Freedom Illusion Quotes & Sayings

We have created our own fake world in order to satisfy our imagination through the illusion. — Nilantha Ilangamuwa

All of us must do our best to live gracefully in the present moment. I now see depression as akin to being tied to a chair with restraints on my wrists. It took me a long time to realize that I only magnify my distress by struggling for freedom. My pain diminished when I gave up trying to escape completely from it. However, don't interpret my current approach to depression as utterly fatalistic. I do whatever I can to dull depression's pain, while premising my life on its continuing presence. The theologian and philosopher Thomas Moore puts it well with his distinction between cure and care. While cure implies the eradication of trouble, care "appreciates the mystery of human suffering and does not offer the illusion of a problem-free life. — David A. Karp

Freedom is an illusion of collective consciousness. — Toba Beta

The idea of the freedom of the human will has found enthusiastic supporters and stubborn opponents in plenty. There are those who, in their moral fervor, label anyone a man of limited intelligence who can deny so patent a fact as freedom. Opposed to them are others who regard it as the acme of unscientific thinking for anyone to believe that the uniformity of natural law is broken in the sphere of human action and thinking. One and the same thing is thus proclaimed, now as the most precious possession of humanity, now as its most fatal illusion. — Rudolf Steiner

Perhaps, there is no such person who can be called truly free, but only those who can be deemed so by comparison. — Ashim Shanker

So you see, we are not free to choose our fate. There is a yoke to be borne and freedom is only an illusion. I am not free. God has put me here on earth for a reason. — Naomi Ragen

There is no objective reality. But there is only an illusion of consciousness, there is only an objectivication of reality, which was created by the spirit. The origin of life is creativity, freedom; and the personality, subject, and spirit are the representatives of that origin, but not the nature, not the object. — Nikolai Berdyaev

Freedom is an illusion, but a valuable one. — Skinner

It is just an illusion of freedom. We are, perhaps, as free as a railway carriage. — Venugopal Gupta

Marketing jingles from every angle lure patrons to turn our backs on our locally owned stores, restaurants, and farms. And nobody considers that unpatriotic. This appears to aggravate Tod Murphy. We have the illusion of consumer freedom, but we've sacrificed our community life for the pleasure of purchasing lots of cheap stuff. Making and moving all that stuff can be so destructive: child labor in foreign lands, acid rain in the Northeast, depleted farmland, communities where the big economic engine is crystal meth. We often have the form of liberty, but not the substance. — Barbara Kingsolver

But the world is out there, and it understands that the illusion of knowledge and freedom is not the same as the real thing. Eventually it will fade, and there are those who will do whatever it takes to make that happen sooner rather than later. — Aimee Carter

Freedom is an illusion. Try walking along the road with long hair and it won't be long before a sheriff pulls up asking questions. — Shaman Elizabeth Herrera

Once the truth is denied to human beings, it is pure illusion to try to set them free. Truth and freedom either go together hand in hand or together they perish in misery. — Pope John Paul II

If freedom is a requisite for human happiness, then all that's necessary is to provide the illusion of freedom. — B.F. Skinner

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

Oedipa resolved to pull in at the next motel she saw, however ugly, stillness and four walls having at some point become preferable to this illusion of speed, freedom, wind in your hair, unreeling landscape - it wasn't. What the road really was, she fancied, was this hypodermic needle, inserted somewhere ahead into the vein of a freeway, a vein nourishing the mainliner L.A., keeping it happy, coherent, protected from pain, or whatever passes, with a city, for pain. But were Oedipa some single melted crystal of urban horse, L.A., really, would be no less turned on for her absence. — Thomas Pynchon

Wilbur Larch knew that freedom was an orphan's most dangerous illusion, and when he finally heard from Homer, he scanned the oddly formal letter, which was disappointing in its lack of detail. Regarding illusions, and all the rest, there was simply no evidence.
'I am learning to swim,' wrote Homer Wells. (I know! I know! Tell me about it! Thought Wilbur Larch.) 'I do better at driving,' Homer added. — John Irving

"Your Breast is Enough"
By Pablo Neruda
Your breast is enough for my heart,
and my wings for your freedom.
What was sleeping above your soul will rise
out of my mouth to heaven.
In you is the illusion of each day.
You arrive like the dew to the cupped flowers.
You undermine the horizon with your absence.
Eternally in flight like the wave.
I have said that you sang in the wind
like the pines and like the masts.
Like them you are tall and taciturn,
and you are sad, all at once, like a voyage.
You gather things to you like an old road.
You are peopled with echoes and nostalgic voices.
I awoke and at times birds fled and migrated
that had been sleeping in your soul. — Pablo Neruda

As I've said, freedom is really an illusion. Anytime we think we have a real choice, it just means we haven't seen the shotgun aimed at our navel. — Jeff Lindsay

The recipe for beauty is to have less illusion and more Soul, to retreat from the belief of pain or pleasure in the body into the unchanging calm and glorious freedom of spiritual harmony. — Mary Baker Eddy

Everybody talks about freedom, citizens," the big man said gently, seeming to draw upon that very sure source of personal knowledge again, "but they dont really want it. Half of them wants it but the other half dont. What they really want is to maintain an illusion of freedom in front of their wives and business associates. Its a satisfactory compromise, and as long they can have that they can get along without the other which is more expensive. The only trouble is, every man who declares himself free to his friends has to make a slave out of his wife and employees to keep up the illusion and prove it; the wife to be free in front of her bridgeclub has to command her Help, Husband and Heirs. It resolves itself into a battle; whoever wins, the other one loses. For every general in this world there have to be 6,000 privates. — James Jones

She stared at it. How had they found her? How? She'd changed her name. She'd disappeared. Had they known where she was all along, been watching her all this time? The idea horrified her. That the years of freedom could have been an illusion ... — Anonymous

Freedom without illusion.
Petra Hermans
September 28, 2016 — Petra Hermans

In April 1917 the illusion of isolation was destroyed, America came to the end of innocence, and of the exuberant freedom of bachelor independence. That the responsibilities of world power have not made us happier is no surprise. To help ourselves manage them, we have replaced the illusion of isolation with a new illusion of omnipotence. — Barbara Tuchman

There was no real comfort in being alone with her thoughts, her memories, but somehow the illusion of freedom lessened her despair. — Octavia E. Butler

The real damage is done by those millions who want to 'survive.' The honest men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don't want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes. Those who won't take measure of their own strength, for fear of antagonizing their own weakness. Those who don't like to make waves - or enemies. Those for whom freedom, honour, truth, and principles are only literature. Those who live small, mate small, die small. It's the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you'll keep it under control. If you don't make any noise, the bogeyman won't find you. But it's all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe?! From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn. — Sophie Scholl

The life of West, Nietzsche said, is based on Christianity. The values of the West are based on Christianity. Some of these values seem to have taken a life of their own, and this gives us the illusion that we can get rid of Christianity and keep the values. This, Nietzsche says, is an illusion ... Remove the Christian foundation, and the values must go too. — Dinesh D'Souza

As for those who think the Arab world promises freedom, the briefest study of its routine traditional treatment of blacks (slavery) and women (purdah) will provide relief from all illusion. If Malcolm X had been a black woman his last message to the world would have been entirely different. The brotherhood of Moslem men-all colors-may exist there, but part of the glue that holds them together is the thorough suppression of women. — Alice Walker

Trap yourself inside your own brain, switch off the light, block all the escape routes, then turn your back on everything you know to be reality and try and survive there. Try. Living. Nowhere. — Carla H. Krueger

I believe it was Napoleon who first sensed the ease with which, in modern society, the illusion of freedom can be created by strategic relaxation of regulations and law on individual thought, provided it is only individual, while all the time fundamental economic and political liberties are being circumscribed. The barriers to the kind of power Napoleon wielded as emperor are not individual rights so much as the kinds of rights associated with autonomy of local community, voluntary association, political party. These are the real measure of the degree to which central political power is limited in a society. Neither centralization nor bureaucratized collectivism can thrive as long as there is a substantial body of local authorities to check them — Robert A. Nisbet

Freedom isn't an illusion; it's perfectly real in the context of sequential consciousness. Within the context of simultaneous consciousness, freedom is not meaningful, but neither is coercion; it's simply a different context, no more or less valid than the other. It's like that famous optical illusion, the drawing of either an elegant young woman, face turned away from the viewer, or a wart-nosed crone, chin tucked down on her chest. There's no "correct" interpretation; both are equally valid. But you can't see both at the same time.
"Similarly, knowledge of the future was incompatible with free will. What made it possible for me to exercise freedom of choice also made it impossible for me to know the future. Conversely, now that I know the future, I would never act contrary to that future, including telling others what I know: those who know the future don't talk about it. Those who've read the Book of Ages never admit to it. — Ted Chiang

The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater. — Frank Zappa

You're like a half-tamed creature, still shy of the bridle. 'Except you enthrall me, never shall be free.' But freedom is an illusion, anyway. — Nenia Campbell

Absolute freedom is an illusion. For while an employed man might be free from starvation, he is a slave to his employer's financial aspirations, and, working-hours. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Sin creates the illusion of freedom. In the end it fools us into seeking freedom from God rather than finding freedom in God. — Erwin McManus

Is true freedom even possible? It certainly is in a momentary sense, as any mature practitioner of meditation knows, and those moments can increase in both number and duration with practice. Therefore, I see no reason why a person couldn't perfectly banish the illusion of the self. However, just the ability to meditate - to rest as consciousness for a few moments prior to the arising of the next thought - can offer a profound relief from mental suffering. — Sam Harris

Free zero-point energy doesn't exist in an illusion of freedom. — Toba Beta

Playing with various approaches may be due to resistance to going within, to the fear of having to abandon the illusion of being something or somebody in particular.Of all the affections the love of oneself comes first. Light and love are impersonal.When you do not think yourself to be this or that, all conflict ceases. Any attempt to do something about your problems is bound to fail, for what is caused by desire can be undone only in freedom from desire. You cannot be rid of problems without abandoning illusions. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

The illusion of knowledge and freedom is not the same as the real thing. — Aimee Carter

I may not be free, but I'm not about to surrender the illusion of choice. — Johnny Rich

Rulers who destroy men's freedom commonly begin by trying to retain its forms ... They cherish the illusion that they can combine the prerogatives of absolute power with the moral authority that comes from popular assent. — Alexis De Tocqueville

Freedom from worries and surcease from strain are illusions that always inhabit the distance. — Edwin Way Teale

To be in community is to be in personal, interdependent relationship, and it comes with a price: our illusion of independence, our freedom from obligation. You can't have it both ways. If you want community, you must be willing to be obligated, dependent, tied, attached. You will — Charles Eisenstein

A recent book by University of Chicago professor of philosophy and law Brian Leiter outlines what I believe will become the theoretical consensus that does away with religious liberty in spirit if not in letter. "There is no principled reason," he writes, "for legal or constitutional regimes to single out religion for protection." . . . Evoking the principle of fairness, Leiter argues that everybody's conscience should be accorded the same legal protections. Thus he proposes to replace religious liberty with a plenary "liberty of conscience."

Leiter's argument is libertarian. He wants to get the government out of the business of deciding whose conscience is worth protecting. This mentality seems to expand freedom, but that's an illusion. In practice it will lead to diminished freedom, as is always the case with any thoroughgoing libertarianism. — R. R. Reno

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

What to wear: An employee chooses. How to dress: His employer chose. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

An anarchist society is by definition a Free Society, but a Free Society is not necessarily Anarchist. It might fall short in several respects. Some failings might seriously limit its desirability. For instance, a Revolution carried out by men in a male-dominated society, might perpetuate sex discrimination, which would limit freedom and undermine the Revolution by leaving it possible for aggressive attitudes to be fostered. The liberal illusion that repressive forces must be tolerated which will ultimately wipe out all freedom
lest the right to dissent be imperilled
could well destroy the revolution. — Albert Meltzer

I fall upon the thorns of life, I bleed. And then? I fall upon the thorns of life, I bleed. And what next? I get laid, I take a short holiday, but very soon after I fall upon those same thorns with gratification in pain, or suffering in joy - who knows what the mixture is! What good, what lasting good is there in me? Is there nothing else between birth and death but what I can get out of this perversity - only a favorable balance of disorderly emotions? No freedom? Only impulses? And what about all the good I have in my heart - does it mean anything? Is it simply a joke? A false hope that makes a man feel the illusion of worth? And so he goes on with his struggles. But this good is no phony. I know it isn't. I swear it. — Saul Bellow

But like everything else in the world that sounds good, freedom is an illusion. And in this case, I had no more choice than a man strapped into Old Sparky who is told he's free to stay alive as long as he can when they throw the switch. I looked up at Roger the Pirate. His smile looked kind of mean all of a sudden. "Quit smirking," I told him. He didn't answer. I followed my sister and Chutsky into the park. — Jeff Lindsay

You are dealing with national security. Anything labeled a national security issie is taken out from the system. There is no due process, no lawyers. They may do with us what they wish. Fear is a government's greatest weapon. With it, they can convince a people that they need to abandon their freedom. In exchange, they get safety. Of course, you just trade one monster for another, but by the time the people realize this, it is too late.
Excerpt from Superhero. — Victor Methos

The only freedom is freedom from illusion ... — Stefan Molyneux

Today's education is entirely defective to the extent that, calling itself positivist, it begins with abusing the child's trust by presenting as true what is only either a temporary phenomenon or a hypothesis, when it's not a blatant untruth; and to the extent that it prevents children from forming in good time their own opinions by creasing into them certain habits that make their freedom of judgement an illusion — Andre Breton

There was beauty in the idea of freedom, but it was an illusion. Every human heart was chained by love. — Cassandra Clare

Our sense of our own freedom results from our not paying attention to what it is actually like to be what we are. The moment we do pay attention, we begin to see that free will is nowhere to be found, and our subjectivity is perfectly compatible with this truth. Thoughts and actions simply arise in the mind. What else could they do? The truth about us is stranger than many suppose: The illusion of free will is itself an illusion. — Sam Harris

The achievement of freedom is hardly possible without the felt mourning. This ability to mourn, i.e, to give up the illusion of a happy childhood, can restore vitality and creativity if a person is able to experience that he was never loved as a child for what he was, but for his achievements, success and good qualities. And that he sacrificed his childhood for this love, this will shake him very deeply. — Alice Miller

And what's care?
What's coldness?
Why you are so foolish of your freedom?

...

Merely an illusion... programmed..... — Deyth Banger

Imagine the ability to let go of everything. To step back from the expectations of life, let it all slip through your fingers as though none of it mattered. Your doubts, your fears, your weaknesses, all of them falling like grains of sand into the wind. It feels like freedom, but it's an illusion. — Pippa DaCosta

I think of the old slavery, and of the way The Economy has now improved upon it. The new slavery has improved upon the old by giving the new slaves the illusion that they are free. The Economy does not take people's freedom by force, which would be against its principles, for it is very humane. It buys their freedom, pays for it, and then persuades its money back again with shoddy goods and the promise of freedom. "Buy a car," it says, "and be free. Buy a boat and be free." Is this not the raw material of bad dreams? Or is it maybe the very nightmare itself? — Wendell Berry

He had outlived the luxurious agonies of youthful blood, and in this very freedom from illusion he recognised the loss of something. From now on, every hour of light-heartedness would be, not a prerogative but an achievement - one more axe or case-bottle or fowling-piece, rescued, Crusoe-fashion, from a sinking ship. — Dorothy L. Sayers

What is there left to understand? Choice is an illusion. Freedom is conceit. The hands that reach out to guide your every step, your every thought, come not from the gods, for they are no less deluded than we - no, my friends, those hands come to each of us ... from each of us. — Steven Erikson

Freedom is to stand alone, unattached and unafraid, free in the understanding of desire which breeds illusion. There is a vast strength in being alone. It is the conditioned, programmed brain that is never alone, for it is filled with knowledge. That which is programmed, religiously or technologically, is always limited. This limitation is the major factor of conflict. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

You wish to be free, but there is no such thing as freedom. You can redecorate dungeon to give illusion of freedom, but you are still in dungeon." "I should've had the choice." "Choice is illusion, same as happiness and freedom. — Carolyn Crane

In order to become whole we must try, in a long process, to discover our own personal truth, a truth that may cause pain before giving us a new sphere of freedom. If we choose instead to content ourselves with intellectual "wisdom," we will remain in the sphere of illusion and self-deception. — Alice Miller

Spiritual practice, by uprooting our personal mythologies of isolation, uncovers the radiant, joyful heart within each of us and manifests this radiance to the world. We find, beneath the wounding concepts of separation, a connection both to ourselves and to all beings. We find a source of great happiness that is beyond concepts and beyond convention. Freeing ourselves from the illusion of separation allows us to live in a natural freedom rather than be driven by preconceptions about our own boundaries and limitations. — Sharon Salzberg

The illusion that freedom is the prerogative of one's own particular race is fairly widespread. Dr Gerard was wiser. He knew that no race, no country and no individual could be described as free. But he also knew that there were different degrees of bondage. — Agatha Christie

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

The complete collapse of the belief in the attainability of freedom and equality through Marxism," writes Peter Drucker, "has forced Russia to travel the same road toward a totalitarian, purely negative, non-economic society of unfreedom and inequality which Germany has been following. Not that communism and fascism are essentially the same. Fascism is the stage reached after communism has proved an illusion, and it has proved as much an illusion in Stalinist Russia as in pre-Hitler Germany."9 No less significant — Friedrich Hayek

He didn't know if it was real, if freedom was something you could earn or win after a long, hard fight, or if it was just an illusion. But he decided it didn't matter. Only this mattered. This moment right here, surrounded by the people he cared about. And he realized this was the paradise his parents had meant when they named this ship. — Mindee Arnett

Before embarking on a voyage, first speak with the ancient sailors, listen to and understand the winds, then patiently make a boat and sail. Yet, even then, be open to other dreams, changes, circumstances. Throughout our lives, we limit ourselves to fixed goals, only to get on the local ferry and just travel the distance between two known points. Yet, we create an illusion of freedom and choice, accompanied by a sense of independence. Thus, we carefully study weather reports, ride on the port side on odd numbered days, starboard on holidays, have tea at fixed times, never speak with those who wear glasses, always smile at those who wear green and of course allow ourselves just the slight possibility of a dream about jumping ship and going off to our island one day.
C'est la vie? Our predictably totalitarian lives are an insult to the human spirit. — Gunduz Vassaf

The illusion that humans possess free will is compounded by the inherent randomness of the universe. Chaos disguised as freedom of choice ... — Henry Lindell

The illusion of free will, of freedom, is a useful tool you know. Let people think they are free and present them with a danger to their so-called freedom, a fear. It's amazing how much you can get them to deal with just as long as you tell them they're still free. — Jordon Greene

Democratic Socialism is simply Totalitarianism that allows you the illusion of a voice in the matter. — A.E. Samaan

The great modern novel of the comic-pathetic illusion of freedom is Confessions of Zeno . — Italo Svevo

Warped and bigoted with preconceived illusions of justice, freedom, and consistency, they cast off the old lore and the old way with the old beliefs; nor ever stopped to think that the lore and those ways were the sole makers of their present thoughts and judgments, and the sole guides and standards in a meaningless universe without fixed aims or stable points of reference. — H.P. Lovecraft

Psychological imprisonment was no less uncomfortable than its physical counterpart. In some ways, it was even worse; it provided the illusion of physical freedom, but garnered none of the benefits of it. — Nenia Campbell

Modern man lives under the illusion that he knows 'what he wants, while he actually wants
what he is supposed to want. In order to accept this it is necessary to realize that to know what one really wants is not comparatively easy, as most people think, but one of the most difficult problems any human being has to solve. It is a task we frantically try to avoid by accepting ready-made goals as though they were our own. — Erich Fromm

The idea that political freedom can be preserved in the absence of economic freedom, and vice versa, is an illusion. Political freedom is the corollary of economic freedom. — Ludwig Von Mises

The old freedom sufficiently survives in the mind of the wage earner to give him the illusion that, while accepting insurance and maintenance from the capitalist state, he can still be a full citizen. He thinks he can have his cake and eat it too. He is mistaken. The great capitalists who procured these regulations from the politicians knew what they were at. They were catching their proletariat in a net, and now they hold it fast. — Hilaire Belloc

I don't mean to defend zoos. Close them all down if you want (and let us hope that what wildlife remains can survive in what is left of the natural world). I know zoos are no longer in people's good graces. Religion faces the same problem. Certain illusion about freedom plague them both. — Yann Martel

True freedom has more to do with following the North Star than going whichever way the wind blows. Sometimes it seems like freedom is blowing with the winds of the day, but that kind of freedom is really an illusion. It turns your boat in circles. Freedom is sailing toward your dreams. — Mary Pipher

Been Contented goes beyond our material wants; contentment sets us free from the illusion of having more or "Better things", or expecting "better times" it sets us free from the illusion that somehow things should be different. — Martin Suarez

What's so bad about addiction? I can't remember. Isn't it something about giving up your freedom? Isn't freedom an illusion? — Jeffrey Steingarten

Freedom is an illusion. It always comes at a price. — Jonathan Stroud

Freedom is an ILLUSION — Dhanwanth

What is society but an individual? [ ... ] The ocean is not society; it is individuals. This was how I managed to gain a modicum of freedom from my terror at the illusion of the ocean called the world. — Osamu Dazai

The greatest deception, and the deepest source of unhappiness, is the illusion of finding life by excluding God, of finding freedom by excluding moral truths and personal responsibility. — Pope John Paul II

Sin is our condition," I said.
"Say rather that love is our rightful condition."
"You talk like
you are a good man! But how can you be good without God?"
He grinned. "Not so good, neither. But what virtue I do have is in me and of me. Men deny the good that comes from themselves, calling it God. So they do with their own evil, calling it the Devil."
I tried to see how this might be.
"There is no Hell, Jacob."
"And the Bible?"
"Was written by men like ourselves."
He was frightening. At the idea of there being no Hell I had felt a breath of something like freedom, but it was illusion. I marvelled at his foolhardiness, feared it, and loved it. — Maria McCann

In so many ways, for so many people, freedom was still an illusion. Barrie thought of the statistics she had read about how many women and children were still enslaved all over the world. Now - not three hundred years ago - and she wondered how it was possible that so little could change. Sometimes it seemed like the world was sliding backward and no one was noticing. — Martina Boone

For you who no longer posses it, freedom is everything, for us who do, it is merely an illusion. — Emile M. Cioran

We have the illusion of freedom only because so few ever try to exercise it. Try it sometime. Try to save your home from the highway crowd, or to work a trade without the approval of the goons, or to open a little business without a permit, or to grow a crop without a quota, or to educate your child the way you want to, or to not have a child. We all have the freedom of a balloon floating in a pin factory. — Karl Hess

Whether they really believe in their brave new world, however, is ultimately beside the point. They're building it. And in the friction-free future, jacked into paradise, we'll have the 'liberty' of living (or rather, or buying the illusion of living), through the benevolent offices of a middleman as nearly omnipotent as god himself. Freedom? A more perfect captivity is difficult to imagine. — Mark Slouka

There are nations in whom the passion for governing others is so much stronger than the desire of personal independence, that for the mere shadow of the one they are found ready to sacrifice the whole of the other. Each one of their number is willing, like the private soldier in an army, to abdicate his personal freedom of action into the hands of his general, provided the army is triumphant and victorious, and he is able to flatter himself that he is one of a conquering host, though the notion that he has himself any share in the domination exercised over the conquered is an illusion. A government strictly limited in its powers and attributions, required to hold its hands from overmeddling, and to let most things go on without its assuming the part of guardian or director, is not to the taste of such a people. — John Stuart Mill

Understand: people judge you by appearances, the image you project through your
actions, words, and style. If you do not take control of this process, then people will see
and define you the way they want to, often to your detriment. You might think that
being consistent with this image will make others respect and trust you, but in fact it is
the opposite - over time you seem predictable and weak. Consistency is an illusion
anyway - each passing day brings changes within you. You must not be afraid to
express these evolutions. The powerful learn early in life that they have the freedom to
mold their image, fitting the needs and moods of the moment. In this way, they keep
others off balance and maintain an air of mystery. You must follow this path and find
great pleasure in reinventing yourself, as if you were the author writing your own
drama — 50 Cent

The plan to carve up British India was never approved of or accepted by Gandhi ... who realised too late that his closest comrades and disciples were more interested in power than principle, and that his own vision had long been clouded by the illusion that the struggle he led for India's freedom was a nonviolent one. — Stanley Wolpert

Words of Emancipation didn't arrive until the middle of June so they called it Juneteenth. So that was it, the night of Juneteenth celebration, his mind went on. The celebration of a gaudy illusion. — Ralph Ellison

Human freedom is not an illusion; it is an objective phenomenon, distinct from all other biological conditions and found in only one species - us. — Daniel Dennett

Cognitive science has something of enormous importance to contribute to human freedom: the ability to learn what our unconscious conceptual systems are like and how our cognitive unconscious functions. If we do not realize that most of our thought is unconscious and that we think metaphorically, we will indeed be slaves to the cognitive unconscious. Paradoxically, the assumption that we have a radically autonomous rationality as traditionally conceived actually limits our rational autonomy. It condemns us to cognitive slavery - to an unaware and uncritical dependence on our unconscious metaphors. To maximize what conceptual freedom we can have, we must be able to see through and move beyond philosophies that deny the existence of an embodied cognitive unconscious that governs most of our mental lives. — George Lakoff

Over the years, Americans in particular have been all too willing to squander their hard-earned independence and freedom for the illusion of feeling safe under someone else's authority. The concept of self-sufficiency has been undermined in value over a scant few generations. The vast majority of the population seems to look down their noses upon self-reliance as some quaint dusty relic, entertained only by the hyperparanoid or those hopelessly incapable of fitting into mainstream society. — Cody Lundin

Jan had friends who like him had left their old homeland and who devoted all their time to the struggle for its lost freedom. All of them had sometimes felt that the bond tying them to their country was just an illusion and that only enduring habit kept them prepared to die for something they did not care about. They all knew that feeling and at the same time were afraid of knowing it; they turned their heads away from fear of seeing the border and stumbling (lured by vertigo as by an abyss) across it to the other side, where the language of their tortured people make a noise as trivial as the twittering of birds. — Milan Kundera

Living under the tremendous illusion that personal freedoms and freedom of speech are devoid of moral assumptions and responsibilities, we have bankrupted ourselves, so that honor, truth, and morality have been sacrificed at the altar of autonomy and self-worship. — Ravi Zacharias