Freedom

"Let your eyes see what they see, not what others want you to see. Let your ears hear what they naturally hear, not what others want you to hear. Let your mouth speak your mind freely and not be constrained by other people's approval or disapproval. Let your mind think what it wants to think and not let other people's demands dictate your thoughts. If your senses and your mind are not allowed to do what they want to do naturally, you are denying them their rights. When you cannot think, sense, feel, or act freely, then your body and mind are injured. Break these oppressions, and you will cultivate life." "دع عينيك تبصران ما تريانه، لا ما يودّ الآخرون أن تبصره. ودع أذنيك تسمعان ما تسمعانه بالفطرة، لا ما يشتهيه الآخرون أن تسمعه. ودع لسانك ينطق بما في نفسك بحرية، فلا تقيّده موافقة الناس أو رفضهم. ودع عقلك يفكر فيما يشاء، ولا تدع إملاءات الآخرين تتحكم في أفكارك. إن لم تُمنح حواسك وعقلك حرية التصرف الطبيعي، فأنت تسلبهما حقوقهما. وحين لا تستطيع أن تفكر أو تحس أو تشعر أو تتصرف بحرية، فإن جسدك وعقلك يصابان بالأذى. اكسر هذه القيود، وسوف تنمو الحياة فيك."

"Posterity! you will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in Heaven that I ever took half the pains to preserve it." "أيها الخلف! لن تدركوا أبدًا كم كلّف الجيلَ الحاضرَ الحفاظُ على حريتكم! آمل أن تحسنوا استخدامها. فإن لم تفعلوا، فسأندم في السماء على أنني بذلت نصف هذا الجهد للحفاظ عليها."

"The truth, when it matches with what we want, think, or believe already, we love it. But, when it doesn't, we either hate it or ignore it, or both." "الحقيقة، حين تتوافق مع ما نرغب فيه أو نفكر فيه أو نؤمن به سلفًا، نحبها. أما حين لا تتوافق، فإننا إما نكرهها أو نتجاهلها، أو كليهما معًا."

"Hatred towards thy neighbor is the cage that deprives us from social freedom." "كراهية جارك هي القفص الذي يسلبنا الحرية الاجتماعية."

"Are the Trials starting?” The girl claps her hands over her mouth. “I'm sorry,” she whispers. “I—”“It's all right.” I don't smile at her. It will only scare her. For a female slave, a smile from a Mask is not usually a good thing. “I'm actually wondering the same thing. What's your name?”“S-slave-Girl.” Of course. My mother would already have scourged her name out of existence.“Right. You work for the Commandant?” I want her to say no. I want her to say that my mother roped her into this. I want her to say she's assigned to the kitchens or infirmary, where slaves aren't scarred or missing body p" "أتبدأ المحاكمات؟" تضع الفتاة يديها على فمها. "أنا آسفة،" تهمس. "أنا—" "لا بأس." لا أبتسم لها. ذلك لن يفعل سوى إخافتها. بالنسبة لأمة، ابتسامة من قناع ليست عادةً شيئًا جيدًا. "أنا في الواقع أتساءل نفس الشيء. ما اسمكِ؟" "أ-أمة." بالطبع. أمي كانت قد محت اسمها من الوجود بالفعل. "حسنًا. هل تعملين لدى القائدة؟" أريدها أن تقول لا. أريدها أن تقول إن أمي ورطتها في هذا. أريدها أن تقول إنها مكلفة بالمطابخ أو المستوصف، حيث لا تُشوّه العبيد أو يفقدون أجزاء من أجسادهم."

"Mama wasn't dead...exactly. They all said she was, but when Elma was small, she seen Mama creep into her room at night, half-naked, head all bloodied red like when they found her by the well that day, and Elma reckoned dead just meant pretendin' you couldn't move or breathe until nightfall when you got up and walked around like you was free." "لم تكن أمي ميتة... تمامًا. كلهم قالوا إنها كذلك، لكن عندما كانت إلما صغيرة، رأتها أمي تتسلل إلى غرفتها ليلاً، نصف عارية، رأسها ملطخ بالدماء الحمراء تمامًا كما وجدوها بجانب البئر في ذلك اليوم، واعتقدت إلما أن الموت يعني فقط التظاهر بأنك لا تستطيع الحركة أو التنفس حتى حلول الليل، حين تنهض وتتجول وكأنك حرة."

"There is no need for us all to be alike and think the same way, neither do we need a common enemy to force us to come together and reach out to each other. If we allow ourselves and everyone else the freedom to fully individuate as spiritual beings in human form, there will be no need for us to be forced by worldly circumstances to take hands and stand together. Our souls will automatically want to flock together, like moths to the flame of our shared Divinity, yet each with wings covered in the glimmering colors and unique patterns of our individual human expression." "ليس علينا جميعًا أن نكون متشابهين ونفكر بالطريقة ذاتها، ولا نحتاج إلى عدو مشترك يجبرنا على التآلف والتواصل. إذا سمحنا لأنفسنا وللآخرين حرية التفرّد الكامل ككائنات روحية في هيئة بشرية، فلن نكون بحاجة إلى أن تجبرنا الظروف الدنيوية على تشابك الأيدي والوقوف معًا. سترغب أرواحنا تلقائيًا في التجمع، كالفراشات المنجذبة إلى لهيب ألوهيتنا المشتركة، لكن كل واحدة بأجنحة تتلألأ بألوان وأنماط فريدة تعبر عن تجليها البشري الخاص."

"I think all people want freedom, but they've got this idea inserted into their head about money." "أظن أن جميع الناس يبتغون الحرية، لكنهم استُودِعوا في أذهانهم فكرة المال هذه."

"Our present idea of freedom is only the freedom to do as we please: to sell ourselves for a high salary, a home in the suburbs, and idle weekends. But that is a freedom dependent upon affluence, which is in turn dependent upon the rapid consumption of exhaustible supplies. The other kind of freedom is the freedom to take care of ourselves and of each other. The freedom of affluence opposes and contradicts the freedom of community life." "فكرتنا الحالية عن الحرية ليست سوى حرية فعل ما يحلو لنا: أن نبيع أنفسنا مقابل راتب مرتفع، ومنزل في الضواحي، وعطلات نهاية أسبوع خاملة. لكن هذه حرية تعتمد على الوفرة، التي تعتمد بدورها على الاستهلاك السريع لموارد قابلة للنضوب. أما النوع الآخر من الحرية فهو حرية الاعتناء بأنفسنا وببعضنا البعض. إن حرية الوفرة تعارض وتناقض حرية الحياة المجتمعية."

"Only when you decide to truly live can you be free of your fears, and only when you are free of your fears can you truly live."

"Silence. Montag sat like a carved white stone. The echo of the final hammer on his skull died slowly away into the black cavern where Faber waited for the echoes to subside. And then when the startled dust had settled down about Montag's mind, Faber began, softly, "All right, he's had his say. You must take it in. I'll say my say, too, in the next hours. And you'll take it in. And you'll try to judge them and make your decisions as to which way to jump, or fall. But I want it to be your decision, not mine, and not the Captain's. But remember that the Captain belongs to the most dangerous enemy to truth and freedom, the solid unmoving cattle of the majority. We all have our harps to play. And it's up to you now to know with which ear you'll listen."

"If the secret core of potlatch is the reciprocity of exchange, why is this reciprocity not asserted directly, why does it assume the “mystified” form of two consecutive acts each of which is staged as a free voluntary display of generosity? Here we encounter the paradoxes of forced choice, of freedom to do what is necessary, at its most elementary: I have to do freely what I am expected to do. (If, upon receiving a gift, I immediately return it to the giver, this direct circulation would amount to an extremely aggressive gesture of humiliation, it would signal that I refused the other’s gifts — recall those embarrassing moments when elderly people forget and give us last year’s present once again … ) …the reciprocity of exchange is in itself thoroughly ambiguous; at its most fundamental, it is destructive of the social bond, it is the logic of revenge, tit for tat. To cover this aspect of exchange, to make it benevolent and pacific, one has to pretend that each person’s gift is free and stands on its own. This brings us to potlatch as the “pre-economy of the economy,” its zero-level, that is, exchange as the reciprocal relation of two non-productive expenditures. If the gift belongs to Master and exchange to the Servant, potlatch is the paradoxical exchange between Masters. Potlach is simultaneously the zero-level of civility, the paradoxical point at which restrained civility and obscene consumption overlap, the point at which it is polite to behave impolitely."

"...the dead, being wiser than the living, know freedom is always better than revenge."

"We're fighting for unhappiness" Noah asked skeptically. "It sounds a bit crazy when you put it that way."Nijinsky laughed, delighted. "Oh, it is." Then, serious again, he said, "We fight for the right to be what we choose,to feel what we choose. Even if what we choose seems crazy to others."If it's all the same to you, I'll fight for revenge," Sadie said. Nijinsky's eyes glittered. "Oh, yes. That's fine with me."

"Our enemies are Medes and Persians, men who for centuries have lived soft and luxurious lives; we of Macedon for generations past have been trained in the hard school of danger and war. Above all, we are free men, and they are slaves. There are Greek troops, to be sure, in Persian service — but how different is their cause from ours! They will be fighting for pay — and not much of at that; we, on the contrary, shall fight for Greece, and our hearts will be in it. As for our foreign troops — Thracians, Paeonians, Illyrians, Agrianes — they are the best and stoutest soldiers in Europe, and they will find as their opponents the slackest and softest of the tribes of Asia. And what, finally, of the two men in supreme command? You have Alexander, they — Darius!"

"I refuse to stay a prisoner to my body. I am going to free myself."

"Quid nomen tibi est? She was not about to offer her name up to a stranger. It was almost the only thing she possessed that nobody had stolen."

"It has been said that civilization is the process of freeing human beings from each other, and that is true. But it takes people to free each other, because people cannot be freed from each other except by each other. The irony of this cannot be overstated."

"I’m an observer. I am fascinated by people and how their minds work (and, of course, my own). Why we are the way we are, why we do the things we do – and that interest drives my writing. I was a physicist before fiction claimed my soul, so I’m an experimenter. I’m open to different ways of thinking. I like exaggerating, making things up. I’m a very open, honest person in life and that’s the way it should be, but when it comes to fiction, I want to pour a few sharp objects into the comfort zone. Our fears are powerful, yet we’ve all got a desire to laugh and be entertained. I could have followed the same path I do now as a scientist, examining how the brain works. Ironically I get much more freedom to experiment as a writer. That’s why I love it."

"My ambition is to enjoy my life and to do exactly what I want to do. And I'll do that. I will be free."