Three provisions of the Constitution refer to “the people” in a context other than “rights”—the famous preamble (“We the people”), §2 of Article I (providing that “the people” will choose members of the House), and the Tenth Amendment (providing that those powers not given the Federal Government remain with “the States” or “the people”). Those provisions arguably refer to “the people” acting collectively—but they deal with the exercise or reservation of powers, not rights. Nowhere else in the Constitution does a “right” attributed to “the people” refer to anything other than an individual right.

- Antonin Scalia

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 Can this orchestrated assault on freedom and privacy be stopped? Americans must demand nationally televised congressional hearings to hold accountable the de facto indoctrination centers more familiarly known as public schools and colleges, currently producing legions of would-be totalitarians, comfortable with destroying history, suppressing speech and obliterating privacy. Unless this battle is engaged, America will become a republic in name only, controlled by an oligarchy of tech titans, answerable to no one but themselves.

- Arnold Ahlert

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 “The difference between political power and any other kind of social power … is the fact that a government holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force. … The nature of governmental action is: coercive action. The nature of political power is: the power to force obedience under threat of physical injury – the threat of property expropriation, imprisonment, or death.”

- Ayn Rand

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 We must, indeed, all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.

- Benjamin Franklin

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 Ill at ease in the tyranny, ill at ease in the republic, in the one I longed for freedom, in the other for the end of corruption.

- Czeslaw Milosz

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 You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. With your head full of brains, and your shoes full of feet, You're too smart to go down any not-so-good-street.

- Dr. Seuss

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 But God intends that His children should act according to the moral agency He has given them, “that every man may be accountable for his own sins in the day of judgment.”2 It is His plan and His will that we have the principal decision-making role in our own life’s drama. God will not live our lives for us nor control us as if we were His puppets, as Lucifer once proposed to do. Nor will His prophets accept the role of “puppet master” in God’s place. Brigham Young stated: “I do not wish any Latter Day Saint in this world, nor in heaven, to be satisfied with anything I do, unless the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ,—the spirit of revelation, makes them satisfied. I wish them to know for themselves and understand for themselves.”

- D. Todd Christofferson

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 Liberty is the only object worth the sacrifice of a man's life. ~ Simón Bolívar

- Edwin Kiester, Jr.

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 Gun control advocates may continue to swing their fists in the air calling for more restrictions until they are blue in the face, but what they will never succeed in convincing the American people is that hampering the Second Amendment will do any good for the United States. It is always disturbing and gut-wrenching whenever an individual who legally acquires firearms uses them to commit insidious criminal acts. However, that is one of the many costs that the United States must incur if it seeks to maintain the social contract between the people and the federal government codified in the United States Constitution. As long as the Democrats and their allies continue to disturb that balance, the less likely they will be able to convince the American people that they should be entrusted not to become the very Leviathans that would suppress the very rights the Left purports to defend.

- Elliott Hamilton

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 If you scare people enough, they will demand removal of freedom. This is the path to tyranny.

- Elon Musk

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 A major reason why there is famine in some parts of the world is because evil men have used the vehicle of government to abridge the freedom that men need to produce abundantly.

- Ezra Taft Benson

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 It would be difficult to overestimate the impact the Bible has had on the history of the world. Its pages have blessed the lives of generations … The Founding Fathers knew that “where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty” (2 Corinthians 3:17). The United States of America began and lives as a result of faith in God. The Bible has been and is the foundation for this faith. “It is impossible to govern the world without the Bible,” said George Washington. The fathers of our country had to turn to religion in order that their new experiment make sense.

- Ezra Taft Benson

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 We know that enduring peace cannot be bought at the cost of other people's freedom.

- Franklin D. Roosevelt

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 In a thoroughly imperfect world (espionage) is necessary if the safe and free are to remain safe and free.

- Frederick Forsyth

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 Let us therefore animate and encourage each other, and show the whole world that a Freeman, contending for liberty on his own ground, is superior to any slavish mercenary on earth.

- George Washington

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 The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world, it is God's gift to humanity.

- George W. Bush

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 The instinct of nearly all societies is to lock up anybody who is truly free. First, society begins by trying to beat you up. If this fails, they try to poison you. If this fails too, they finish by loading honors on your head.

- Jean Cocteau

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 We are faced with an enemy which now commands a vast empire from the Formosa Straits to Berlin - an enemy whose agents of subversion are penetrating into Africa, into Asia, and now stand only ninety miles from our shores in Cuba - an enemy which is convinced of its ultimate victory - which believes, to quote Mr. Khrushchev, "that the old and the rotten will always fight with the newly emerged, but it is a law of history that the new will always win." But it is freedom that is new, and despotism and tyranny that is as old as civilization is - and it is freedom that will win - not because of any law of history - but because we will have the strength and the determination that will bring the victory.

- John F. Kennedy

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 I think the basic problem facing the United States is to maintain the peace, maintain our vital interest in our national security, serve as the leader of the cause of freedom around the globe, and attempt to develop in this country sufficient forward motion so that we catch again the imagination of the world as a power and a system of government that represents the kind of government which all people want to endorse, the kind of government under which all people want to live.

- John F. Kennedy

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 In other words, if we do well here, we enhance the prestige and power and influence of the cause of freedom around the world.

- John F. Kennedy

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 If we fail, the cause of freedom fails. If we succeed, the cause of freedom succeeds. Our responsibility is to throw light and luster around that great cause, around the globe.

- John F. Kennedy

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 Children have as much mind to shew that they are free, that their own good actions come from themselves, that they are absolute and independent, as any of the proudest of you grown men, think of them as you please.

- John Locke

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 "the ammunition you need for freedom is money" ~ Lieutenant Trotte

- Joseph Roth

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 freedom is as “different from a furlough as a war is from maneuvers”

- Joseph Roth

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 "war is the soldier's freedom"

- Joseph Roth

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 When speaking about the Council of Fifty in Nauvoo, which had members who were not members of the church, In the council men were not consulted about their religious opinions, no matter what they were. “We act upon the broad and liberal principle that all men have equal rights and ought to be respected,” he said. “Every man has a privilege in this organization of choosing for himself voluntarily his God and what he please for religion.”

- Joseph Smith

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 Certainly, we should have national and state parks and open expanses. But to enjoy them, we must make a living. We must farm, mine, travel, and work as we please. We must act on our own initiative and by our own efforts. We need resources to live on and use, readily available to anyone who wants to work. That is the spirit of a free people.

- Larry P. Arnn

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 To remain free, we must have a government accountable to us. That is the first precept of constitutionalism. That is what must be restored.

- Larry P. Arnn

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 It is often argued that socialism is a secular version of Christianity, referring to Acts 2-5, which describes the early Christians as having “all things in common.” It is true that following Pentecost, Christians sold their possessions and property and shared the results with “any [that] might have need.” But there is a critical distinction between Christians and socialists: Jesus urged his followers to give up their possessions while socialists want to give away the possessions of others. St. Paul is sometimes quoted as saying that “money is the root of all evil.” What he actually wrote in a letter to Timothy was that “loveof money is the root of all kinds of evil.” His indictment, as the former AEI president Arthur Brooks has pointed out, was of an inordinate attachment to money.

- Lee Edwards

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 More secular sources about the consequential role of private property can be cited. In The Constitution of Liberty, Nobel Laureate Friedrich Hayek writes that the recognition of private property is “an essential condition for the prevention of coercion.” He quotes Lord Acton as saying that “a people averse to the institution of private property is without the first element of freedom” and Henry Maine as asserting: “Nobody is at liberty to attack [private] property and to say at the same time that he values civilization. The history of the two cannot be disentangled.” In view of the alleged lack of individual liberty in classical Greece, writes Hayek, it deserves mention that in 5th century Greece the sanctity of the private home was so recognized that even under the rule of the “Thirty Tyrants,” a man could save his life by staying at home. The power of private property indeed.

- Lee Edwards

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 The essential difference between the visions of Karl Marx and George Washington, aside from the question of human nature, is that in Marx’s socialist world there is a dictatorship of the Communist Party, while in a liberal democracy like the United States “We the People” tell the government what to do, the government does not tell the people what to do.

- Lee Edwards

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 But if you were asked, “How many victims of communism have there been?” You would probably hesitate and respond — “Five million? Twenty million? Fifty million?” Few of us would know the right answer: at least 100 million men, women, and children, more than all the deaths of all the major wars of the 20thcentury. Communism committed the great crime of the last century.

- Lee Edwards

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 Free peoples who were once willing to give their lives for liberty can be persuaded very quickly to relinquish their liberties for a aquiet life.

- Mark Steyn

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 ...small government gives you big freedoms.

- Mark Steyn

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 Real freedom is having nothing. I was freer when I didn't have a cent.

- Mike Tyson

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 “The only liberty to which we can make a claim upon society is the freedom to do as we please within the limits imposed by justice and that variant of circumstantial freedom that is the political liberty enjoyed by enfranchised citizens of a republic.”

- Mortimer J. Adler

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 “The constitution to which the citizen has given consent by exercising his suffrage provides for a decision by the vote of the majority. He has accepted the principle of majority rule and, having done so, the citizen has also accepted, in advance the result of majority rule, whether or not the voting places him in the majority or in an adversely affected minority.”

- Mortimer J. Adler

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 “Now it is not common that the voice of the people desireth anything contrary to that which is right; but it is common for the lesser part of the people to desire that which is not right; therefore this shall ye observe and make it your law—to do your business by the voice of the people. And if the time comes that the voice of the people doth choose iniquity, then is the time that the judgments of God will come upon you; yea, then is the time he will visit you with great destruction even as he has hitherto visited this land.”

- Mosiah

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 "The political movements against the state, with the aim of freeing the people, in Roth forges a leg iron of its own by which the revolutionary is going to find himself hobbled."

- Nadine Gordimer

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 "The old and eternal truth (is) that the individual is always defeated in the end."

- Nadine Gordimer

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 No one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens but its lowest ones.

- Nelson Mandela

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 I always knew that someday I would once again feel the grass under my feet and walk in the sunshine as a free man.

- Nelson Mandela

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 There is no easy walk to freedom anywhere, and many of us will have to pass through the valley of the shadow of death again and again before we reach the mountaintop of our desires.

- Nelson Mandela

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 It was during those long and lonely years that my hunger for the freedom of my own people became a hunger for the freedom of all people, white and black. I knew as well as I knew anything that the oppressor must be liberated just as surely as the oppressed. A man who takes away another man's freedom is a prisoner of hatred, he is locked behind the bars of prejudice and narrow-mindedness. I am not truly free if I am taking away someone else's freedom, just as surely as I am not free when my freedom is taken from me. The oppressed and the oppressor alike are robbed of their humanity.

- Nelson Mandela

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 When I walked out of prison, that was my mission, to liberate the oppressed and the oppressor both. Some say that has now been achieved. But I know that that is not the case. The truth is that we are not yet free; we have merely achieved the freedom to be free, the right not to be oppressed. We have not taken the final step of our journey, but the first step on a longer and even more difficult road. For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.

- Nelson Mandela

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 Only free men can negotiate; prisoners cannot enter into contracts. Your freedom and mine cannot be separated.

- Nelson Mandela

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 Gandhi remained committed to nonviolence; I followed the Gandhian strategy for as long as I could, but then there came a point in our struggle when the brute force of the oppressor could no longer be countered through passive resistance alone. We founded Umkhonto we Sizwe and added a military dimension to our struggle. Even then, we chose sabotage because it did not involve the loss of life, and it offered the best hope for future race relations. Militant action became part of the African agenda officially supported by the Organization of African Unity (O.A.U.) following my address to the Pan-African Freedom Movement of East and Central Africa (PAFMECA) in 1962, in which I stated, "Force is the only language the imperialists can hear, and no country became free without some sort of violence."

- Nelson Mandela

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 15. So, since we're out from under the old tyranny, does that mean we can live any old way we want? Since we're free in the freedom of God, can we do anything that comes to mind? 16. Hardly. You know well enough from your own experience that there are some acts of so-called freedom that destroy freedom. Offer yourselves to sin, for instance, and it's your last free act. But offer yourselves to the ways of God and the freedom never quits. All your lives you've let sin tell you what to do. 17. But thank God you've started listening to a new master, 18. one whose commands set you free to live openly in his freedom!

- Paul

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 You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on Earth, or we will sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.

- Ronald Reagan

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 For many years now, you and I have been shushed like children and told there are no simple answers to the complex problems which are beyond our comprehension. Well, the truth is, there are simple answers, they just are not easy ones.

- Ronald Reagan

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 Saying that America is exceptional is not, despite popular perceptions, the same as saying America is wholly superior and better than other countries. You could also say that America is unique from other countries, but saying it is exceptional means so much more. It’s a belief that this country’s laws and standards are different from other countries. America is exceptional because it is a singular standard of freedom and liberty in the world. 

- Ski Ingram

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 America was built on the eternal principle that all men are created equal and they have certain rights given to them by God. Because these rights are God-given, they cannot be taken away by man. This was a completely new concept in the world at that time. In every other society, the citizens’ rights came from men, such as a king or dictator.

- Ski Ingram

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 America’s founding has always been about its ambitions. The founders did not claim the country would be perfect, only that through freedom it may encourage greatness among its citizens. Yes, ugly things took place in our history by flawed and dishonest men. But if one looks at history fairly we see that the great leaders of our founding succeeded in creating a nation in which individual freedom became the pathway for unparalleled levels of achievement by its citizens.

- Ski Ingram

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 American exceptionalism does not mean that people here are better than in other countries. It means our Constitution is exceptional. It gives all who live here the opportunity to succeed or fail in what they choose to do in life. This enlightened document inspires, uplifts, and encourages American citizens, both native-born and immigrant, to live better lives, dream bigger dreams, and work hard for themselves, their families, and their fellow citizens.

- Ski Ingram

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 Jesus’ leadership emphasized the importance of being discerning with regard to others, without seeking to control them. He cared about the freedom of his followers to choose. Even he, in those moments that mattered so much, had to choose voluntarily to go through Gethsemane and to hang on the cross at Calvary. He taught us that there can be no growth without real freedom. One of the problems with manipulative leadership is that it does not spring from a love of others but from a need to use them. Such leaders focus on their own needs and desires and not on the needs of others.

- Spencer W. Kimball

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 Jesus knew how to involve his disciples in the process of life. He gave them important and specific things to do for their development. Other leaders have sought to be so omnicompetent that they have tried to do everything themselves, which produces little growth in others. Jesus trusts his followers enough to share his work with them so that they can grow. That is one of the greatest lessons of his leadership. If we brush other people aside in order to see a task done more quickly and effectively, the task may get done all right, but without the growth and development in followers that is so important. Because Jesus knows that this life is purposeful and that we have been placed on this planet in order to perform and grow, growth then becomes one of the great ends of life as well as a means. We can give corrective feedback to others in a loving and helpful way when mistakes are made.

- Spencer W. Kimball

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 Jesus gave people truths and tasks that were matched to their capacity. He did not overwhelm them with more than they could manage, but gave them enough to stretch their souls. Jesus was concerned with basics in human nature and in bringing about lasting changes, not simply cosmetic changes.

- Spencer W. Kimball

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 Jesus taught us that we are accountable not only for our actions but also for our very thoughts. This is so important for us to remember. We live in an age that stresses “no-fault insurance”—and “no fault” in other human behavior as well. Accountability is not possible, of course, without fixed principles. A good leader will remember he is accountable to God as well as to those he leads. By demanding accountability of himself, he is in a better position, therefore, to see that others are accountable for their behavior and their performance. People tend to perform at a standard set by their leaders.

- Spencer W. Kimball

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 Jesus also taught us how important it is to use our time wisely. This does not mean there can never be any leisure, for there must be time for contemplation and for renewal, but there must be no waste of time. How we manage time matters so very much, and we can be good managers of time without being frantic or officious. Time cannot be recycled. When a moment has gone, it is really gone. The tyranny of trivia consists of its driving out the people and moments that really matter. Minutia holds momentous things hostage, and we let the tyranny continue all too often. Wise time management is really the wise management of ourselves.

- Spencer W. Kimball

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 Conversely, those leaders in history who have been most tragic in their impact on mankind were tragic precisely because they lacked to almost any degree the qualities of the Man of Galilee. Where Jesus was selfless, they were selfish. Where Jesus was concerned with freedom, they were concerned with control. Where Jesus was concerned with service, they were concerned with status. Where Jesus met the genuine needs of others, they were concerned only with their own needs and wants. Where Jesus was concerned with the development of his disciples, they sought to manipulate mortals. Where Jesus was filled with compassion balanced by justice, they have so often been filled with harshness and injustice.

- Spencer W. Kimball

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 We must remember that those mortals we meet in parking lots, offices, elevators, and elsewhere are that portion of mankind God has given us to love and to serve. It will do us little good to speak of the general brotherhood of mankind if we cannot regard those who are all around us as our brothers and sisters. If our sample of humanity seems unglamorous or so very small, we need to remember the parable Jesus gave us in which he reminded us that greatness is not always a matter of size or scale, but of the quality of one’s life. If we do well with our talents and with the opportunities around us, this will not go unnoticed by God. And to those who do well with the opportunities given them, even more will be given!

- Spencer W. Kimball

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 I make no apology for giving something of the accomplishments of Jesus Christ to those who seek success as leaders. If we would be eminently successful, here is our pattern. All the ennobling, perfect, and beautiful qualities of maturity, of strength, and of courage are found in this one person. As a large, surly mob, armed to the teeth, came to take him prisoner, he faced them resolutely and said, “Whom seek ye?” The mob, startled, mumbled his name, “Jesus of Nazareth.” “I am he,” answered Jesus of Nazareth with pride and courage—and with power: the soldiers “went backward, and fell to the ground.” A second time he said, “Whom seek ye?” and when they named him, he said, “I have told you that I am he: if therefore ye seek me, let these [his disciples] go their way.” (John 18:4–8).

- Spencer W. Kimball

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 Perhaps the most important thing I can say about Jesus Christ, more important than all else I have said, is that he lives. He really does embody all those virtues and attributes the scriptures tell us of. If we can come to know that, we then know the central reality about man and the universe. If we don’t accept that truth and that reality, then we will not have the fixed principles or the transcendent truths by which to live out our lives in happiness and in service. In other words, we will find it very difficult to be significant leaders unless we recognize the reality of the perfect leader, Jesus Christ, and let him be the light by which we see the way!

- Spencer W. Kimball

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 These are the times that try men’s souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: Tis dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to set proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed, if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated. Britain, with an army to enforce her tyranny, has declared that she has right [not only to tax but] ‘to bind us in all cases whatsoever’ and if being bound in that manner is not slavery, then is there not such a thing as slavery upon the earth. Even the expression is impious, for so unlimited a power can belong only to God.

- Thomas Paine

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 We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.

- Victor E. Frankl

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 Once a man has tasted freedom he will never be content to be a slave. That is why I believe that this frightfulness we see everywhere today is only temporary.

- Walt Disney

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 Tomorrow will be better for as long as America keeps alive the ideals of freedom and a better life. All men will want to be free and share our way of life.

- Walt Disney

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 I thank God and America for the right to live and raise my family under the flag of tolerance, democracy and freedom.

- Walt Disney

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 The greatest glory of a freeborn people is to transmit that freedom to their children.

- William Havard

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 Liberty is a big value. We have the Liberty Bell. Not the Equality Bell
- Dennis Prager
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 Douglass was an escaped slave who became one of the most charismatic and forceful leaders of the American abolition movement. As a young man he briefly embraced Christianity but soon abandoned it, observing that the religion did so little to soften the behavior of slave owners. At the age of 20 he made his daring escape. Here are two versions of a quotation attributed to him: I. Praying for freedom never did me any good til I started praying with my feet. 2. I prayed for freedom for twenty years, but received no answer until I prayed with my legs. According to Heschel's daughter Dr. Susanna Heschel: (http://www.dartmouth.edu/%7Evox/0405/0404/heschel.html) ""When he came home from Selma in 1965, my father wrote, 'For many of us the march from Selma to Montgomery was about protest and prayer. Legs are not lips and walking is not kneeling. And yet our legs uttered songs. Even without words, our march was worship. I felt my legs were praying.""

- Abraham Joshua Heschel

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 Each man is the smith of his own fortune.

- Appius Claudius Caecus

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 Liberty is a blessing that must be earned before it can be enjoyed.

- Charles Caleb Colton

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 She dances to the songs in her head,speaks with the rhythm of her heart,and loves from the depths of her soul.

- Dean Jackson

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 I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, that to be crowded on a velvet cushion.

- Henry David Thoreau

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 The state of war is a state of enmity and destruction; and therefore declaring by word or action, not a passionate and hasty, but sedate, settled design upon another man's life puts him in a state of war with him against whom he has declared such an intention, and so has exposed his life to the other's power to be taken away by him, or any one that joins with him in his defence, and espouses his quarrel; it being reasonable and just I should have a right to destroy that which threatens me with destruction; for by the fundamental law of Nature, man being to be preserved as much as possible, when all cannot be preserved, the safety of the innocent is to be preferred, and one may destroy a man who makes war upon him ... And hence it is that he who attempts to get another man into his absolute power does thereby put himself into a state of war with him; it being to be understood as a declaration of a design upon his life. For I have reason to conclude that he who would get me into his power without my consent would use me as he pleased when he had got me there, and destroy me too when he had a fancy to it; for nobody can desire to have me in his absolute power unless it be to compel me by force to that which is against the right of my freedom- i.e. make me a slave. To be free from such force is the only security of my preservation, and reason bids me look on him as an enemy to my preservation who would take away that freedom which is the fence to it; so that he who makes an attempt to enslave me thereby puts himself into a state of war with me. He that in the state of Nature would take away the freedom that belongs to any one in that state must necessarily be supposed to have a design to take away everything else, that freedom being the foundation of all the rest; as he that in the state of society would take away the freedom belonging to those of that society or commonwealth must be supposed to design to take away from them everything else, and so be looked on as in a state of war.

- John Locke

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 A Woman in harmony with her spirit is like a river flowing. She goes where she will without pretense and arrives at her destination prepared to be herself and only herself

- Maya Angelou

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 I want to wake up every day and do whatever comes in my mind, and not feel pressure or obligations to do anything else in my life.

- Michael Jordan

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 Move to your own drum, create your own rhythm. Step left if you want to, even if it's not right. Follow the hidden song only you can hear, begging you to dance - each move weaving together the lines of your life, the love of your heart, and the light of your soul.

- Nina Heyen

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 What If There Is No Need To Change What if there is no need to change? No need to transform yourself Into someone who is more compassionate, more present, more loving, or wise? How would this affect all the places in your life where you are endlessly trying to be better, or different? What if the task is simply to unfold To become who you already are in your essential nature – Gentle, compassionate, and capable of living fully and passionately present? What if the question is not, Why am I so infrequently the person I really want to be? But ‘why do I so infrequently want to be the person I really am?’ How would this change what you think you have to learn? What if becoming who and what we truly are happens not through striving and trying But by recognizing and receiving the people and places and practices That are for us the warmth of encouragement we need to unfold? How would this shape the choices you make about how to spend today? What if you know that the impulse to move in a way that creates beauty in the world Will arise from deep within And guide you every time you simply pay attention And wait. How would this shape your stillness, your movement, Your willingness to follow this impulse To just let go And dance?

- Oriah Mountain Dreamer

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 During any dance to which we surrender with joy, the brain loses its controlling power, and the heart takes up the reins of the body.

- Paulo Coelho

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 Dance, when you are broken open. Dance, if you've torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance, when you are perfectly free. Struck, the dancers hear the tambourine inside them, as a wave turns the foam on its very top, begin. Maybe you don't hear that tambourine, all the tree leaves clapping time. Close the ears on your head that listen mostly to lies and cynical jokes. There are other things to hear and see: dance, music and a brilliant city inside the soul.

- Rumi

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 Stopping the endless pursuit of getting somewhere else is the perhaps most beautiful offering we can make to our spirit.

- Tara Brach

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 Awakening from mistaken belief that it’s something outside ourselves. It’s right here. More we trust, the more we can manifest it. But we must shed the skin of the trance we live in. Niche says, “If a snake cannot shed its skin, it perishes.” This means letting go of old identity, thoughts, beliefs, story. It is a risk- no way to shed skin without opening up vulnerability How am I holding on to this skin? Where am I closed, defended?

- Tara Brach

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 When she started letting go, her vision became clearer. The present felt more manageable and the future began to look open and full of bright possibilities. As she shed the tense energy of the past, her power and creativity returned. With a revitalized excitement, she focused on building a new life in which joy and freedom were abundant.

- Yung Pueblo

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