Freedom

What we call our destiny is truly our character and that character can be altered. The knowledge that we are responsible for our actions and attitudes does not need to be discouraging, because it also means that we are free to change this destiny. One is not in bondage to the past, which has shaped our feelings, to race, inheritance, background. All this can be altered if we have the courage to examine how it formed us. We can alter the chemistry provided we have the courage to dissect the elements.

To the man who only has a hammer, everything he encounters begins to look like a nail. Every human being has both sets of forces within us. One set clings to safety and defensiveness out of fear, tending to regress backward, hanging on to the past, afraid to grow, afraid to take chances, afraid to jeopardize what he already has, afraid of independence, freedom and separateness. The other set of forces impels us forward toward wholeness of Self and uniqueness of Self, toward full functioning of all his capacities, toward confidence in the face of the external world at the same time that he can accept his deepest, real, unconscious Self.

There’s a debate in our culture about what really makes us happy, which is summarized by, on the one hand, the book “On the Road” and, on the other, the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life.” The former celebrates the life of freedom and adventure. The latter celebrates roots and connections. Research over the past thirty years makes it clear that what the inner mind really wants is connection. “It’s a Wonderful Life” was right. Joining a group that meets just once a month produces the same increase in happiness as doubling your income. According to research by Daniel Kahneman, Alan B. Krueger, and others, the daily activities most closely associated with happiness are social—having sex, socializing after work, and having dinner with friends. Many of the professions that correlate most closely with happiness are also social—a corporate manager, a hairdresser.

We're not free until we're bound to be free, until there's something that has a claim upon us other than our self, our aspirations, our psychological and intellectual and sexual tics and yearnings and desires for community.

The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.

The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the LORD ’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion—to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the LORD for the display of his splendor.

The Statue of Liberty has another name: the Mother of Exiles. The nickname — symbolizing the United States as a nation of immigrants — was imagined by the poet Emma Lazarus, who in 1883 wrote the sonnet “The New Colossus” to raise money to create the statue’s pedestal. Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome … “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” Those excerpts were inscribed on a plaque and mounted inside the monument — in 1903.

I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crises. The great point is to bring them the real facts.

On August 3rd 1914, on the eve of the Great War, Sir Edward Grey, the British Foreign Secretary, stood at the window of his office in the summer dusk and observed: “The lamps are going out all over Europe.” Today the lamps are going out on liberty all over the western world in a more subtle and elusive and profound way...

Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend.

If you don't believe in free speech for speech you loathe, you don't believe in free speech at all.

You know what this feels like? – When I was in high school the thing I wanted most when I was stuck in class, the thing that I was desperately in pursuit of, was a hall pass. That’s all I ever wanted. I loved moving freely around the school while everybody else was trapped in there. That’s how I feel right now. Like I have some giant – all day – hall pass.

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.

A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take everything you have.

Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

What we want, Heaven help us, is simultaneously to be perfectly ruled and perfectly free, that is, at the same time to discover the right and the good and to create it.

Aye, fight and you may die. Run, and you'll live... at least a while. And dying in your beds, many years from now, would you be willin' to trade ALL the days, from this day to that, for one chance, just one chance, to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they'll never take... our freedom! There's a difference between us. You think the people of this country exist to provide you with position. I think your position exists to provide those people with freedom. And I go to make sure that they have it.

Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.

Many suppose that intellectual freedom is identical with 'free thought', that is, the liberty to think and believe absolutely anything you want to think and believe. But this is not freedom. To believe nothing is to be in bondage to meaninglessness. To believe lies is to be in bondage to falsehood. True intellectual freedom is found in believing the truth and living by it. Archbishop Michael Ramsey in a series of sermons which he preached in Lent 1970 before the University of Cambridge (published now in the little book called "Freedom, Faith and the Future") spoke of intellectual freedom. The Christian creed involves 'a certain yoke of specific belief', but is also, he said, 'a means of intellectual liberty'. 'It frees you into the large room of the family of Christ's followers across the ages. There is a timelessness about such a faith. It is not first century or 16th century or 20th century. It can free you from one of the most horrible of tyrannies, the dominance of the contemporary.' I would add, it can free you from a great deal else besides, including the shifting sands of subjectivity.

They [Adam and Eve] wanted, as we say, to “call their souls their own.” But that means to live a lie, for our souls are not, in fact, our own. They wanted some corner in the universe of which they could say to God, “This is our business, not yours.” But there is no such corner. They wanted to be nouns, but they were, and eternally must be, mere adjectives.

They were now representatives of something much larger than themselves - a way of life, a shared set of values. Liberty was perhaps the most fundamental of those values. But the things that held them together - trust in each other, mutual respsect, humility, fair play, watching out for one another - those were also part of what America meant to all of them.

So long as man remains free he strives for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find someone to worship.

If you think you can't live without it, the truth is you can't live with it.

Dance like no one is watching. Sing like no one is listening. Love like you've never been hurt and live like it's heaven on Earth.

You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred. You cannot build character and courage by taking away people's initiative and independence. You cannot help people permanently by doing for them, what they could and should do for themselves.

There's a difference between us. You think the people of this country exist to provide you with position. I think your position exists to provide those people with freedom. And I go to make sure that they have it.

Take me to you, imprison me, for I, Except you enthrall me, never shall be free, Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

A man can’t ride your back unless it’s bent.

To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic, but is morally treasonable to the American public.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

‘Well, well, he is gone,’ said Gandalf. ‘We have no time to seek for him again. He must do what he will. But he may play a part yet that neither he nor Sauron have foreseen.

Aragorn. ‘One who cannot cast away a treasure at need is in fetters. You did rightly.’

Just as in sports and music, discipline in spiritual hygiene has a point. Anybody can play, but only a disciplined person can play freely. Discipline is the basis and presupposition of both freedom and power.

We are persons of seemingly endless possibilities and of immense power, but we are also creatures utterly dependent on the good offices of our Creator. So we live on the edge of our finitude and freedom, anxious lest we miss opportunities and anxious anew when we have exploited them.

Nor can Satan detach and harm those who faithfully cling to Christ. Satan can tempt but not coerce. Satan can accuse but not convict. Satan can accost but not destroy —or, at any rate, cannot destroy those who “put on the whole armor of God” (Eph. 6: 11). A central New Testament conviction is that the evil one gains no ground that we do not give him. Satan seduces only those who are in the market for seduction. Satan deceives only the self-deceived.

The better stuff a creature is made of —the cleverer and stronger and freer it is —then the better it will be if it goes right, but also the worse it will be if it goes wrong.

Religion operates on the principle 'I obey—therefore I am accepted by God.' The gospel operates on the principle 'I am accepted by God through Christ—therefore I obey.'

And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good.

When I was very young and the urge to be someplace else was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch. When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age. In middle age I was assured greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job. Nothing has worked. Four hoarse blasts of a ship's whistle still raise the hair on my neck and set my feet to tapping. The sound of a jet, an engine warming up, even the clopping of shod hooves on pavement brings on the ancient shudder, the dry mouth and vacant eye, the hot palms and the churn of stomach high up under the rib cage. In other words, I don't improve; in further words, once a bum always a bum. I fear the disease is incurable. I set this matter down not to instruct others but to inform myself.

When the virus of restlessness begins to take possession of a wayward man, and the road away from Here seems broad and straight and sweet, the victim must first find in himself a good and sufficient reason for going. This to the practical bum is not difficult. He has a built-in garden of reasons to choose from. Next he must plan his trip in time and space, choose a direction and a destination. And last he must implement the journey. Once a journey is designed, equipped, and put in process, a new factor enters and takes over. A trip, a safari, an exploration, is an entity, different from all other journeys. It has personality, temperament, individuality, uniqueness. A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us. Tour masters, schedules, reservations, brass-bound and inevitable, dash themselves to wreckage on the personality of the trip. Only when this is recognized can the blown-in-the-glass bum relax and go along with it. In this a journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.

Life, with its rules, its obligations, and its freedoms, is like a sonnet: you're given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself.

Remember, remember, the Fifth of November, the Gunpowder Treason and Plot. I know of no reason why the Gunpowder Treason should ever be forgot… But what of the man? I know his name was Guy Fawkes and I know, in 1605, he attempted to blow up the Houses of Parliament. But who was he really? What was he like? We are told to remember the idea, not the man, because a man can fail. He can be caught, he can be killed and forgotten, but 400 years later, an idea can still change the world. I’ve witnessed first hand the power of ideas, I’ve seen people kill in the name of them, and die defending them… but you cannot kiss an idea, cannot touch it, or hold it… ideas do not bleed, they do not feel pain, they do not love… And it is not an idea that I miss, it is a man… A man that made me remember the Fifth of November. A man that I will never forget.

Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov'd fain, But am betroth'd unto your enemy; Divorce me, untie or break that knot again, Take me to you, imprison me, for I, Except you enthrall me, never shall be free, Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.

The Father's love does not force itself on the beloved. Although he wants to heal us of all our inner darkness, we are still free to make our own choice to stay in the darkness or to step into the light of God's love.

Shame is heavy; grace is light. Shame and grace are the two counterforces in the human spirit: shame depresses; grace lifts. Shame is like gravity, a psychic force that pulls us down. Grace is like levitation, a spiritual force that defies gravity. If our spiritual experience does not lighten our life, we are not experiencing grace.

Sabbath, in the first instance, is not about worship. It is about work stoppage. It is about withdrawal from the anxiety system of Pharaoh, the refusal to let one's life be defined by production and consumption and the endless pursuit of private well-being.