Quotes & Sayings About Freedom From The Past

Our principle is: to prevent all command over man by his fellowmen, to, make state, government, laws, or whatsoever form of compulsion existing, a thing of the past, to establish full freedom for all. Anarchism means first and foremost freedom from all government. — Johann Most

The history of humanity is not a hotel where someone can rent a room whenever it suits him; nor is it a vehicle which we board or get out of at random. Our past will be for us a burden beneath which we can only collapse for as long as we refuse to understand the present and fight for a better future. Only then - but from that moment on - will the burden become a blessing, that is, a weapon in the battle for freedom. — Hannah Arendt

Every human being has both sets of forces within him. One set clings to safety and defensiveness out of fear, tending to regress backward, hanging on to the past, afraid to grow away from the primitive communication with the mother's uterus and breast, afraid to take chances, afraid to jeopardize what he already has, afraid of independence, freedom and separateness. The other set of forces impels him 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. — Abraham H. Maslow

Freedom, as I have been taught to understand as a political being in exile- to be protected by law, to be able to live my life as I choose, absent from tyranny and persecution- is perhaps not the foremost aspiration here in Dhompa's pastoral and nomadic world. The elders tell me they equate freedom with the right to live as Buddhists, which entails being able to perform their rituals, have access to lamas and to monasteries, and be able to participate in retreats and studies. They might even refer to an aspired state of mind: to be free of attachment, anger, stupidity, jealousy and arrogance. To be released from fear and, perhaps, even from their attachment to the past. — Tsering Wangmo Dhompa

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 experience true freedom when I accept, understand, and move on from the conditioning of the past. — Deepak Chopra

Forgiveness is a choice you can make to free yourself from the shackles of your past, from pain, hurt and resentment. Forgiveness is your road to inner freedom. It does not mean that you need to forget, deny or condone what has transpired. You choose to forgive because forgiveness is the only way to transcend painful experiences and to attain inner peace and freedom. Transcending Abuse & Betrayal. — Sasha Samy

To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free, when men are different from one another and do not live alone - to a time when truth exists and what is done cannot be undone: From the age of uniformity, from the age of solitude, from the age of Big Brother, from the age of doublethink - greetings! — George Orwell

Old age is the most precious time of life, the one nearest eternity. There are two ways of growing old. There are old people who are anxious and bitter, living in the past and illusion, who criticize everything that goes on around them. Young people are repulsed by them; they are shut away in their sadness and loneliness, shriveled up in themselves. But there are also old people with a child's heart, who have used their freedom from function and responsibility to find a new youth. They have the wonder of a child, but the wisdom of maturity as well. They have integrated their years of activity and so can live without being attached to power. Their freedom of heart and their acceptance of their limitations and weakness makes them people whose radiance illuminates the whole community. They are gentle and merciful, symbols of compassion and forgiveness. They become a community's hidden treasures, sources of unity and life. They are true contemplatives at the heart of community. — Jean Vanier

Do you think that romantic love is natural; that the life of trade is honorable; that freedom of worship is desirable? Very likely you think none of those things; you have uncritically absorbed them, and only since you came to college begun to learn that they are al comparatively recent and local notions, the products of past conflicts and choices. As the hand of the dyer is tinged by what it works in, so your tastes, ambitions, and values take their quality from a context that was created for you before you were born. — Denham Sutcliffe

And what does he want?" I turn and face the serving girl. "The same thing we all want. He just won't admit it." I see longing in her eyes, and also anger, when she looks at Aladdin. "Freedom from the past." I — Jessica Khoury

Don't hold on too long;to which does not belong,
Don't shed a tear; for all the pain that's gone,
Create a new;from the wisdom of the past,
Open your heart wider, as storms do not last. — Nikki Rowe

How can we expect to be happy when we have no peace of mind, when our mind is constantly jumping from the present to the past? When your mind is constantly running and filled with anxiety and fear, where is the freedom? You are stuck in the prison of your mind, stuck in thoughts and feelings from yesterday, from five years ago. There comes a time when everyone has to stop, look deep, breathe and let go. — Evan Sutter

For the normative self-understanding of modernity, Christianity has functioned as more than just a precursor or catalyst. Universalistic egalitarianism, from which sprang the ideals of freedom and a collective life in solidarity, the autonomous conduct of life and emancipation, the individual morality of conscience, human rights and democracy, is the direct legacy of the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. This legacy, substantially unchanged, has been the object of a continual critical reappropriation and reinterpretation. Up to this very day there is no alternative to it. And in light of the current challenges of a post-national constellation, we must draw sustenance now, as in the past, from this substance. Everything else is idle postmodern talk. — Jurgen Habermas

At another level, though, poems can craft an eraser - we can't revise the past, but poems allow us some malleability, an increased freedom of response, comprehension, feeling. Choice, what choices are possible for any given person, is another theme that's run through my work from the start. — Jane Hirshfield

Universities face a constant struggle to maintain their integrity, and their fundamental social role in a healthy society, in the face of external pressures. The problems are heightened with the expansion of private power in every domain, in the course of the state-corporate social engineering projects of the past several decades. . . . To defend their integrity and proper commitments is an honorable and difficult task in itself, but our sights should be set higher than that. Particularly in the societies that are more privileged, many choices are available, including fundamental institutional change, if that is the right way to proceed, and surely including scholarship that contributes to, and draws from, the never-ending popular struggles for freedom and justice. 5 Higher education is under attack not because it is failing, but because it is a potentially democratic public sphere. — Noam Chomsky

A wise architect observed that you could break the laws of architec75tural art provided you had mastered them first. That would apply to religion as well as to art. Ignorance of the past does not guarantee freedom from its imperfections. — Reinhold Niebuhr

We should not forget, no matter how we quantify it: 'Freedom is not free.' It is a painful lesson, but one from which we have learned in the past and one we should never forget. — Paul Gillmor

You have stood at this junction before You will stand at this junction again And if you pause you can ask yourself Which way to turn You can turn away from your own sadness And run the race named revenge You will run that tired track again and again Or you can admit your own pain And walk the path that ends In this direction lies freedom, my friend I can show you where hope and wholeness make their homes But you can't push past your anguish on your way there To find the path to peace You will have to meet your pain And speak its name — Desmond Tutu

The ethic of ecstasy is the opposite of the trial's ethic; under its protection everybody does whatever he wants: now anyone can suck his thumb as he likes, from infancy to graduation, and it is a freedom no one will be willing to give up; look around you on the Metro; seated or standing, every single person has a finger in some orifice of his face-in the ear, in the mouth, in the nose; no one feels he's being observed, and everyone dreams of writing a book to tell about his unique and inimitable self, which is picking its nose; no one listens to anyone else, everyone writes, and each of them writes the way rock is danced to: alone, for himself, focused on himself yet making the same motions as all the others. In this situation of uniform egocentricity, the sense of guilt does not play the role it once did; the tribunals still operate, but they are fascinated exclusively by the past; they see only the core of the century; they see only the generations that are old or dead. — Milan Kundera

Not to forgive is to be imprisoned by the past, by old grievances that do not permit life to proceed with new business. Not to forgive is to yield oneself to another's control ... to be locked into a sequence of act and response, of outrage and revenge, tit for tat, escalating always. The present is endlessly overwhelmed and devoured by the past. Forgiveness frees the forgiver. It extracts the forgiver from someone else's nightmare. — Lance Morrow

One of my greatest pleasures in motor racing is qualifying. You have loads of freedom from pushing a lap the whole way. I've always been very good in qualifying in the past; everything I've done, I've got pole positions. — Bruno Senna

So there's a kind of resurgence of the sense of freedom and spontaneity in nature. From nature being bound into a rigid, deterministic model, freedom, spontaneity and openness are emerging once again. It's now recognized the future is open, not determined by the past. And this is true in many realms, the astronomical realm, the human realm, the meteorological realm in many ways. — Rupert Sheldrake

When people confront the past - their sins, wounds, and curses - they experience amazing joy, freedom, and spiritual growth. They move from just the assurance of their salvation to an experience of divine deliverance. — Chris Hodges

It must be said here, however, that among the activities that all LTTE members, both men and women, enjoyed most was reminiscing about events of the past. Watching them enjoying such conversations, one would think that they were the happiest people on earth because the interactions would be filled with laughter. They would discuss dead comrades, past battles, instances of near capture by the Lankan Military, receiving punishment from superiors, etc. But all of these subjects were discussed with a sense of humor. One SLMM member, who had noticed this without being able to understand the language, once commented that for a set of liberation fighters they did spend an awful lot of time talking and laughing. All of them indeed carried with them a great deal of painful memories and this, it seemed, was their therapy — N. Malathy

I've said it before, history repeats itself for those who don't learn from the past. Can we please learn from all this? Please? Or is everyone waiting for yet another savior to come along and charm them Hollywood style if freedom is still around for America's next election? — L.M. Fields

A nature wise With finding in itself the types of all, With watching from the dim verge of the time What things to be are visible in the gleams Thrown forward on them from the luminous past, Wise with the history of its own frail heart, With reverence and sorrow, and with love, Broad as the world, for freedom and for man. — James Russell Lowell

We who hold his (Wolfe Tone) principles believe that any movement which would successfully grapple with the problem of national freedom must draw its inspiration not from the mouldering records of the past, but from the glowing hopes of the living present, the vast possibilities of the mighty future. — James Connolly

God owns and controls all things. And there is nothing that he could give you for Christmas this year that would suit your needs and your longings better than the consolation of Israel and the redemption of Jerusalem, restoration for past losses and liberation from future enemies, forgiveness and freedom, pardon and power, healing the past and sealing the future. — John Piper

The Republican party must break with its long-established instinct for caution and make a bold stand for first principles of freedom and constitutional limitations on government - from full repeal of Obamacare to rolling back multitrillion-dollar deficits. This is not so much a reproach of past Republican conduct as it is a recognition of new opportunities. — Tony Blankley

Now, with the glamour of the past upon them we are inclined to look back on old world festivities with regret and consider present day dances as a poor substitute for the old. From an artistic point of view, they maybe, but in individual freedom and independence of spirit they mark a stage upward. — Flora Thompson

Youth. Murder (Biko). Slavery. Freedom. We are all creatures of ignorance at the end of the day. The natural order of the hierarchy of life states that we are creatures. Creatures of habit whether it is normal (following the status quo and all of that jazz). Creatures of marching orders and almost sanitary routine. Creatures of the abnormal. Our leaders are coldly obliterating the past. It is impossible to destroy nations, tribes, individuals without their permission. Many lessons learned from the past come to life like the connect the dots game of a child in a museum. We are swift to forget history. Bury the past like yesterday's newspaper, our infirm and elderly in nursing homes. — Abigail George

Knowledge about yourself binds, weighs, ties you down; there is no freedom to move, and you act and move within the limits of thatknowledge. Learning about yourself is never the same as accumulating knowledge about yourself. Learning is active present and knowledge is the past; if you are learning to accumulate, it ceases to be learning; knowledge is static, more can be added to it or taken away from it, but learning is active, nothing can be added or taken away from it for there is no accumulation at any time. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

To experience emotional freedom, we must accept, surrender, and let go of our wounds. We must be willing to take responsibility for what we're holding on to, which is usually a hurt or pain from the past that leaves us feeling victimized. — Debbie Ford

My belief is that if we live another century or so - I am talking of the common life which is the real life and not of the little separate lives which we live as individuals - and have five hundred a year each of us and rooms of our own; if we have the habit of freedom and the courage to write exactly what we think; if we escape a little from the common sitting-room and see human beings not always in their relation to each other but in relation to reality; and the sky, too, and the trees or whatever it may be in themselves; if we look past Milton's bogey, for no human being should shut out the view; if we face the fact, for it is a fact, that there is no arm to cling to, but that we go alone and that our relation is to the world of reality and not only to the world of men and women, then the opportunity will come and the dead poet who was Shakespeare's sister will put on the body which she has so often laid down. — Virginia Woolf

Life can sometimes feel like being trapped in the midst of a chaotic storm, swirling with darkness and debris, and no perceivable way out. But there is a way out. Seeking out the stillness of one's mind, challenging limiting perceptions and unloading the burdens of the past can allow a person to break free from the darkness and find a path to peace, joy and light. No one has to stay in the storm. Anyone can leave, if they choose. Hypnosis can help a person uncover the way to freedom. Once the path is revealed, all one needs to do is take it. And when they do, everything will seem possible. — Dawn Wheeler

Rambert also spent a certain amount of time at the railroad station. No one was allowed on the platforms. But the waiting-rooms, which could be entered from outside, remained open and, being cool and dark, were often patronized by beggars on very hot days. Rambert spent much time studying the timetables, reading the prohibitions against spitting, and the passengers' regulations. After that he sat down in a corner. An old cast-iron stove, which had been stone-cold for months, rose like a sort of landmark in the middle of the room, surrounded by figure-of-eight patterns on the floor, the traceries of long-past sprinklings. Posters on the walls gaily invited tourists to a carefree holiday at Cannes or Bandol. And in his corner Rambert savored that bitter sense of freedom which comes of total deprivation. — Albert Camus

We must not confuse letting go of past injuries with feeling an obligation to let the injurers back into our life. The freedom of forgiveness often includes a firm boundary and loving distance from those who have harmed us. As my father likes to say, We can let them back into our hearts without ever letting them back into our house. — Noah Levine

America is not so much a country as it is an idea, and that must be why so many people are drawn to it, the idea of it, the idea that you might be free of your past, free of the traditions that kept you in your own traditions - that is the idea of it: freedom from your very own self. — Jamaica Kincaid

This enemy of peace in the world today is unlike any we have seen in the past, and our military is learning from, and building on, previous successes while carrying peace and freedom into the future. — Mark Kennedy

But either way, the fruit of turning to God - before we sin, after we've sinned, even right there in the middle of our sin - is where Christians go to experience the flavors of God-fearing honor, gratitude, dependence, worship, confidence, trust, freedom, revival. Even those sins from our past that have been the most regrettable, the most difficult to move beyond - the ones we'd give anything if we could go back and do over again - Christ is able to redeem and rewrite even those into masterful sequels and come-from-behind victories. He takes what's given us fits for so long and gives us instead a reason to celebrate what He's done. To celebrate our redemption. To celebrate our Redeemer. — Matt Chandler

[F]rom my years of understanding ... I happily chose this kind of life in which I yet live [i.e., unmarried], which I assure you for my own part hath hitherto best contented myself and I trust hath been most acceptable to God. From the which if either ambition of high estate offered to me in marriage by the pleasure and appointment of my prince ... or if the eschewing of the danger of my enemies or the avoiding of the peril of death ... could have drawn or dissuaded me from this kind of life, I had not now remained in this estate wherein you see me. But so constant have I always continued in this determination ... yet is it most true that at this day I stand free from any other meaning that either I have had in times past or have at this present. — Elizabeth I

And right action is freedom from past and future also.
For most of us, this is the aim never to be realized. Who are only undefeated because we have gone on trying. The Dry Salvages — T. S. Eliot

Total freedom from your past; both the good and the bad things is the foundation for a successful life. — Sunday Adelaja

Understanding can lead to liberation. Knowledge can bring freedom from the past. For those who don't take the time to understand their past and are blind to how it has shaped them, the road to true love can be difficult. — Debra Fileta

War had given Francis his respite, and success had brought him his final reward: the freedom he wished from his marriage. The licence, if he desired it, to go back to Russia. The knowledge, one supposed, that, severed from Philippa, he could allow the past to lie in peace, and cease troubling him. — Dorothy Dunnett

Our enemies are Medes and Persians, men who for centuries have lived soft and luxurious lives; we of Macedon for generations past have been trained in the hard school of danger and war. Above all, we are free men, and they are slaves. There are Greek troops, to be sure, in Persian service - but how different is their cause from ours! They will be fighting for pay - and not much of at that; we, on the contrary, shall fight for Greece, and our hearts will be in it. As for our foreign troops - Thracians, Paeonians, Illyrians, Agrianes - they are the best and stoutest soldiers in Europe, and they will find as their opponents the slackest and softest of the tribes of Asia. And what, finally, of the two men in supreme command? You have Alexander, they - Darius! — Alexander The Great

We are citizens who love to fake life than dig deep into our reality to discover the truth and make amends and correct our own wrongdoings, because we are reluctant to learn from our past. — Nilantha Ilangamuwa

Socialism did not have anything particularly new to teach me; however, it provided me with the theory to verify what I already knew emotionally from my own past. I was poor then; I am poor now. Because of this I have been overworked, mistreated, tormented, oppressed, deprived of my freedom, exploited, and ruled by people with money. I had always harbored a deep antagonism toward people with that kind of power and a deep sympathy for people from backgrounds like mine. — Kaneko Fumiko

The unveiled Algerian woman, who assumed an increasingly important place in revolutionary action, developed her personality, discovered the exalting realm of responsibility. The freedom of the Algerian people from then on became identified with woman's liberation, with her entry into history. This woman who, in the avenues of Algier or of Constantine, would carry the grenades or the submachine-gun chargers, this woman who tomorrow would be outraged, violated, tortured, could not put herself back into her former state of mind and relive her behaviour of the past; this woman who was writing the heroic pages of Algerian history was, in so doing, bursting the bounds of the narrow in which she had lived without responsibility, and was at the same time participating in the destruction of colonialism and in the birth of a new woman. — Frantz Fanon

The peoples owe all political rights and privileges which we enjoy today in greater or lesser measure, not to the good will of their governments, but to their own strength. One need only study the history of the past three hundred years to understand by what relentless struggles every right has had to be wrested inch by inch from the despots. — Rudolf Rocker

The United States was born through war, reunited by war, and saved from destruction by war. No future generation, however comfortable and affluent, can escape that terrible knowledge. Our freedom is not entirely our own; in some sense it is mortgaged from those who paid the ultimate price for its continuance. My own life of security, freedom, opportunity, and relative affluence certainly has been made possible because a grandfather fought and was gassed in the Argonne; an uncle in the Marines died trying to stop Japanese imperialism on Okinawa; a cousin in the Army lost his life at twenty-two trying to stop Hitler in France; and my father in the Army Air Force flew forty times over Japan hoping to end the idea of the expansive Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere. I have spent some time these past decades trying to learn where, how, and why they and their generations fought as they did - and what our own obligations are to acknowledge their sacrifices. — Victor Davis Hanson

In detachment lies the wisdom of uncertainty ... in the wisdom of uncertainty lies the freedom from our past, from the known, which is the prison of past conditioning. And in our willingness to step into the unknown, the field of all possibilities, we surrender ourselves to the creative mind that orchestrates the dance of the universe. — Deepak Chopra

Beneath the rubbernecking Chums of Chance wheeled streets and alleyways in a Cartesian grid, sketched in sepia, mile on mile. "The Great Bovine City of the World," breathed Lindsey in wonder. Indeed, the backs of cattle far outnumbered the tops of human hats. From this height it was as if the Chums, who, out on adventures past, had often witnessed the vast herds of cattle adrift in everchanging cloudlike patterns across the Western plains, here saw that unshaped freedom being rationalized into movement only in straight lines and at right angles and a progressive reduction of choices, until the final turn through the final gate that led to the killingfloor. — Thomas Pynchon

Too often in the past, our Armed Forces have returned to Canada from their trials with little fanfare. Not so today. Canadians across the country came out in force, united in appreciation, to honour the bravery, heroism, strength and sacrifice of those who fought for freedom and security in Afghanistan. — Stephen Harper

He had understood long ago that the past was no better than the present. That was as plain as day. One had to try to escape, to wrestle free from every era, so as not to be devoured by it. — Lyudmila Ulitskaya

I want to." That was it. Choice. The idea hit him like a defibrillator
burst - spreading out from his chest in hot, sure waves that tore past the
indecision and stagnation of the last week. The roar in his head crackled,
then calmed, sanity returning like oxy gen to his starved Hulk brain. He
didn't have to, but he was choosing to. And may be that was what was
missing from his life - choice. He hadn't chosen to be gay. Hadn't chosen
to come out to the world. Hadn't chosen where he'd go to college - free
tuition from two professor parents made that a nondiscussion. Hadn't
chosen to come here. Hadn't chosen to stay. But this? He was choosing
this, and the freedom made his nerves jangle. — Annabeth Albert

The first generations of Comanches in captivity never really understood the concept of wealth, of private property. The central truth of their lives was the past, the dimming memory of the wild, ecstatic freedom of the plains, of the days when Comanche warriors in black buffalo headdresses rode unchallenged from Kansas to northern Mexico, of a world without property or boundaries. What Quanah had that the rest of his tribe in the later years did not was that most American of human traits: boundless optimism. — S.C. Gwynne

Time is not an enemy as such, but a missing person, sending cryptic postcards from the past. — Carla H. Krueger

The ability to choose who governs us, and the freedom to change laws we do not like, were secured for us in the past by radicals and liberals who took power from unaccountable elites and placed it in the hands of the people. — Michael Gove

The stories from Iran's present and past are reminders that freedom, democracy and human rights, or fundamentalism, fascism and terrorism are not geographically and culturally determined, but universal. — Azar Nafisi

We are runaway slaves from our own past, and only by turning to face the hounds can we find our freedom beyond them. — Timothy B. Tyson

The thing that strikes me now when I think about the Wilderness of Childhood is the incredible degree of freedom my parents gave me to adventure there. A very grave, very significant shift in our idea of childhood has occurred since then. The Wilderness of Childhood is gone; the days of adventure are past. The land ruled by children, to which a kid might exile himself for at least some portion of every day from the neighboring kingdom of adulthood, has in large part been taken over, co-opted, colonized, and finally absorbed by the neighbors. — Michael Chabon

Freedom may come not from being in control of life but rather from a willingness to move with the events of life, to hold on to our memories but let go of the past, to choose, when necessary, the inevitable. We can become free at any time. — Rachel Naomi Remen

Was there to be any end to the gradual improvement in the techniques and artifices used by the replicators to ensure their own continuation in the world? There would be plenty of time for improvement. What weird engines of self-preservation would the millennia bring forth? Four thousand million years on, what was to be the fate of the ancient replicators?
They did not die out, for they are past masters of the survival arts. But do not look for them floating loose in the sea; they gave up that cavalier freedom long ago. Now they swarm in huge colonies, safe inside gigantic lumbering robots, sealed off from the outside world, communicating with it by tortuous indirect routes, manipulating it by remote control.
They are in you and in me; they created us, body and mind; and their preservation is the ultimate rationale for our existence. They have come a long way, those replicators. Now they go by the name of genes, and we are their survival machines. — Richard Dawkins

Hot. Tropical, damp climates always made the skin sticky and hot. Feverishly so. Sometimes, I thought my very flesh would melt and hang from my bones like Spanish moss. In Paris I whirled in lightness and freedom . . . flinging the past away until I felt cool and alive again. But . . . the oppression came back, didn't it? I shivered, it still held me down, sucked my breath away. — Parris Afton Bonds

Things don't go away. They become you. There is no end, as T.S. Eliot somewhere says, but addition: the trailing consequence of further days and hours. No freedom from the past, or from the future.
But we keep making our way, as we have to. We're all pretty much able to deal even with the worst that life can fire at us, if we simply admit that it is very difficult. I think that's the whole of the answer. We make our way, and effort and time give us cushion and dignity. And as we age, we're riding higher in the saddle, seeing more terrain. — Darin Strauss

your abuser tried to map your life for you. But he does not own you, and you have the freedom and the power to overcome and transcend the (negative) associations. You deserve to be happy, to be free of any feelings of shame or guilt or fear. You have the right to a completely satisfying sexual life. You are a righteous young woman. If you can get in touch with the feelings and consciously change the awful associations, you can re-map your life. — Patti Feuereisen

Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been effort stored up in the past. — Theodore Roosevelt

I have given up the ambition to be a great scholar. I want to be more- simply a human ... We are not true humans, but beings who live by a civilization inherited from the past, that keeps us hostage, that confines us. No freedom of movement. Nothing. Everything in us is killed by our calculations for our future, by our social position and cast. You see, I am not happy-yet I am happy. I suffer, but that is part of life. I live, I don't care about my existence, and that is the beginning of wisdom. — Albert Schweitzer

The greatest lesson we can learn from the past ... is that freedom is at the core of every successful nation in the world. — Frederick Chiluba

For our past can be a prison we are locked in permanently, or it can be the key to our freedom if we glean the lessons from it and deal with it directly. — Kevin Powell

I don't want you to be free from something, I simply want you to be free. See the difference: Freedom from is never total; that "from" keeps it entrapped with the past. Freedom from can never be real freedom. Neither can freedom for ever be real freedom; that is a search for a new slavery. — Osho

Don't expect anything from anybody, this is also a great freedom. Don't expect things to be different or people to be in service to you or your own life or projections. Feel gradually that natural feeling of detachment. Dont watch constantly with the eyes of relationship and past and so on. Stay faithful to your own discovery, leave the rest and life will take care of it. — Mooji

I feel different, better, about my personal life as well as my professional life. So much confidence comes simply because I have reached this very good age. Women my age today are forging new ground. Society stops defining us by our reproductive capacity, sexual attractiveness, or other traditional measures, so we become liberated from stereotype. We are freed to grow into our full selves.

I couldn't have allowed myself to feel so positive in the past. When I was at the height of my film career, I didn't have the kind of respect I now have from the theatrical community. I hadn't yet proved that I have the chops for the stage. But now I have a stature I've never before enjoyed.

Virginia Woolf herself observed that when her Aunt Mary left her enough money to live on, her financial independence meant she "need not hate" or "flatter any man." She said this was of even more value to her freedom and autonomy than the right to vote. — Kathleen Turner

Each time you allow the past to hold your future, [he] steals more and more from you. — Pepper D. Basham

All meditations are nothing but efforts to bring you to the present. When you live in the present moment, with no past hanging around you, with no future projection, you are free from life and death, you are free from body and mind. You are free - simply free - you are freedom. — Rajneesh

Dogs invite us not only to share their joy but also to live in the moment, where we are neither proceeding from nor moving toward, where the enchantment of the past and future cannot distract us, where a freedom from practical desire and a cessation of our usual ceaseless action allows us to recognize the truth of our existence, the reality of our world and purpose-if we dare. — Dean Koontz

If all the exchange-ratios of the past were erased from human memory, the process of market-price-determination might certainly become more difficult, because everybody would have to construct a new scale of valuations for himself; but it would not become impossible. In fact, people the whole world over are engaged daily and hourly in the operation from which all prices result: the decision as to the relative significance enjoyed by specific quantities of goods as conditions for the satisfaction of wants. — Ludwig Von Mises

The things we have in common from our past, long past, are often in my mind. Now that it is all over bar the final destruction of the weapons I look forward to the freedom to lay bare my experiences unfettered by codes now redundant.
This is the only freedom left to me and those Republicans of like mind. — Dolours Price

In the wisdom of uncertainty lies the freedom from our past, from the known, from the prison of past conditioning. Uncertainty is the fertile ground of creativity and freedom. — Deepak Chopra

Understanding where you come from means taking a good hard look at your past and giving yourself the freedom to learn from it. — Debra Fileta

Instructions for freedom:
1. Life's metaphors are God's instructions.
2. You have just climbed up and above the roof, there is nothing between you and the Infinite; now, let go.
3. The day is ending, it's time for something that was beautiful to turn into something else that is beautiful. Now, let go.
4. Your wish for resolution was a prayer. You are being here is God's response, let go and watch the stars came out, in the inside and in the outside.
5. With all your heart ask for Grace and let go.
6. With all your heart forgive him, forgive yourself and let him go.
7. Let your intention be freedom from useless suffering then, let go.
8. Watch the heat of day pass into the cold night, let go.
9. When the Karma of a relationship is done, only Love remains. It's safe, let go.
10. When the past has past from you at last, let go.. then, climb down and begin the rest of your life with great joy. — Elizabeth Gilbert

I'm learning how much I have to learn, how little I know, how fragile my understanding is. I'm learning to be thankful and patient; today is all that we will ever have in this life. If we spend our time obsessing with the future or regretting the past then we will never live. Tomorrow will always be tomorrow and yesterday cannot be changed. The wise man seeks God in the now and brings both his regrets and fears before Him. The freedom that we are offered is truly amazing: to live, today, free from even our own fallen desires. This is where I want to be. — Jon Foreman

It is my earnest hope - indeed the hope of all mankind - that from this solemn occasion a better world shall emerge out of the blood and carnage of the past, a world found upon faith and understanding, a world dedicated to the dignity of man and the fulfillment of his most cherished wish for freedom, tolerance and justice. — Douglas MacArthur

Remembering to forget the past allows you freedom from a past that holds back your Christian growth. — Elizabeth George

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

Living a life of faith is not superficial. You are not simply living in some hurt from the past, trying to be the top dog, or even tying to fulfill a parent inadequacy. No, you are on a unique journey, living each day anew, with freedom to be yourself, with special guidance from above, there is a set purpose to what your doing, and some goal in mind. — Phil Mitchell

There's freedom in hitting bottom, in seeing that you won't be able to save or rescue your daughter, her spouse, his parents, or your career, relief in admitting you've reached the place of great unknowing. This is where restoration can begin, because when you're still in the state of trying to fix the unfixable, everything bad is engaged: the chatter of your mind, the tension of your physiology, all the trunks and wheel-ons you carry from the past. It's exhausting, crazy-making. — Anne Lamott

Without freedom from the past, there is no freedom to all ... — Jiddu Krishnamurti

One thing about having mostly absent parents that I think was perhaps "good" for the development of my intellect/writing is that I was given almost total freedom to read/write/look at whatever I wanted. I wonder a lot about how my past experiences, particularly my negative childhood (home life and being severely bullied/ostracized throughout school) as formed my/my thoughts/my writing, though I should also note those things were far from the only thing that had an impact on me/my writing. — Marie Calloway