Freedom

"Anything can be a curse if it ain't a choice. If it's all you know. If you do it because your father did it. And you do it because it's familiar and safe and you're afraid to do something else. Even if all you want to do is anything else."

"Introduction of rational standards to differentiate between acceptable and unacceptable forms of drug related conduct allows us to hold drug users fully accountable for any harm resulting from irresponsible, stupid or ‘anti-social’ drug use in a manner consistent with current alcohol and tobacco policies, and more importantly, in a manner consistent with our commitment to the principles of liberty, freedom of choice and so on."

"Freedom has a cost, which is borne by individuals who make bad choices, and by a society that feels obligated to help them."

"Find your freedom through questioning everything you hear and see. Be free to choose, from all possible perspectives and opinions, what builds love and harmony."

"We equate choice with freedom, but they are not the same."

"Each time we make a choice we are either moving toward freedom and prosperity or bondage and misery."

"I don't want to be told that it's the people with power over us who are guilty, that we're innocent slaves, that we're not guilty because we're not free. I am free! I'm building a Vernichtungslager; I have to answer to the people who'll be gassed here. I can say "No". There's nothing can stop me—as long as I can find the strength to face my destruction."

"Our business is to be free of anything that separates us from God, who has created us to simply be happy and to progress."

"How easy to be free. How strong we are when we have nothing to lose."

"This day, you are free, because you have chosen to be free – and because of your choice, your days of insignificance are over."

"There's a way that money is freedom, but it isn't money, it's that money stands for having a choice."

"The spiritual freedom we seek cannot be found by grasping at, retreating to, or protecting our perceived safe spaces. Our freedom lies in remaining open continuously, not only to Life’s changes but also to the Divine Light within us and others. This is our choice. Although often perceived as a weakness, being open and surrendering to the experience of the present moment is our greatest strength. By authentically living Life in the Now, we submit to Divine guidance where we find the freedom to see everything equally and sacred in Truth."

"Cherish the others in your life. Cherish your freedom to be yourself. Cherish your freedom to choose who you want to be, what you want to do next."

"Because here’s something else that’s weird but true: in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship–be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles–is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness. Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they’re evil or sinful, it’s that they’re unconscious. They are default settings. They’re the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that’s what you’re doing."

"My life. My choice. Live life only once. So to hell with the world"

"I wouldn’t have gone if he’d made me. But it was different, deciding myself. It made staying too easy. It took the...the rebelliousness out of it.'Peter nodded. 'It’s easy to take the opposite path from the one you’re directed to,' he said. 'It’s much harder to find the right path alone."

"Freedom is a choice, and we have to defend our choices."

"If you see many paths before you, don't be afraid; if you see only one path before you, then be afraid because choice means freedom and no choice means slavery!"

"Perhaps in the pursuit of happiness, men and women take somewhat different paths. And, isn't it more than a little patronizing to suggest that most...women are not free? They're not self-determining human beings?"

"What do you want to be, free or happy? How about if they really are mutually exclusive options? What is freedom anyway? How does humanity govern itself when each person can have anything they want? How does humanity govern itself when nothing is natural?"