Chains And Freedom Quotes & Sayings

Start with a style and you are in chains, start with an idea and you are free. — Richard Avedon

In quiet we had learn'd to dwell-
Myvery chains and I grew friends,
So much a long communion tends-
To make us what we are:-even I
Regain'd my freedom with a sigh. — George Gordon Byron

Freedom is a hard-bought thing and millions are in chains, but they strain toward the new day drawing near. — Paul Robeson

Badreya whispered in her ear, The price of freedom is high, Bodour, and there is no writing without freedom. Break your chains, Bodour, break free of your prison and reach out for the forbidden tree. If you eat from it, you will not die, for knowledge leads you to life and not to death. You will live forever. — Nawal El Saadawi

The whole world yearns after freedom, yet each creature is in love with his chains; this is the first paradox and inextricable knot of our nature. — Sri Aurobindo

You do not take a man who for years has been hobbled by chains, liberate him, bring him to the starting line of a race, saying you are free to compete with all the others, and still justly believe you have been completely fair ... We seek not just freedom but opportunity ... not just equality as a right and a theory, but equality as a fact and as a result. — Lyndon B. Johnson

It is only your self-identification with your mind that makes you happy or unhappy. Rebel against your slavery to your mind, see your bonds as self-created and break the chains of attachment and revulsion. Keep in mind your goal of freedom, until it dawns on you that you are already free, that freedom is not something in the distant future to be earned with painful efforts, but perennially one's own, to be used! Liberation is not an acquisition but a matter of courage, the courage to believe that you are free already and to act on it. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Unless your freedom turns into a creative realization, you will feel sad. Because you will see that you are free-your chains are broken, and you are no longer in prison; you are standing under the starry night, completely free. But where do you go? — Rajneesh

To be obsessed by the idea of freedom, for instance, is itself a form of slavery. Such people are in the chains of the hope of freedom, and are therefore able to do little else than struggle with them. — Idries Shah

The first step in freeing men from external chains was to emancipate them from the internal chains of false beliefs and ideals. To free one's mind of chains is to free it of the care of what is acceptable or viewed so by society, this is when true freedom is discovered. — John Dewey

If you love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen. — Samuel Adams

Is It Frightening To Be Free?"

"You said it."

"You Say To People 'Throw Off Your Chains' And They Make New Chains For Themselves?"

"Seems to be a major human activity, yes. — Terry Pratchett

Liberate yourself as far as you can, and you have done your part; for it is not given to every one to break through all limits,or,more expressively, not to every one is that a limit which is a limit for the rest. Consequently,do not tire yourself with toiling at the limits of others ... He who overturns one of his limits may have shown others the way and the means; the overturning of their limits remains their affair. — Max Stirner

True freedom is a freedom with clear boundaries. True freedom understands the real essence of do's and don'ts. A freedom without restrictions that brings comfort is a freedom in chains. — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Unsullied!" Dany galloped before them, her silver-gold braid flying behind her, her bell chiming with every stride. "Slay the Good Masters, slay the soldiers, slay every man who wears a tokar or holds a whip, but harm no child under twelve, and strike the chains off every slave you see." She raised the harpy's fingers in the air ... and then she flung the scourge aside. "Freedom!" she sang out. "Dracarys! Dracarys!" "Dracarys!" they shouted back, the sweetest word she'd ever heard. "Dracarys! Dracarys!" And all around them slavers ran and sobbed and begged and died, and the dusty air was filled with spears and fire. — George R R Martin

And oft the blessed time foretells
When all men shall be free;
And musical, as silver bells,
Their falling chains shall be. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

There has never been upon the earth a generation of free men and women. It is not yet time to write a creed. Wait until the chains are broken - until dungeons are not regarded as temples. Wait until solemnity is not mistaken for wisdom - until mental cowardice ceases to be known as reverence. Wait until the living are considered the equals of the dead - until the cradle takes precedence of the coffin. Wait until what we know can be spoken without regard to what others may believe. Wait until teachers take the place of preachers - until followers become investigators. Wait until the world is free before you write a creed.
In this creed there will be but one word - Liberty. — Robert G. Ingersoll

I can think of no wiser financial investment than in self-knowledge. It is the path to freedom, at many levels. By sorting through painful past experiences, irrational beliefs, and unacknowledged fears, people can become free of these chains and find healthier ways of coping than making money and consuming things. — Tim Kasser

A man in chains need not be a slave. If he has pride and self-respect he is a free man though a prisoner, and a constant danger to his jailers. Conversely, a slave who escapes is not a free man, but a runaway slave who may be caught and returned to servitude. A slave is one who accepts the identity ascribed to him by a master: You are an inferior and unworthy person and so will remain, and therefore must serve me with obedience and humility. — Allen Wheelis

Freedom was a thing that shifted as you looked at it, the way a forest is dense with the trees up close but from the outside, from the empty meadow, you see its true limits. Being free had nothing to do with chains or how much space you had. On the plantation, she was not free, but she moved unrestricted on its acres, tasting the air and tracing the summer stars. The place was big in its smallness. Here, she was free of her master but slunk around a warren so tiny she couldn't stand. — Colson Whitehead

Ignorance may be bliss, but it certainly is not freedom, except in the minds of those who prefer darkness to light and chains to liberty. The more true information we can acquire, the better for our enfranchisement. — Robert Hugh Benson

Our children lost our direction because they have been compromised. They have found freedom at the ballot box, and then they have taken on plastic chains around their minds and souls and mortgage their future on credit cards. They have to learn better - they have to learn the value of ideas and health as opposed to wealth. — Andrew Young

You know, there are some words I've known since I was a schoolboy: ' With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably.' Those words were uttered by Judge Aaron Satie as wisdom and warning. The first time any man's freedom is trodden on we're all damaged. I fear that today... — Jeri Taylor

If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen. — Samuel Adams

Let none falter who thinks he is right, and we may succeed. But if, after all, we shall fail, be it so: we still shall have the proud consolation of saying to our consciences, and to the departed shade of our country's freedom, that the cause approved of our judgment and adored of our hearts, in disaster, in chains, in torture, in death, we never faltered in defending. — Abraham Lincoln

If, to expose the fraud and imposition of monarchy ... to promote universal peace, civilization, and commerce, and to break the chains of political superstition, and raise degraded man to his proper rank; if these things be libellous ... let the name of libeller be engraved on my tomb."
[Letter Addressed To The Addressers On The Late Proclamation, 1792 (Paine's response to the charge of "seditious libel" brought against him after the publication of The Rights of Man)] — Thomas Paine

kill to live, live to kill. Immortality and freedom from these chains, but oh, what a loss . . . — Richelle Mead

Unforgiveness feels like a prison built by the hands of a criminal where we end up incarcerated. Whether robbed, violated, or betrayed, we find ourselves trapped by the bondage of bitterness, the chains of cynicism, and the shackles of sin. With enough time, we can convince ourselves the prisons of our past were built by someone else, but unforgiveness is a cage we construct ourselves. If we choose to stop focusing on our inward pain and instead scan the perimeter, we discover the door to freedom hangs wide open thanks to Christ. The choice is ours. — Margaret Feinberg

The domestic NSA-led Surveillance State which Frank Church so stridently warned about has obviously come to fruition. The way to avoid its grip is simply to acquiesce to the nation's most powerful factions, to obediently remain within the permitted boundaries of political discourse and activism. Accepting that bargain enables one to maintain the delusion of freedom - "he who does not move does not notice his chains," observed Rosa Luxemburg - but the true measure of political liberty is whether one is free to make a different choice. — Glenn Greenwald

Give me my freedom for as long as I be All I ask of livin' is to have no chains on me All I ask of livin' is to have no chains on me And all I ask of dyin' is to go naturally ... And when I die, and when I'm gone There'll be one child born, in our world To carry on, to carry on ... — Laura Nyro

Oh, yes, we'll be in chains, and there will be no freedom, but then, in our great grief, we will arise once more into joy, without which it's not possible for man to live, or for God to be, for God gives joy, it's his prerogative, a great one ... Lord, let man dissolve in prayer! How would I be there underground without God? Rakitin's lying: if God is driven from the earth, we'll meet him underground! It's impossible for a convict to be without God, even more impossible than for a non-convict! And then from the depths of the earth, we, the men underground, will start singing a tragic hymn to God, in who there is joy! Hail to God and his joy! I love him! — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The place is good. How good, one must have circumnavigated the globe to discover. Why not stay? Take root? But roots are chains. I have a terror of losing my freedom. Free, without ties, unpossessed by any possessions, free to do as one will, to go at a moment's notice wherever the fancy may suggest
it is good. But so is this place. Might it not be better? To gain freedom one sacrifices something [ ... ] and all that these things and people signify. One sacrifices something
for a greater gain in knowledge, in understanding, in intensified living? I sometimes wonder. — Aldous Huxley

I wish I had the power to tell them that the despair of their hearts was not to be final, and their night was not without hope. For the battle they lost can never be lost. For that which they died to save can never perish. Through all the darkness, through all the shame of which men are capable, the spirit of man will remain alive on this earth. It may sleep, but it will awaken. It may wear chains, but it will break through. And man will go on. — Ayn Rand

At first, man was enslaved by the gods. But he broke their chains. Then he was enslaved by the kings. But he broke their chains. He was enslaved by his birth, by his kin, by his race. But he broke their chains. He declared to all his brothers that a man has rights which neither god nor king nor other men can take away from him, no matter what their number, for his is the right of man, and there is no right on earth above this right. And he stood on the threshold of freedom for which the blood of the centuries behind him had been spilled. — Ayn Rand

The truth is that we are not yet free; we have merely achieved the freedom to be free, the right not to be oppressed. We have not taken the final step of our journey, but the first step on a longer and even more difficult road. For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others. The true test of our devotion to freedom is just beginning. — Nelson Mandela

In my world, our self-inflicted bondage with chains, cuffs, and ropes was never about containment, but freedom, a letting go. — Vanessa Fewings

Slavery is such an atrocious debasement of human nature, that its very extirpation, if not performed with solicitous care, may sometimes open a source of serious evils. The unhappy man who has been treated as a brute animal, too frequently sinks beneath the common standard of the human species. The galling chains, that bind his body, do also fetter his intellectual faculties, and impair the social affections of his heart ... To instruct, to advise, to qualify those, who have been restored to freedom, for the exercise and enjoyment of civil liberty ... and to procure for their children an education calculated for their future situation in life; these are the great outlines of the annexed plan, which we have adopted.
[For the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, 1789] — Benjamin Franklin

Most of us came here in chains and most of you came here to escape your chains. Your freedom was our slavery, and therein lies the bitter difference in the way we look at life. — John Oliver Killens

Free is one that breaks the chains of one's mind and surrenders to that which gives absence of fear. — Tambre Bryant

I was a dog on a short chain / and now there's no chain. — Jim Harrison

Who is he that shall control me? Why may I not speak and write and think with entire freedom? What am I to the universe, or, the universe, what is it to me? Who hath forged the chains of wrong and right, of Opinion and Custom? And must I wear them? I say to the universe, Mighty One! thou art not my mother. Return to chaos if thou wilt. I shall still
exist. I live. If I owe my being, it is to a destiny greater than thine. Star by star, world by world, system by system shall be crushed,-but I shall live. — Samuel A. Schreiner Jr.

Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death! — Patrick Henry

that ancient legend about paradise ... Why, it's about us, about today. Yes! Just think. Those two, in paradise, were given a choice: happiness without freedom, or freedom without happiness. There was no third alternative. Those idiots chose freedom, and what came of it? Of course, for ages afterward they longed for the chains. — Yevgeny Zamyatin

For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others. — Nelson Mandela

I understood that centuries of chains and lashes will not kill the spirit of man nor the sense of truth within him. — Ayn Rand

The populace consists of individuals and free men, while the state is made up of numbers. When the state dominates, killing becomes abstract. Servitude began with the shepherds; in the river valleys it attained perfection with canals and dikes. Its model was the slavery in mines and mills. Since then, the ruses for concealing chains have been refined. — Ernst Junger

True freedom is to share All the chains our brothers wear, And, with heart and hand, to be Earnest to make others free! — James Russell Lowell

Slavery remains rife, the shackles are just different. Labels and desires have replaced the cuffs and chains. — Aisha Mirza

I look forward to seeing you in the "jungle" as our warriors meet and join the battle drum that calls for unity in the struggle for breaking the chains of modern slavery - like the butterflies flying the skies and the birds over the seas, all are welcomed for both ear and eye - promises of victory are high, for even if unattainable today, tomorrow still holds the torch and dream, like fire of paradise, glory of life, glory of eternity! — Martin Guevara Urbina

Disdain the chain, preserve your freedom; and maintain your independency: be industrious and free; be frugal and free. — Benjamin Franklin

Youth, elastic and bright, disdains to be compelled. When conquered, from its very chains it forges implements for freedom; it alights from one baffled flight, only again to soar on untired wing towards some other aim. Previous defeat is made the bridge to pass the tide to another shore; and, if that break down, its fragments become stepping stones. It will feed upon despair, and call it a medicine which is to renovate its dying hopes. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

It had been happy for me if I could have lived a private life in peace and plenty, enjoying all the happiness that results from a well-tempered society founded on mutual esteem. But the injury done my country, and the chains of slavery forging for all posterity, calls me forth to defend our common rights, and repel the bold invaders of the sons of freedom. — Nathanael Greene

I swore I would battle not only for myself but for freedom and opportunity for everything living that wore chains, especially sex chains. It that meant poverty for myself and my boy then poverty we should have to suffer. If it meant social ostracism, if it meant relinquishing the literary success that lay within my grasp, then let the success go. — Rheta Childe Dorr

You were wrong, commander. Whatever chains you try to place on me, I will always, always, rise from them. I'm not buying my freedom, because you never owned it. But I am taking it back, for me, and for my country. — Jennifer A. Nielsen

Fear is a wet blanket that smothers the fiery passion God deposited in your heart when he formed you. Fear freezes us into inaction. Frozen ideas, frozen souls, frozen bodies can't move, can't dream, can't risk, can't love, and can't live. Fear chains us. — Stasi Eldredge

Many people think that love represents chains, bondage, the opposite of freedom. But people who believe such things are simple-minded creatures who have been lied to, and who easily accept the general trend of the lie. It is in fact love that is the only thing powerful enough to set one free from even the most deeply-embedded and thoroughly-wound chains of the soul, the mind, and the body. The fact is that we are born into chains and born into bondages; these things are put upon us by fear, pain and doubt. When you are thoroughly loved by someone in mind and in heart, this has the power to set you so free, more free than you have ever been before. And that is because freedom is not the equivalent of detachment. Freedom is the equivalent of that which sets you free. And when someone loves you the way that only they can, that is what sets you free. — C. JoyBell C.

Then you know Prometheus was rescued in the end. His chains were broken, and he was finally set free." The old man squinted one of his eyes and added, "How about that? — Brian Selznick

Strange as it may seem, within plain sight of this same house, looking down from its commanding height upon it, was the Capitol. The voices of patriotic representatives boasting of freedom and equality, and the rattling of the poor slave's chains, almost commingled. A slave pen within the very shadow of the Capitol! — Solomon Northup

This "freedom" put a proud people in chains
And turned free men into slaves
"Independence" made us weak
And slaughtered us
In the name of kindness
This is democracy by the whip
And the fear of chains
With a whirlwind at its core — Abdul Salam Zaeef

My freedom will be so much the greater and more meaningful the more narrowly I limit my field of action and the more I surround myself with obstacles. Whatever diminishes constraint diminishes strength. The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one's self of the chains that shackle the spirit. — Igor Stravinsky

Handel's yearning for independence from the traditional chains of patronage and his persistence in monitoring his productions resulted with unique developments concerning Baroque 'opera seria'; however, paradoxically his personal obsession to obtain complete artistic freedom generated disastrous side-effects that eventually impeded the progress of opera in London. — E.A. Bucchianeri

Freedom of mind is the real freedom.
A person whose mind is not free though he may not be in chains, is a slave, not a free man.
One whose mind is not free, though he may not be in prison, is a prisoner and not a free man.
One whose mind is not free though alive, is no better than dead.
Freedom of mind is the proof of one's existence. — B.R. Ambedkar

Forces of good and evil are massed and armed and opposed as rarely before in history. Freedom is pitted against slavery; lightness against the dark ... In the final choice, a soldier's pack is not so heavy a burden as a prisoner's chains. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

Freedom is the first wish of our heart; freedom is the first blessing of nature; and unless we bind ourselves with voluntary chains of interest or passion, we advance in freedom as we advance in years — Edward Gibbon

It is difficult, my dear Lucius, to escape becoming the person others believe one to be. A slave is twice enslaved, once by his chains and once again by the glances that fall upon him and say thou slave. — Thornton Wilder

Any so-called fetters do not bind youngsters because they have the power and the tactics to break them in their own adroit ways! — Balroop Singh

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

He freed man from outer religiosity because he made religiosity the inner man. He freed the body from chains because he enchained the heart. — Karl Marx

The poor, stupid, free American citizen! Free to starve, free to tramp the highways of this great country, he enjoys universal suffrage, and by that right, he has forged chains around his limbs. The reward that he receives is stringent labor laws prohibiting the right of boycott, of picketing, of everything, except the right to be robbed of the fruits of his labor. — Emma Goldman

Well sir, if slavery is freedom then I'm glad I don't have to make a meal of it. Whips and chains are not much to my taste. — Amitav Ghosh

If men and women are in chains anywhere in the world, then freedom is endangered everywhere. — John F. Kennedy

In America, we have achieved the Orwellian prediction - enslaved, the people have been programmed to love their bondage and are left to clutch only mirage-like images of freedom, its fables and fictions. The new slaves are linked together by vast electronic chains of television that imprison not their bodies but their minds. Their desires are programmed, their tastes manipulated, their values set for them. — Gerry Spence

Who then is free? the wise man who is lord over himself;
Whom neither poverty nor death, nor chains alarm; strong to withstand his passions and despise honors, and who is completely finished and rounded off in himself. — Horace

There are internal chains and external chains. All the external chains in the world won't enslave you, if you are free inside. And all the external 'freedom' in the world won't liberate you, if you are chained inside.
Let go. And you'll know Freedom. — Yasmin Mogahed

It will be hard James but you come from sturdy peasant stock men who picked cotton and dammed rivers and built railroads and in the teeth of the most terrifying odds achieved an unassailable and monumental dignity You come from a long line of great poets some of the greatest poets since Homer. One of them said "The very time I thought I was lost My dungeon shook and my chains fell off." You know and I know that the country is celebrating one hundred years of freedom one hundred years too soon. We cannot be free until they are free. God bless you James and Godspeed. — James Baldwin

It is our duty to fight for our freedom.
It is our duty to win.
We must love each other and support each other.
We have nothing to lose but our chains. — Assata Shakur

Many people don't fear a hell after this life and that's because hell is on this earth, in this life. In this life there are many forms of hell that people walk through, sometimes for a day, sometimes for years, sometimes it doesn't end. The kind of hell that doesn't burn your skin; but burns your soul. The kind of hell that people can't see; but the flames lap at your spirit. Heaven is a place on earth, too! It's where you feel freedom, where you're not afraid. No more chains. And you hear your soul laughing. — C. JoyBell C.

July 4, the day we celebrate giving our political masters independence from conscience, morality, consequences for evil doing, and basic social and economic reality.
The fireworks are the glowing tears of your children's incinerated futures.
Cheer happy slaves - your only chains are your deluded joys. Cheer and sing, because for you, songs of death are easier than questions of life. — Stefan Molyneux

No man was born in chains; it is their fellow man who has put them in chains, and at any given time, every single man and woman has the absolute right to break free from those chains of any nature and of any form! It is not God who has put you in any sort of bondage! It is your fellow man who puts you in bondage in the name of God! — C. JoyBell C.

The most formidable chains are forged from beliefs. Ah, beliefs! Beliefs tear out the eyes and leave us blind and groping in the dark. If I believe in one proposition, I have become locked behind the door of that belief, and all other doors to learning and freedom, although standing open and waiting for me to enter, are now closed to me. If I believe in one God, one religion, yes, if I believe in God at all, if I have closed my mind to magic, to spirit, to salvation, to the unknown dimension that exist in the firmament, I have plunged my mind into slavery. Test all beliefs. Distrust all beliefs. — Gerry Spence

Bad men cannot make good citizens. It is when a people forget God that tyrants forge their chains. A vitiated state of morals, a corrupted public conscience, is incompatible with freedom. No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue; and by a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles. — Patrick Henry

Man was born free, but everywhere he is in chains!" Rousseau saw the primitive as innocent and autonomous freedom as the final good. We — Francis A. Schaeffer

America is beyond power; it acts as in a dream, as a face of God. Wherever America is, there is freedom, and wherever America is not, madness rules with chains, darkness strangles millions. Beneath her patient bombers, paradise is possible. — John Updike

Man is created free, and is free, even though born in chains. — Friedrich Schiller

No matter, they weren't going anywhere. Never again. Two skeletons buried beneath a dead city. No more fitting a barrow for a warrior of the Apocalypse and a Malazan soldier. That seemed just, poetic even. He would not complain, and when he stood at this sergeant's side at Hood's Gate, he would be proud for the company.So much had changed inside him. He was no believer in causes, not any more. Certainty was an illusion, a lie. Fanaticism was poison in the soul, and the first victim in its inexorable, ever-growing list was compassion. Who could speak of freedom, when one's own soul was bound in chains? — Steven Erikson

Often misunderstood, Dionysus is far more than a wine deity. He is the Breaker of Chains, who rescues not only the flesh but the heart and spirit from too much of worldly regulations and duties. He is a god of joy and freedom. Any uncultivated, tangled, and primal woodland is very much his domain. — Tanith Lee

We move through the world in a narrow groove, preoccupied with the petty things we see and hear, brooding over our prejudices, passing by the joys of life without even knowing that we have missed anything. Never for a moment do we taste the heady wine of freedom. We are as truly imprisoned as if we lay at the bottom of a dungeon, heaped with chains. — Steve Hagen

I'd like to see animals removed from the entertainment business. Chimpanzees and apes won't perform unless you beat them. Circuses keep elephants in chains 90 percent of the time. Elephants need freedom of movement. In circuses, they live in cramped quarters, which is not the life intended for them by nature. Some are beaten daily, forced to do ridiculous tricks and robbed of every shred of dignity. — Bob Barker

The natural state of mankind ... and I know that this is a controversial idea ... is freedom ... And the proof is the lengths to which a man, woman, or child will go to regain it once lost. He will break loose his chains. He will decimate his enemies. He will try and try and try again, against all odds, against all prejudices. — John Quincy Adams

Is it a small thing to quench the flames of hell with the holy tears of pity
to unbind the martyr from the stake
break all the chains
put out the fires of civil war
stay the sword of the fanatic, and tear the bloody hands of the Church from the white throat of Science?
Is it a small thing to make men truly free
to destroy the dogmas of ignorance, prejudice and power
the poisoned fables of superstition, and drive from the beautiful face of the earth the fiend of fear? — Robert G. Ingersoll

Don't grieve at the stab.
It's only meant to free you.
From the chains that bind you to the earth
and shackle you to the shadows of people.
The mirage of water cannot quench.
But is so beautiful to the thirsty.
I'm afraid. Of never knowing another life.
Different. So different.
If I let go, will You take me higher?
Above grief, want, loss.
Above all that I've ever known.
Take me higher. Unbind me from the earth.
Like a vaccine, it sickens, to make you stronger.
The stab is temporary. The freedom, eternal. — Yasmin Mogahed

The chains that keep you bound to the past are not the actions of another person. They are your own anger, stubbornness, lack of compassion, jealousy and blaming others for your choices. It is not other people that keep you trapped; it is the entitled role of victim that you enjoy wearing. There is a familiarness to pain that you enjoy because you get a payoff from it. When you figure out what that payoff is then you will finally be on the road to freedom. — Shannon L. Alder

A subject to which few intellectuals ever give a thought is the right to be a vagrant, the freedom to wander. Yet vagrancy is a deliverance, and life on the open road is the essence of freedom. To have the courage to smash the chains with which modern life has weighted us (under the pretext that it was offering us more liberty), then to take up the symbolic stick and bundle and get out. — Isabelle Eberhardt

You are silent now who once stood on battlefields ravaged by destruction unimaginable, holding in those desperate places the line of freedom for others you would never know, and who would never know you. And being one of those you never knew, I would give all I have to clasp your hand one single time, look into eyes that witnessed the bloodied carnage that results when freedom refuses to bow to chains of any kind, and simply say 'thank you. — Craig D. Lounsbrough