Quotes & Sayings About Born To Be Free

The greatest of all capabilities of a human being is to become born again. — J.R. Rim

O wretched state! O bosom black as death! O limed soul that, struggling to be free, art more engaged! Help, angels! Make assay! Bow, stubborn knees! and, heart with strings of steel, be soft as sinews of the new-born babe! — William Shakespeare

You are a free man now, and Ygritte is a free woman. What dishonor if you lay together?"
"I might get her with child."
"Aye, I'd hope so. A strong son or a lively laughing girl kissed by fire, and where's the harm in that?"
Words failed him for a moment. "The boy ... the child would be a bastard."
"Are bastards weaker than other children? More sickly, more like to fail?"
"No, but-"
"You are bastard born yourself. And if Ygritte does not want a chile, she will go to some woods witch and drink a cup o' moon tea. You do not come in to it, once the seed is planted."
I will not father a bastard. — George R R Martin

My son, you've seen the temporary fire
and the eternal fire; you have reached
the place past which my powers cannot see.
I've brought you here through intellect and art;
from now on, let your pleasure be your guide;
you're past the steep and past the narrow paths.
Look at the sun that shines upon your brow;
look at the grasses, flowers, and the shrubs
born here, spontaneously, of the earth.
Among them, you can rest or walk until
the coming of the glad and lovely eyes
those eyes that weeping, sent me to your side.
Await no further word or sign from me:
your will is free, erect, and whole
to act
against that will would be to err: therefore
I crown and miter you over yourself — Dante Alighieri

I was not born with a hunger to be free, I was born free. — Nelson Mandela

The school must permit the free, natural manifestations of the child if in the school scientific pedagogy is to be born. This is the essential reform. No one may affirm that such a — Maria Montessori

It is not every man who can be a Christian, even in a very moderate sense, whatever education you give him. It is a matter of constitution and temperament, after all. He may have to be born again many times. I have known many a man who pretended to be a Christian, in whom it was ridiculous, for he had no genius for it. It is not every man who can be a free man, even. — Henry David Thoreau

The implants just give you a new set of reproductive-free imperatives, that's all. The rest, thank the gods, is up to you. They wouldn't be worth anything if they didn't give rise to the most troubling and complex problems of the heart. They are what makes all this glory, this madness worthwhile. We are born to the trouble as sparks fly upwards, that is what is great about us, man, woman, transgen, nute. — Ian McDonald

It's not enough to be born free; I have to live my freedom! — Esther M. Friesner

The hands of Hitler were filthy, but those of the United States were not clean. Our government had accepted, was still accepting, the subordination of black people in what we claimed was a democratic society. Our government threw Japanese families into concentration camps on the racist supposition that anyone Japanese - even if born in this country - could not be allowed to remain free. — Howard Zinn

Our country was born out of a desire to be free. And every day since, it's been protected by our men and women in uniform - people who believed so deeply in America, they were willing to give their lives for it. — Barack Obama

Attack me already. Please! I can't take it anymore.
But I don't say any of that. I just savor each and every slow, amazing, and tongue-free kiss.
Maybe he was born without a tongue, I think for a brief second, but then I realize that I am dumb because he wouldn't be able to talk if he had been, now would he? — Jillian Dodd

Treatments worked well enough for us to get by. Most people lived into old age, but the medication, like everything else, has never been free. Life was a privilege, not a right, apparently. Something you had to struggle for when you were unlucky enough to be born at the intersection of poverty and bad genes. — Jacqueline Koyanagi

A free thinker used to be a man who had been educated on ideas of religion, law, morality, and had arrived at free thought by virtue of his own struggle and toil; but now a new type of born freethinker has been appearing, who've never even heard that there have been laws of morality and religion, and that there are authorities, but who simply grow up with negative ideas about everything, that is savages. — Leo Tolstoy

Christianity is a creed embraced by billions, but rarely chosen by anyone. The same is true of Islam, whose followers now make up about one-fifth of the world's population of sex billion people. Jews are racially born into their religion. Today we have utterly forgotten that heresy derives from the Greek heraisthai, "to choose." To be heretical means to have choices and not be forced or obligated to believe what one is told to believe. A heretic is free to choose what to believe, or not to believe. — John Lamb Lash

Treat all men alike ... give them all the same law. Give them all an even chance to live and grow. You might as well expect the rivers to run backward as that any man who is born a free man should be contented when penned up and denied liberty to go where he pleases. We only ask an even chance to live as other men live. We ask to be recognized as men. Let me be a free man ... free to travel ... free to stop ... free to work ... free to choose my own teachers ... free to follow the religion of my Fathers ... free to think and talk and act for myself. — Dee Brown

That was when I realized we weren't born to be
slaves. It was ignorant for any man to think he could be the master of another. We were all meant to be free, and somewhere there were good people helping to heal this broken world. — Jay Grewal

Not everyone born free and equal, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against. So! A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man's mind. Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man. Me? I won't stomach them for a minute. — Ray Bradbury

I was born 20 years after my eldest sister. I was the pampered child. That kind of love gives you an almost unbreakable backbone. My mother had three kids before me. She let me be completely free. I just never had anything to beat myself up over. — Christian Louboutin

Free education, almost free healthcare, a generous benefits system and a better state pension than elsewhere, guarantee equal opportunities for all citizens. The only problem is that all these require a considerable amount of public revenue. This is why the common assertion that to be born in Finland is like winning the jackpot in the lottery is only applicable when you are at the receiving end. A far more common experience is that you need to win the lottery just to cover the tax bill. — Tarja Moles

Surely you remember the boy in your own school class who was exceptionally "bright", did most of the reciting and answering while the others sat like so many leaden idols, hating him. And wasn't it this bright boy you selected for beatings and tortures after hours? Of course it was. We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against. So! A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. — Ray Bradbury

There are three ways in which a man becomes a slave. He may be born into slavery, or forced into it, or he can deliberately accept his servitude. All three forms flourish in the modern world. Men are born and forced into slavery in Russia and her satellites states. Men in the free world invite slavery when they ask the government to provide complete security, when they surrender their freedom to the "Welfare State." — Fulton J. Sheen

It may be that the most interesting American struggle is the struggle to set oneself free from the limits one is born to, and then to learn something of the value of those limits. — Greil Marcus

If somebody comes and scoops up all of my neighbor's information because they're on Verizon and just gathers all of that information, it is a violation of my civil rights as well. I'm telling you, America, we are the civil rights leaders of this day. Accept your position. Accept your role. Square your shoulders. Stand up. Link arms. Some of us will not make it to the end, as they used to say because this is a long, long journey to the end of the road. But man will be free as long as people understand the Bill of Rights. It was given to us, yes, by man, and flawed men, but it was inspired by God. Those rights don't belong to you. You are merely a guardian of those rights for our children and our grandchildren, of all color, of all races, of all theological backgrounds. You are a guardian and a steward. Recognize what time it is. Recognize why you have been born, where you have been born. You have been given much, and believe me, much is required, not just expected. — Glenn Beck

Woman is born free and lives equal to man in her rights. Social distinctions can be based only on the common utility. — Olympe De Gouges

We were born to be free, to expand our horizons by going where we have never gone before, and not to hang out in the relative comfort and safety of the nest, the known. There is a place within us that is courageous beyond our human understanding; it yearns to explore beyond the boundaries of our daily life. — Dennis Merritt Jones

There is 'a time to be born' - and born again, free of accumulated, encrusted sores of fears and prejudices, old hates, of cancerous wounds, old prides. And there is a time to die - a time for the blue, unburied child of our young years to be decently interred - and to get on with the living. — Josephine Winslow Johnson

No man [ ... ] can be so stupid to deny that all men naturally were born free, being the image and resemblance of God himself. — John Milton

All great enterprises have a pearl of faith at their core, and this must be ours: that Americans are still a people born to liberty. That they retain the capacity for self-government. That, addressed as free-born, autonomous men and women of God-given dignity, they will rise yet again to drive back a mortal enemy. — Mitch Daniels

I told him I had, perhaps, different notions of matrimony from what the received custom had given us of it; that I thought a woman was a free agent as well as a man, and was born free, and, could she manage herself suitably, might enjoy that liberty to as much purpose as the men do; that the laws of matrimony were indeed otherwise, and mankind at this time acted quite upon other principles, and those such that a woman gave herself entirely away from herself, in marriage, and capitulated, only to be, at best, but an upper servant, and from the time she took the man she was no better or worse than the servant among the Israelites, who had his ears bored - that is, nailed to the door-post - who by that act gave himself up to be a servant during life; that the very nature of the marriage contract was, in short, nothing but giving up liberty, estate, authority, and everything to the man, and the woman was indeed a mere woman ever after - that is to say, a slave. — Daniel Defoe

People are born to be free; it's a gift from God. — Joyce Meyer

When you hear of Gay Pride, remember, it was not born out of a need to celebrate being gay.
It evolved out of our need as human beings to break free of oppression and to exist without being criminalized, pathologized or persecuted.
Depending on a number of factors, particularly religion, freeing ourselves from gay shame and coming to self-love and acceptance, can not only be an agonising journey, it can take years.
Tragically some don't make it.
Instead of wondering why there isn't a straight pride be grateful you have never needed one.
Celebrate with us. — Anthony Venn-Brown

You might as well expect rivers to run backwards as any man born free to be contented penned up. — Chief Joseph

Freedom, or individual liberty, was a basic premise of the Spanish anarchist tradition. "Individual sovereignty" is a prime tenet of most anarchist writing; the free development of one' s individual potential is one of the basic "rights" to which all humans are born. Yet Spanish anarchists were firmly rooted in the communalist-anarchist tradition. For them, freedom was fundamentally a social product: the fullest expression of individuality and of creativity can be achieved only in and through community. As Carmen Conde (a teacher who was also active in Mujeres Libres) wrote, describing the relationship of individuality and community: "I and my truth; I and my faith ... And I for you, but without ever ceasing to be me, so that you can always be you. Because I don' t exist without your existence, but my existence is also indispensable to yours. — Martha A. Ackelsberg

The body cannot be afraid of death. The movement that is created by society or culture is what does not want to come to an end. . . . What you are afraid of is not death. In fact, you don't want to be free from fear. . . . It is the fear that makes you believe that you are living and that you will be dead. What we do not want is the fear to come to an end. That is why we have invented all these new minds, new science, new talk, therapies, choiceless awareness and various other gimmicks. Fear is the very thing that you do not want to be free from. What you call "yourself" is fear. The "you" is born out of fear; it lives in fear, functions in fear and dies in fear. — U.G. Krishnamurti

To A Young Beauty
Dear fellow-artist, why so free
With every sort of company,
With every Jack and Jill?
Choose your companions from the best;
Who draws a bucket with the rest
Soon topples down the hill.
You may, that mirror for a school,
Be passionate, not bountiful
As common beauties may,
Who were not born to keep in trim
With old Ezekiel's cherubim
But those of Beauvarlet.
I know what wages beauty gives,
How hard a life her servant lives,
Yet praise the winters gone:
There is not a fool can call me friend,
And I may dine at journey's end
With Landor and with Donne. — W.B.Yeats

All children are really orphans. At heart, a child has nothing to do with its parents, its background, its last name, its gender, its family trade. It is a brand-new person, and it is born with the only legacy that all individuals inherit when they open their eyes in this world: the
inalienable right to be free. — Heather O'Neill

Rousseau had it backwards. We are NOT born free. We are born in the chains of the random and the reflexive, and are ignorant and unreasonable by simple nature. We must learn to be free, to organize the random and detect the reflexive, to acquire the knowledge of particulars and the powers of reason. The examined life is impossible if we cannot examine, order, classify, define, distinguish, always in minute particulars. — Richard Mitchell

By the time the sixties hit their home bases, we the kids, were already born, and our parents found themselves stuck between an entrenched belief that children needed to be raised in a traditional household, and a new sense that anything was possible, that the alternative lifestyle was out there for the asking. There they were in marriages they once thought were a necessity and with children they'd had almost by accident in a world that was suddenly saying, 'No necessities! No accidents! Drop Everything!' A little too old to take full advantage of the cultural revolution, our parents just got all the fallout. Freedom hit them obliquely, and invidiously, rather than head-on. Instead of waiting longer to get married, our parents got divorced; Instead of becoming feminists, our mothers were left to become displaced homemakers. A lot of unhappy situations were dissolved by people who were not quite young or free enough to start again. — Elizabeth Wurtzel

To be born in a free society and not to be born free is to be born into a lie. To be told by co-citizens and co-Christians that you have no value, no history, have never done anything that is worthy of human respect destroys you because in the beginning you believe it. — James A. Baldwin

Who can be born again in Christ but him who has forgiven everyone he sees or thinks of or imagines? Who could be set free while he imprisons anyone? A jailer is not free, for he is bound together with his prisoner. He must be sure that he does not escape, and so he spends his time in keeping watch on him. The bars that limit him become the world in which his jailer lives, along with him. And it is on his freedom that the way to liberty depends for both of them. Therefore, hold no one prisoner. Release instead of bind, for thus are you made free. The way is simple. Every time you feel a stab of anger, realize you hold a sword above your head. And it will fall or be averted as you choose to be condemned or free. Thus does each one who seems to tempt you to be angry represent your savior from the prison house of death. And so you owe him thanks instead of pain. — Foundation For Inner Peace

Tell him solitude is creative if he is strong
and the final decisions are made in silent rooms.
Tell him to be different from other people
if it comes natural and easy being different.
Let him have lazy days seeking his deeper motives.
Let him seek deep for where he is a born natural.
Then he may understand Shakespeare
and the Wright brothers, Pasteur, Pavlov,
Michael Faraday and free imaginations
Bringing changes into a world resenting change.
He will be lonely enough
to have time for the work
he knows as his own. — Carl Sandburg

As you embrace the present and become one with it, and merge with it, you will experience a fire, a glow, a sparkle of ecstasy throbbing in every sentient being. As you begin to experience this exultation of spirit in everything that is alive, as you become intimate with it, joy will be born within you, and you will drop the terrible burdens of defensiveness, resentment, and hurtfulness ... then you will become lighthearted, carefree, joyous, and free. — Deepak Chopra

She was born to be free, let her run wild in her own way and you will never lose her. — Nikki Rowe

And so it is to the printing press
to the recorder of man's deeds, the keeper of his conscience, the courier of his news
that we look for strength and assistance, confident that with your help man will be what he was born to be: free and independent. — John F. Kennedy

I was not born to be free
I was born to adore and obey. — C.S. Lewis

Must I go bound while you go free Must I love a manwho doesn't love me Must I be born with so little art As to love a man who'll break my Heart — Cassandra Clare

A lion is not a lion if it is only free to eat, to sleep and to copulate. It deserves to be free to hunt and to choose its own prey; to look for and find its own mate; to fight for and hold its own territory; and to die where it was born - in the wild. It should have the same rights as we have. — Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

Enforced maternity brings into the world wretched infants, whom their parents will be unable to support and who will become the victims of public care or 'child martyrs'. It must be pointed out that our society, so concerned to defend the rights of the embryo, shows no interest in the children once they are born; it prosecutes the abortionists instead of undertaking to reform that scandalous institution known as 'public assistance'; those responsible for entrusting the children to their torturers are allowed to go free; society closes its eyes to the frightful tyranny of brutes in children's asylums and private foster homes. — Simone De Beauvoir

I have come to realise that men are not born to be free. — Napoleon Bonaparte

A sick person is Allah's guest for as long as he is ill. Every day he is sick, God gives him countless rewards, as long as he says ' al hamdulillah', praise be
to God, and does not fight it and complain. When God returns to him his health, he expiates his sins and gives him the status of the newly-born
(completely pure and free of any sin). Illness is a mercy and a blessing. — Kristiane Backer

As they advanced (towards the fountain) one after another of Bastian's Fastastican gifts fell away from him. The strong, handsome, fearless hero became the small, fat, timid boy.
( ... )
But then he jumped into the crystal-clear water ... He drank till his thrist was quenched. And joy filled him from head to foot, the joy of living and the joy of being himself. He was new born. And the best part of it was that he was now the very person he wanted to be. If he had been free to choose, he would have chosen to be no one else. — Michael Ende

If business is going to continue to sell through the decades, it must also promote an understanding of what made those products possible, what is necessary to a free market, and what our free market means to the individual liberty of each of us, to be certain that the freedoms under which this nation was born and brought to this point shall endure in the future ... for America is the product of our freedoms. — Edward Francis Hutton

Secondly, these missionaries would gradually, and without creating suspicion or exciting alarm, introduce a rudimentary cleanliness among the nobility, and from them it would work down to the people, if the priests could be kept quiet. This would undermine the Church. I mean would be a step toward that. Next, education - next, freedom - and then she would begin to crumble. It being my conviction that any Established Church is an established crime, an established slave-pen, I had no scruples, but was willing to assail it in any way or with any weapon that promised to hurt it. Why, in my own former day - in remote centuries not yet stirring in the womb of time - there were old Englishmen who imagined that they had been born in a free country: a "free" country with the Corporation Act and the Test still in force in it - timbers propped against men's liberties and dishonored consciences to shore up an Established Anachronism with. — Mark Twain

To all who have discerning eyes, it is apparent that the republican form of government established by our noble forefathers cannot long endure once fundamental principles are abandoned. Momentum is gathering for another conflict-a repetition of of the crisis two hundred years ago. This collision of ideas is worldwide. Another monumental moment is soon to be born. The issue is the same that precipitated the great premortal conflict-will men be free to determine their own course of action or must they be coerced? — Ezra Taft Benson

Never may an act of possession be exercised upon a free being; the exclusive possession of a woman is no less unjust than the possession of slaves; all men are born free, all have equal rights: never should we lose sight of those principles; according to which never may there be granted to one sex the legitimate right to lay monopolizing hands upon the other, and never may one of the sexes, or classes, arbitrarily possess the other. — Marquis De Sade

As for free will, there is such a narrow crack of it for man to move in, crushed as he is from birth by environment, heredity, time and event and local convention. If I had been born of Italian parents in one of the caves in the hills I would be a prostitute at the age of 12 or so because I had to live (why?) and that was the only way open. If I was born into a wealthy New York family with pseudo-cultural leanings, I would have had my coming-out party along with the rest of them, and be equipped with fur coats, social contacts, and a blase pout. How do I know? I don't; I can only guess. I wouldn't be I. But I am I now; and so many other millions are so irretrievably their own special variety of "I" that I can hardly bear to think of it. I: how firm a letter; how reassuring the three strokes: one vertical, proud and assertive, and then the two short horizontal lines in quick, smug succession. The pen scratches on the paper ... I ... I ... I ... I ... I ... I. — Sylvia Plath

Well I was born to run, to get ahead of the rest. And all that I wanted was to be the best Just to feel free and be someone I was born to be fast, I was born to run . — Emmylou Harris

Freedom is the possibility of isolation. You are free if you can withdraw from people, not having to seek them out for the sake of money, company, love, glory or curiosity, none of which can thrive in silence and solitude. If you can't live alone, you were born a slave. You may have all the splendours of the mind and the soul, in which case you're a noble slave, or an intelligent servant, but you're not free. And you can't hold this up as your own tragedy, for your birth is a tragedy of Fate alone. Hapless you are, however, if life itself so oppresses you that you're forced to become a slave. Hapless you are if, having been born free, with the capacity to be isolated and self-sufficient, poverty should force you to live with others. — Fernando Pessoa

Every person is born with feelings of envy and hate. If he gives way to them, they will lead him to do violence and crime, and any sense of loyalty and good faith will be abandoned. Then he is forever lost. He is forever damned. Not by the world or the circumstances of his birth, but by his own free will. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Mary's Song

Blue homespun and the bend of my breast
keep warm this small hot naked star
fallen to my arms. (Rest...
you who have had so far
to come.) Now nearness satisfies
the body of God sweetly. Quiet he lies
whose vigor hurled
a universe. He sleeps
whose eyelids have not closed before.
His breath (so slight it seems
no breath at all) once ruffled the dark deeps
to sprout a world.
Charmed by doves' voices, the whisper of straw,
he dreams,
hearing no music from his other spheres.
Breath, mouth, ears, eyes
he is curtailed
who overflowed all skies,
all years.
Older than eternity, now he
is new. Now native to earth as I am, nailed
to my poor planet, caught that I might be free,
blind in my womb to know my darkness ended,
brought to this birth
for me to be new-born,
and for him to see me mended
I must seen him torn. — Luci Shaw

I've left Bethlehem, and I feel free. I've left the girl I was supposed to be, and some day I'll be born. — Paula Cole

Inner peace - you need to know who you are, what you want out of life. You have to do your own thinking, and for that you better know who you are, and not just know but be secure in it, comfortable with yourself. Plus you gotta have discipline. Stamina. And luck sure helps. A little luck counts for a lot, including our great good luck of being born into the greatest economic system ever devised. It's not a perfect system by any means, but overall it's responsible for tremendous human progress. In just the past century alone, we've seen something like a seven-to-one improvement in the standard of living. I'm not saying we don't have problems, we've got a helluva lot of problems, but that's where the genius of the free market comes in, all the drive and talent and energy that goes into solving those problems. — Ben Fountain

You are a midwife, assisting at someone else's birth. Do good without show or fuss. Facilitate what is happening rather than what you think ought to be happening. If you must take the lead, lead so that the mother is helped, yet still free and in charge. When the baby is born, the mother will rightly say, "We did it ourselves! — John Heider

She could hardly tell him it was because the child had been born a girl, destined from birth to be bound and gagged, to never be free. And she seemed to have sensed it far sooner than most. Sadly, the poor fool seemed to believe that she could actually do something about it. — Sonali Dev

It should not be a surprise to find that s/m fantasy is significant in women's sex lives. Women may be born free but they are born into a system of subordination. We are not born into equality and do not have equality to eroticise. We are not born into power and do not have power to eroticise. We are born into subordination and it is in subordination that we learn our sexual and emotional responses. It would be surprising indeed if any woman reared under male supremacy was able to escape the forces constructing her into a member of an inferior slave class. — Sheila Jeffreys

If a man considers that he is born, he cannot avoid the fear of death. Let him find out if he has been born or if the Self has any birth. He will discover that the Self always exists, that the body that is born resolves itself into thought and that the emergence of thought is the root of all mischief. Find from where thoughts emerge. Then you will be able to abide in the ever-present inmost Self and be free from the idea of birth or the fear of death. — Ramana Maharshi

Very few people really care about freedom, about liberty, about the truth, very few. Very few people have guts, the kind of guts on which a real democracy has to depend. Without people with that sort of guts a free society dies or cannot be born. — Doris Lessing

The final awakening is the embracing of the darkness into the light. That means embracing our humanity as well as our divinity. What we go from is being born into our humanity, sleep walking for a long time, until we awaken and start to taste our divinity. And then want to finally get free.
We see as long as we grab at our divinity and push away our humanity we aren't free. If you want to be free, you can't push away anything. You have to embrace it all. It's all God. — Ram Dass

Markets are born free, yet no sooner are they born than some would-be emperor is forging chains. Paradoxically, it sometimes happens that the only way to preserve freedom is through judicious controls on the exercise of private power. If we believe in liberty, it must be freedom from both private and public coercion. — Tim Wu

It still would be years before I understood the seriousness of my change of view. Much later, I recognized it in "Revolution," the essay of Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski, who describes the moment when a man on the edge of a crowd looks back defiantly at a policeman - and when that policeman senses a sudden refusal to accept his defining gaze - as the imperceptible moment in which rebellion is born. "All books about all revolutions begin with a chapter that describes the decay of tottering authority or the misery and sufferings of the people," Kapuscinski writes. "They should begin with a psychological chapter - one that shows how a harassed, terrified man suddenly breaks his terror, stops being afraid. This unusual process - sometimes accomplished in an instant, like a shock - demands to be illustrated. Man gets rid of fear and feel free. Without that, there would be no revolution. — Gloria Steinem

We help each other by sharing our experiences. At the end of the day, the human condition requests one thing: to share. You are not here just to profit. If you don't share, you are nothing. I'll give you an example. You can be watching the most beautiful sunset, in the most beautiful place in the world, and this beautiful sunset can be an oppressive experience because you have nobody to share it with. But if you are in a bazaar or a train station full of people, even without any beautiful sunset, it gives you more emotion, more interaction, it becomes a kind of paradise. We are born to share, we are really born to share, so you have to do it. You have to share what you have. In my case, the Internet is a tool to share. My blog is free. Facebook is free. It's an inner cause I have: to use my celebrity to bring people together and share what I have and what each of them have. — Paulo Coelho

Take care what you say! I'll have no hard words. Wretch! If I am a wretch, who made me one? If I hate you and myself and the world, who made me hate it? I was born free - as free as you are. Why should I be sent to herd with beasts, and condemned to this slavery, worse than death? Tell me that, Maurice Frere - tell me that! — Marcus Clarke

Experience tells us that we can only love because we are born out of love, that we can only give because our life is a gift, and that we can only make others free because we are set free by Him whose heart is greater than ours. When we have found the anchor places for our lives in our own center, we can be free to let others enter into the space created for them and allow them to dance their own dance, sing their own song and speak their own language without fear. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

Our brain is a circuit board with neurons and terminals ready to be wired. We are born free, then programmed to obey our parents, to tell the truth, pass exams, pursue and achieve, love and propagate, age and fade unfulfilled and uncertain what it has all been for. We swallow the operating system with our mother's milk and sleepwalk into the forest of consumer illusion craving shoes, houses, cars, magazines, experiences that endorse our preconceived dreams and opinions. We grow into our parents. We becomes clones, robots, matchstick men thinking and saying the same, feeling the same, behaving the same, appreciating in books and films and art shows those things we already recognize and understand. — Chloe Thurlow

The sacred rowan is a woman born long, long ago, a woman whose refusal to see love cost first her lover's life, then the lives of her family, her clan, her people.
But not her own life. Not quite.
In pity and punishment she was turned into an undying tree, a rowan that weeps only in the presence of transcendent love; and the tears of the rowan are blossoms that confer extraordinary grace upon those who can see them.
When enough tears are wept, the rowan will be free. She waits inside a sacred ring that can be neither weighed or measured nor touched. She waits for love that is worth her tears.
The rowan is waiting still. — Elizabeth Lowell

There's so many examples of just how lucky we are to be born anywhere in this world that is free. — Kid Rock

That day must come when men will understand that freedom and daily bread enough to satisfy all are unthinkable and can never be had together, as men will never be able to fairly divide the two among themselves. And they will also learn that they can never be free, for they are weak, vicious, miserable nonentities born wicked and rebellious. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

It is our own pain, and our own desire to be free of it, that alerts us to the suffering of the world. It is our personal discovery that pain can be acknowledged, even held lovingly, that enables us to look at the pain around us unflinchingly and feel compassion being born in us. We need to start with ourselves. — Sylvia Boorstein

And wasn't it this bright boy you selected for beating and tortures after hours? Of course it was. We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for their are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against. So! A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man's mind. Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man? Me? I won't stomach them for a minute. And so when houses were finally fireproofed completely, all over the world (you were correct in your assumption the other night) there was no longer need of firemen for the old purposes. They were given the new job, as custodians of our peace of mind, the focus of our understandable and rightful dread of being inferior: official censors, judges and executors. That's you, Montag, and that's me. — Ray Bradbury

The spiritual man habitually makes eternity-judgments instead of time-judgments. By faith he rises above the tug of earth and the flow of time and learns to think and feel as one who has already left the world and gone to join the innumerable company of angels and the general assembly and Church of the First-born which are written in heaven. Such a man would rather be useful than famous and would rather serve than be served. And all this must be by the operation of the Holy Spirit within him. No man can become spiritual by himself. Only the free Spirit can make a man spiritual. — Aiden Wilson Tozer

We are born subjects, and to obey God is perfect liberty. He that does this shall be free, safe and happy. — Seneca The Younger

Do we call this the land of the free? What is it to be free from King George and continue the slaves of King Prejudice? What is it to be born free and not to live free? What is the value of any political freedom, but as a means to moral freedom? Is it a freedom to be slaves, or a freedom to be free, of which we boast? We are a nation of politicians, concerned about the outmost defences only of freedom. It is our children's children who may perchance be really free. We tax ourselves unjustly. There is a part of us which is not represented. It is taxation without representation. We quarter troops, we quarter fools and cattle of all sorts upon ourselves. We quarter our gross bodies on our poor souls, till the former eat up all the latter's substance. — Henry David Thoreau

Love is a great thing, a good above all others, which alone maketh every heavy burden light, and equaliseth every inequality. For it beareth the burden and maketh it no burden, it maketh every bitter thing to be sweet and of good taste. The surpassing love of Jesus impelleth to great works, and exciteth to the continual desiring of greater perfection. Love willeth to be raised up, and not to be held down by any mean thing. Love willeth to be free and aloof from all worldly affection, lest its inward power of vision be hindered, lest it be entangled by any worldly prosperity or overcome by adversity. Nothing is sweeter than love, nothing stronger, nothing loftier, nothing broader, nothing pleasanter, nothing fuller or better in heaven nor on earth, for love was born of God and cannot rest save in God above all created things. — Thomas A Kempis

I know now that the poem in my head, the one that pushed me to the page, begged me - or dared me to be born is almost never the poem that comes out. I suppose it's like anything born of/with free will and the will to live: once I've given the seed, once the juices flow through any sort of birth canal and make it to the ambient air there will, at that point, be forces that come into play that are no longer entirely mine. To forget that each word is a life unto itself is to strangle it dead before it can even take a step. — Juan-Paolo Perre

Many Chinese-born scientists have returned from abroad to continue their research, not just out of patriotism but because Chinese research facilities have become so cutting-edge. The Communist revolution's annihilation of traditional thinking has also made for an astonishingly free approach to areas such as medical research; scientists can try things that are banned in the West by strict ethics laws. (I would not be surprised if the first cloned human being is already lurking somewhere along the banks of the Yangtze River.) — Rob Gifford

Only you know who you were born to be and you need to be free to be that person. — Ruby Rose

It is a burden ... (M)ake no mistake about that. Any great gift or power or talent is a burden and this more than any, and you will long to be free of it. But there is nothing to be done. If you were born with the gift, then you must serve it, and nothing in this world or out of it may stand in the way of that service, because that is why you were born and that is the Law."
- Susan Cooper ("Merriman" The Dark is Rising) — Susan Cooper

This body is not me; I am not caught in this body, I am life without boundaries, I have never been born and I have never died. Over there the wide ocean and the sky with many galaxies All manifests from the basis of consciousness. Since beginningless time I have always been free. Birth and death are only a door through which we go in and out. Birth and death are only a game of hide-and-seek. So smile to me and take my hand and wave good-bye. Tomorrow we shall meet again or even before. We shall always be meeting again at the true source, Always meeting again on the myriad paths of life. — Thich Nhat Hanh

Men may be born free; they cannot be born wise; and it is the duty of the university to make the free wise. — Adlai Stevenson I

For to start life with just as much as will make one independent, that is, allow one to live comfortably without having to work - even if one has only just enough for oneself, not to speak of a family - is an advantage which cannot be over-estimated; for it means exemption and immunity from that chronic disease of penury, which fastens on the life of man like a plague; it is emancipation from that forced labor which is the natural lot of every mortal. Only under a favorable fate like this can a man be said to be born free, to be, in the proper sense of the word, sui juris, master of his own time and powers, and able to say every morning, This day is my own. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Have your being outside this body of birth and death and all your problems will be solved. They exist because you believe yourself born to die. Undeceive yourself and be free. You are not a person. — Nisargadatta Maharaj

Why would everyone - in both the movie business and the audience - want to avoid the label "marriage"? Marriage was presumably everybody's business. People were either born into one, born outside of one, living in one, living outside of one, trying to woo someone into one, divorced from one, trying to get divorced from one, reading about one, dreaming about one, or just observing one from afar. For most people, it would be the central event - the biggest decision - of their lives. Marriage was the poor man's trip to Paris and the shopgirl's final goal. At the very least, it was a common touchstone. Unlike a fantasy film or a sci-fi adventure, a marriage story didn't have to be explained or defined. Unlike a western or a gangster plot, it didn't have to find a connection to bring a jolt of emotional recognition to an audience. Marriage was out there, free to be used and presented to people who knew what the deal was. — Jeanine Basinger

The next generation should embrace their struggles. A butterfly develops only after a struggle to break free from its cocoon. A diamond can only emerge after taking in all the pressure that it can. Struggle hard and never ever give up! You are born to be a Hero. — Avijeet Das

All men were made brothers. The earth is the mother of all people, and all people should have equal rights upon it. You might as well expect the rivers to run backward as that any man who was born free should be content when penned up and denied liberty to go where he pleases. — Chief Joseph

The free man must be born before freedom can be won, and the brotherly man must be born before full brotherhood can be won. It will come into being only if we build it out of our very muscle and bone - by trying to act it out. — Barbara Deming

Forced motherhood results in bringing miserable children into the world, children whose parents cannot feed them, who become victims of public assistance or "martyr children." It must be pointed out that the same society so determined to defend the rights of the fetus shows no interest in children after they are born; instead of trying to reform this scandalous institution called public assistance, society prosecutes abortionists; those responsible for delivering orphans to torturers are left free; society closes its eyes to the horrible tyranny practiced in "reform schools" or in the private homes of child abusers; and while it refuses to accept that the fetus belongs to the mother carrying it, it nevertheless agrees that the child is his parents' thing. — Simone De Beauvoir

I do not fight for free. But I was born to be a fighter. — Roberto Duran

Release your majestic mind, embrace your untamed inner spirit. Break free from captivity, avoid society.. You were born to be free. — Melanie Muller

It is the will of God that we live not only as rational beings, but as 'new men' regenerated by the Holy Spirit in Christ. It is His will that we reach out for our inheritance, that we answer His call to be His sons. We are born men without our consent, but the consent to be sons of God has to be elicited by our own free will. — Thomas Merton