Freedom

I am caught like a beast at bay. Somewhere are people, freedom, light, But all I hear is the baying of the pack, There is no way out for me.

Joy, thou spark from Heav’n immortal, Daughter of Elysium! Drunk with fire, toward Heaven advancing Goddess, to thy shrine we come. Thy sweet magic brings together What stern Custom spreads afar; All men become brothers Where thy happy wing-beats are. 1

 

Intellectual freedom is essential to human society—freedom to obtain and distribute information, freedom for open-minded and unfearing debate, and freedom from pressure by officialdom and prejudices.

I reckon I got to light out for the Territoryahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she’sgoing to adopt me and sivilize me and I can’tstand it. I been there before.

Conquering any difficulty always gives one a secret joy, for it means pushing back a boundary-line and adding to one’s liberty.

Yet, Freedom! yet thy banner, torn, but flying, Streams like the thunderstorm against the wind.

I am condemned to be free.

What is at stake is more than one small country; it is a big idea: a new world order, where diverse nations are drawn together in common cause to achieve the universal aspirations of mankind—peace and security, freedom and the rule of law.

 

“Keep clear of the dupes that talk democracy And the dogs that talk revolution, Drunk with talk, liars and believers. I believe in my tusks. Long live freedom and damn the ideologies,” Said the gamey black-maned wild boar Tusking the turf on Mal Paso Mountain.

Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.

for it means pushing back a boundary-line and adding to one’s liberty.

When the soul of a man is born in this country, there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets.

Wherever a man goes, men will pursue him and paw him with their dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their desperate oddfellow society.

The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.

Real freedom is freedom from fear, and unless you can live free from fear you cannot live a dignified human life.

The average man doesn’t want to be free. He wants to be safe.

My soul an’t yours, Mas’r! You haven’t boughtit,—ye can’t buy it! It’s been bought and paid for, by one that is able to keep it.

The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number is self-protection.

It is said that this manifesto is more than a theory, that it was an incitement. Every idea is an incitement.

 

take it from me kiddo believe me my country, ’tis of you, land of the Cluett Shirt Boston Garter and Spearmint Girl With The Wrigley Eyes (of you land of the Arrow Ide and Earl & Wilson Collars) of you i sing: land of Abraham Lincoln and Lydia land above all of Just Add Hot Water And from every B.V.D. let freedom ring amen.

Away; take heed:

If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is a compromise.

We all know that books burn—yet we have the greater knowledge that books can not be killed by fire. People die, but books never die. No man and no force can abolish memory. No man and no force can put thought in a concentration camp forever. No man and no force can take from the world the books that embody man’s eternal fight against tyranny of every kind. In this war, we know, books are weapons. And it is a part of your dedication always to make them weapons for man’s freedom.

In countries where associations are free, secret societies are unknown. In America there are numerous factions, but no conspiracies.