From Fear To Freedom Quotes & Sayings

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

The spirit of bondage works by fear for the slave fears the rod: but love cries, Abba, Father; it disposes us to go to God, and behave ourselves towards God as children; and it gives us clear evidence of our union to God as His children, and so casts out fear. So that it appears that the witness of the Spirit the apostle speaks of, is far from being any whisper, or immediate suggestion or revelation; but that gracious holy effect of the Spirit of God in the hearts of the saints, the disposition and temper of children, appearing in sweet childlike love to God, which casts out fear or a spirit of a slave. — Jonathan Edwards

The prison that exists in a man's mind is far more difficult to escape from than anything built with brick walls and steel doors. For it is the fear of freedom that holds you inside ... — Anirban Bose

In positive terms, we can state that psychological maturity entails finding greater satisfaction in giving than in receiving; having a capacity to form satisfying and permanent loyalties; being primarily a creative, contributing person; having learned to profit from experience; having a freedom from fear (anxiety) with a resulting true serenity and not a pseudo absence of tension; and accepting and making the most of unchangeable reality when it confronts one. — William C. Menninger

In his State of the Union speech in January 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt declared America's commitment to Four Freedoms in the struggle against Nazi totalitarianism. Among them was the freedom from fear. — Robert Dallek

The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way -- everywhere in the world. The third is freedom from want, which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants -- everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear, which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor -- anywhere in the world. — Patrick Henry

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

When this Child Within is not nurtured or allowed freedom of expression, a false or co-dependent self emerges. We begin to live our lives from a victim stance, and experience difficulties in resolving emotional traumas. The gradual accumulation of unfinished mental and emotional business can lead to chronic anxiety, fear, confusion, emptiness and unhappiness. — Charles L. Whitfield

Is freedom anything else than the power of living as we choose? Nothing else. Tell me then, you men, do you wish to live in error? We do not. No one who lives in error is free. Do you wish to live in fear? Do you wish to live in sorrow? Do you wish to live in tension? By no means. No one who is in a state of fear or sorrow or tension is free, but whoever is delivered from sorrows or fears or anxieties, he is at the same time also delivered from servitude. — Epictetus

I am climbing to my freedom, freedom from fear, freedom from marrying the wrong person, like Buddy Willard, just because of sex, freedom from the Florence Crittenden Homes where all the poor girls go who should have been fitted out like me, because what they did, they would do anyway.. — Sylvia Plath

There is a real fear around shifting from our existing economic system because people believe it gives us social organisation, a sense of freedom, and the ability to be nice to each other. Growth is seen as a social lubricant that allows us to be socially responsible. — Tim Jackson

Make no mistake, hiding one's true self away in a closet and creating a facade of heterosexuality is not without its consequences. It may appear to have a degree of safety but from my experience they are very unhealthy places and do all kinds of terrible things to individuals psychologically, emotionally and behaviourally ... to say nothing of projection. The damage of the fear, shame, guilt and self-loathing that exist inside a closet are often reflected unknowingly in the external life of the individual. In or out of the closet; there is a price to pay. Each individual must weigh up the consequences of honesty, openness, secrecy and deception for themselves. Coming out, for most of us, is like an exorcism that releases us of the darkness we have lived in for years and caused us to believe awful things about ourselves. On the other side of the looking glass are freedom, light and life. — Anthony Venn-Brown

Declaring that we will master our fears is the first great leap toward freedom. Our vitality, growth, and destiny all demand that we can topple fear. As so much hangs in the balance, let us better understand what fear really is. Fear is the human motive of aversion. Fear doesn't help us commit to higher aims. It doesn't help us imagine greatness. Its sole aim is immediate release from threat, strain, or pain. It often becomes a by-all-means-necessary approach to controlling any given situation so that the body - but most often the ego - can feel safe and unchallenged. — Brendon Burchard

She fell in love with freedom. In the Sommers' home she had lived shut up within four walls, in a stagnant atmosphere where time moved in circles and where she could barely glimpse the horizon through distorted windowpanes. She had grown up clad in the impenetrable armor of good manners and conventions, trained from girlhood to please and serve, bound by corset, routines, social norms, and fear. Fear had been her companion: fear of God and his unpredictable justice, of authority, of her adoptive parents, of illness and evil tongues, of anything unknown or different; fear of leaving the protection of her home and facing the dangers outside; fear of her own fragility as a woman, of dishonor and truth. Hers had been a sugar-coated reality built on the unspoken, on courteous silences, well-guarded secrets, order, and discipline. She had aspired to virtue but now she questioned the meaning of the word. — Isabel Allende

Let each person find peace within. When you find peace within, you also find that you can do without. This means simply that you no longer need the things of your outside world. "Not needing" is a great freedom. It frees you, first, from fear: fear that there is something you won't have; fear that there is something you have that you will lose; and fear that without a certain thing, you won't be happy. Secondly, "not needing" frees you from anger. Anger is fear announced. When you have nothing to fear, you have nothing over which to be angry. — Neale Donald Walsch

Most people are convinced that as long as they are not overtly forced to do something by an outside power, their decisions are theirs, and that if they want something, it is they who want it. But this is one of the great illusions we have about ourselves. A great number of our decisions are not really our own but are suggested to us from the outside; we have succeeded in persuading ourselves that it is we who have made the decision, whereas we have actually conformed with expectations of others, driven by the fear of isolation and by more direct threats to our life, freedom, and comfort. — Erich Fromm

His greatest virtue, I think, was his honesty--not only to others but to himself...He demanded freedom of expression and lived in what we consider the most important of moral freedoms; freedom from hate, unconditionally; freedom from all self-pity (even throughout all the pain and bad news); freedom from fear of possibly doing something that might help another more than it might help himself; and freedom from that kind of pride that could make a man feel he was better than his brother or neighbor — Duke Ellington

If you approach others with the thought of compassion, that will automatically reduce fear and allow an openness with other people. It creates a positive, friendly atmosphere. With that attitude, you can approach a relationship in which you, yourself, initially create the possibility of receiving affection or a positive response from the other person. And with that attitude, even if the other person is unfriendly or doesn't respond to you in a positive way, then at least you've approached the person with a feeling of openness that gives you a certain flexibility and the freedom to change your approach as needed. — Dalai Lama XIV

Among the basic freedoms to which men aspire that their lives might be full and uncramped, freedom from fear stands out as both a means and an end. A people who would build a nation in which strong, democratic institutions are firmly established as a guarantee against state-induced power must first learn to liberate their own minds from apathy and fear. — Aung San Suu Kyi

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

We look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. The first is freedom of speech and expression. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way. The third is freedom from want. The fourth is freedom from fear. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

In a system which denies the existence of basic human rights, fear tends to be the order of the day. The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear. Never let fear prevent you from doing right. — Aung San Suu Kyi

You speak of being afraid. Yet fear is something you generate in yourself, from your mind's lack of control; and you will learn to look at it and discover for yourself when you choose to be afraid. The first thing you must do is acknowledge that the fear is yours, and you can bid it come and go at will. Begin with this; whenever you feel fear that prevents choice say to yourself: 'What has made me feel fear? Why have I chosen to feel this fear preventing my choice, instead of feeling the freedom to choose?' Fear is a way of not allowing yourself to choose freely what you will do next; a way of letting your body's reflexes, not the needs of your mind, choose for you ... [Y]ou have chosen to do nothing, so that none of the things you fear will come upon you; so your choices are not made by you but by your fear ... I cannot promise to free you of your fear, only that a time will come when you are the master, and fear will not paralyze you. — Marion Zimmer Bradley

If we want to be Christians, we must have some share in Christ's large-heartedness by acting with responsibility and in freedom when the hour of danger comes, and by showing a real sympathy that springs, not from fear , but from the liberating and redeeming love of Christ for all who suffer. Mere waiting and looking on is not Christian behavior. The Christian is called to sympathy and action, not in the first place by his own sufferings, but by the sufferings of his brethren, for whose sake Christ suffered. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Within a system which denies the existence of basic human rights, fear tends to be the order of the day. Fear of imprisonment, fear of torture, fear of death, fear of losing friends, family, property or means of livelihood, fear of poverty, fear of isolation, fear of failure. A most insidious form of fear is that which masquerades as common sense or even wisdom, condemning as foolish, reckless, insignificant or futile the small, daily acts of courage which help to preserve man's self-respect and inherent human dignity. It is not easy for a people conditioned by fear under the iron rule of the principle that might is right to free themselves from the enervating miasma of fear. Yet even under the most crushing state machinery courage rises up again and again, for fear is not the natural state of civilized man. — Aung San Suu Kyi

Love wakes much and sleeps little and, in sleeping, does not sleep. It faints is not weary; it is restricted in its liberty and is great freedom. It sees reasons to fear and does not fear, but, like an ember or a spark of fire, flames always upward, by the fervor of its love, toward God, and through the special help of grace is delivered from all perils and dangers — Thomas A Kempis

When she spread her wings and leaped screeching into the air she had not the slightest doubt that every hand below her would stretch to catch her. And if one could leap from a height with no fear of falling, could one not be said to possess the secret of flight? Just like a bird, just like a god. — David Anthony Durham

He isn't like most guys, you know?'
I know.'
No, but do you really know? I mean here's the deal, what do most guys want from a woman? I'll tell you what we want. We want a warm body to sleep next to, preferably one with a nice pair of tits, maybe someone who'll cook for us and fuck us on a regular basis. Pretty simple, huh? Now, what we don't want is someone who's going to come in and disrupt our lives and steal our souls. That's what we fear most. We call it our freedom, but it's our souls we're talking about. You following me?'
I nodded.
Okay, good. Now forget it. Forget all that,' Pete said. 'Because Jacob's not like that. He's never been like that. He's a damn fool and he wants the exact opposite of all that. He wants someone to obsess over, someone to possess his soul, and those are his corny words, by the way, not mine. It's what he lives for. It's what he thinks life's all about. Do you get what I'm saying?'
I nodded again. — Tiffanie DeBartolo

any movement which is worth while, any action which has any deep significance, must begin with each one of us. I must change first; I must see what is the nature and structure of my relationship with the world - and in the very seeing is the doing; therefore I, as a human being living in the world, bring about a different quality, and that quality, it seems to me, is the quality of the religious mind.

The religious mind is something entirely different from the mind that believes in religion...A religious mind does not seek at all, it cannot experiment with truth. Truth is not something dictated by your pleasure or pain, or by your conditioning as a Hindu or whatever religion you belong to. The religious mind is a state of mind in which there is no fear and therefore no belief whatsoever but only what is - what actually is. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Foolish man, what do you bemoan, and what do you fear? Wherever you look there is an end of evils. You see that yawning precipice? It leads to liberty. You see that flood, that river, that well? Liberty houses within them. You see that stunted, parched, and sorry tree? From each branch liberty hangs. Your neck, your throat, your heart are all so many ways of escape from slavery [...] Do you enquire the road to freedom? You shall find it in every vein of your body. — Al Alvarez

Risk is one of the keys that move you from fear to freedom. — Rhonda Britten

Creation is grace: a statement at which we should like best to pause in reverence, fear and gratitude. God does not grudge the existence of the reality distinct from Himself; He does not grudge it its own reality, nature and freedom. — Karl Barth

Your true purpose is to become your own unique self, and to do so with happiness and freedom from fear. — Bryant McGill

To want something desperately, to be tested, to feel that life will be impossible if the object of one's desires is not achieved, is always dangerous for the soul. Some people attempt to climb Everest because, as they say, it is there; others want nothing but wealth and care little how or where they collect it; others still, with less avaricious tastes - perhaps desiring nothing more than freedom from fear - are blinded by the same personal sun that shines on all human ambition. At some time or another it burns most of us. — Bryan Forbes

Assured of your salvation by the unique grace of our Lord Jesus Christ is the heartbeat of the gospel, joyful liberation from fear of the Final Outcome, a summons to self-acceptance, and freedom for a life of compassion toward others. — Brennan Manning

The war, however, and the rhetoric that accompanied it created an urgency in the black community to call in the long overdue debt their country owed them. "Men of every creed and every race, wherever they lived in the world" were entitled to "Four Freedoms": freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear, Roosevelt said, addressing the American people in his 1941 State of the Union address. — Margot Lee Shetterly

Science ... has opened our eyes to the vastness of the universe and given us light, truth and freedom from fear where once was darkness, ignorance and superstition. There is no personal salvation, except through science. — Luther Burbank

Yoga is a way to freedom. By its constant practice, we can free ourselves from fear, anguish and loneliness. — Indra Devi

We can't save ourselves from fear by seeking safety, because safety always means there's something to be safe from-in other words, something to fear. The way out of fear isn't safety. It's freedom. — Martha Beck

Traditional corporations, particularly large-scale service and manufacturing businesses are organized for efficiency. Or consistency. But not joy. Joy comes from surprise and connection and humanity and transparency and new ... If you fear special requests, if you staff with cogs, if you have to put it all in a manual, then the chances of amazing someone are really quite low. These organizations have people who will try to patch problems over after the fact, instead of motivated people eager to delight on the spot.
The alternative, it seems, is to organize for joy. These are the companies that give their people the freedom (and the expectation) that they will create, connect and surprise. These are the organizations that embrace someone who make a difference, as opposed to searching the employee handbook for a rule that was violated. — Seth Godin

Freedom. The freedom to be, without limits, to the very best of your ability. The freedom to move without fear or reticence and live your life one leap at a time. The freedom to unbind yourself from all those paths that have been constructed for you by society and find your own way through the obstacles. The freedom to write your own physics, accepting nobody's rules of gravity and space but your own. — Sam A. Patel

for the existentialists, what generated anxiety was not the godlessness of the world, per se, but rather the freedom to choose between God and godlessness. Though freedom is something we actively seek, the freedom to choose generates anxiety. "When I behold my possibilities," Kierkegaard wrote, "I experience that dread which is the dizziness of freedom, and my choice is made in fear and trembling." Many people try to flee anxiety by fleeing choice. This helps explain the perverse-seeming appeal of authoritarian societies - the certainties of a rigid, choiceless society can be very reassuring - and why times of upheaval so often produce extremist leaders and movements: Hitler in Weimar Germany, Father Coughlin in Depression-era America, or Jean-Marie Le Pen in France and Vladimir Putin in Russia today. But running from anxiety, Kierkegaard believed, was a mistake because anxiety was a "school" that taught people to come to terms with the human condition. — Scott Stossel

There can be no creative morality unless man has the possibility of freedom. This is where the moralists make their mistake. If they want man to change his way of life, they must assume that he is free, for if he is not, all the raging and protesting in the world will make no difference. On the other hand, a man who is acting from the fear of a moralist's threats or from the lure of his promises is not making a free act! If man is not free, threats and promises may modify his conduct, but they will not change it in any essential respect. If he is free, threats and promises will not make him use his freedom. — Alan W. Watts

Self-discipline is a form of freedom. Freedom from laziness and lethargy, freedom from the expectations and demands of others, freedom from weakness and fear-and doubt. Self-discipline allows a pitcher to feel his individuality, his inner strength, his talent. He is master of, rather than a slave to, his thoughts and emotions. — Harvey Dorfman

[I]t is the greatest absurdity to suppose it in the power of one, or of any number of men, at the entering into society to renounce their essential natural rights, or the means of preserving those rights, when the grand end of civil government, from the very nature of its institution, is for the support, protection, and defence of those very rights; the principal of which, as is before observed, are life, liberty, and property. If men, through fear, fraud, or mistake, should in terms renounce or give up an essential natural right, the eternal law of reason and the grand end of society would absolutely vacate such renunciation. The right of freedom being the gift of God Almighty, it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift and voluntarily become a slave. — Samuel Adams

Men talk of freedom! How many are free to think? Free from fear, from perturbation, from prejudice? Nine hundred and ninety-nine in a thousand are perfect slaves. — Henry David Thoreau

Peace is a state of mind; it is the freedom from all desire to be secure. The mind-heart that seeks security must always be in the shadow of fear. Our desire is not only for material security, but much more for inner, psychological security, and it is this desire to be inwardly secure through virtue, through belief, through a nation, that creates limiting and so conflicting groups and ideas. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Where the mind is without fear
and the head is held high,
where knowledge is free.
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls.
Where words come out from the depth of truth,
where tireless striving stretches its arms toward perfection.
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost it's way
into the dreary desert sand of dead habit.
Where the mind is led forward by thee
into ever widening thought and action.
In to that heaven of freedom, my father,
LET MY COUNTRY AWAKE! — Rabindranath Tagore

The trick is to ride the wave,
Fast, wide-open and
in deep Now-magic.
Free, burning fear for fuel
Generous, knowing there is always more where that came from.
Cresting, spray of liquid jewels hanging, shining in the sun and wind.
Flying down the wave in graceful slices.
Rolling, tumbling under, over
Breathless falling, floating into the deep dark beneath.
Rising, face breaks the surface
Laughing
Kneeling, standing
Riding again.
Sunset waits behind the horizon
But daylight begs us to swim
Out beyond
Where our feet can't touch bottom.
Into the deep wild
Where the next wave can
sweep us higher,
Show us what else is possible
In this marvelous place. — Jacob Nordby

I apprehend no danger to our country from a foreign foe. Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter. From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence, I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants, and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men, and become the instruments of their own undoing. Make them intelligent, and they will be vigilant; give them the means of detecting the wrong, and they will apply the remedy. — Daniel Webster

Our fellow men are black magicians. And whoever is with them
is a black magician on the spot. Think for a moment, can you
deviate from the path that your fellow men have lined up for you?
And if you remain with them, your thoughts and your actions are
fixed forever in their terms. That is slavery. The warrior, on the
other hand, is free from all that. Freedom is expensive, but the
price is not impossible to pay. So, fear your captors, your
masters. Don't waste your time and your power fearing freedom. — Carlos Castenada

I am, and that is all I know at times,
My being shaped by forces known and not.
But whereas words are made to bend to rhymes,
My feet are bound to steps that I have wrought.

I feel myself expanding into this
Beautiful niche I could not see before
But I always sensed-and now I cannot miss
Myself: I am unlimited and more

Is opening to me, the more I open
To this sweet fear, like falling from a cloud,
My heart's inertia clear and calm, unspoken
But heard. It says to me: "You are allowed."

And I am free at last to feel this way
To take this step: to wonder, love and stray. — David Griswold

My world falls apart, crumbles, "The centre cannot hold." There is no integrating force, only the naked fear, the urge of self-preservation. I am afraid. I am not solid, but hollow. I feel behind my eyes a numb, paralysed cavern, a pit of hell, a mimicking nothingness. I never thought. I never wrote, I never suffered. I want to kill myself, to escape from responsibility, to crawl back abjectly into the womb. I do not know who I am, where I am going - and I am the one who has to decide the answers to these hideous questions. I long for a noble escape from freedom - I am weak, tired, in revolt from the strong constructive humanitarian faith which presupposes a healthy, active intellect and will. There is nowhere to go. — Sylvia Plath

The deepest parts of you know that if freedom from fear was as easy as 'creating a new reality' for yourself, then you would already be the fearless person you know in your heart that you're meant to be. — Guy Finley

A Last Word
Let us go hence: the night is now at hand;
The day is over worn, the birds all flown;
And we have reaped the crops the gods have sown;
Despair and death; deep darkness o'er the land,
Broods like an owl; we cannot understand
Laughter or tears, for we have only known
Surpassing vanity: vain things alone
Have driven our perverse and aimless band..
Let us go hence, some whither strange and cold,
To Hollow Lands where just men and unjust
Find end of labor, where's rest for the old,
Freedom to all from love and fear and lust.
Twine our torn hands! O pray the earth enfold
Our life-sick hearts and turn them into dust — Ernest Dowson

The nation state has taken the place of God. Responsibilities for education, healing and public welfare which had formerly rested with the Church devolved more and more upon the nation state ... National governments are widely assumed to be responsible for and capable of providing those things which former generations thought only God could provide - freedom from fear, hunger, disease and want - in a word: "happiness". — Lesslie Newbigin

On the Left side of the blackboard I print a capital F on the right side another capital F. I draw an arrow from left to right, from FEAR to FREEDOM.
I don't think anyone achieves complete freedom, but what I am trying to do with you is drive fear into a corner — Frank McCourt

Culture, far from giving us freedom, only develops, as it advances, new necessities; the fetters of the physical close more tightly around us, so that the fear of loss quenches even the ardent impulse toward improvement, and the maxims of passive obedience are held to be the highest wisdom of life. — Friedrich Schiller

We have educated ourselves into a world from which wonder, and he fear and dread and splendor and freedom of wonder have been banished. Of course wonder is costly. You couldn't incorporate it into a modern state, beacuse it is the antithesis of the anxiously worshiped security which is what a modern state is asked to give. Wonder is marvellous but it is also cruel, cruel, cruel. It is undemocratic, discriminatory and pitiless. — Robertson Davies

Only love can free us from fear. Fear causes us to cower in the shadows; Love allows us to dance in the sunlight. — Donald L. Hicks

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

I believe that at this point in history, the greatest danger to our freedom and way of life comes from the reasonable fear of omniscient State powers kept in check by nothing more than policy documents. — Edward Snowden

When you teach a man to hate and to fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color, or his beliefs or the policies that he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you, threaten your freedom or your job or your home or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens, but as enemies. — Robert Kennedy

Crime, folly, sickness and all phenomena must be contemplated with complete freedom from fear aversion or shame. Otherwise we shall fail to see accurately, and interpret intelligently; in which case we shall be unable to outwit and outfight them. — Aleister Crowley

'Freedom from fear' could be said to sum up the whole philosophy of human rights. — Dag Hammarskjold

Here were the luxury and priviledge of the well-fed man scoffing at all hopes and progress for the rest. [He] owed nothing to a world that nurtured him kindly, liberally educated him for free, sent him to no wars, brought him to manhood without scary rituals or famine or fear of vengeful gods, embraced him with a handsome pension in his twenties and placed no limits on his freedom of expression. This was an easy nihilism that never doubted that all we had made was rotten, never thought to pose alternatives, never derived hope from friendship, love, free markets, industry, technology, trade, and all the arts and sciences. — Ian McEwan

[W]e should be mucking about all the time, because mucking about is enjoying life for its own sake, now, and not in preparation for an imaginary future. It's obvious that the mirth-filled man, the cheerful soul, the childish adult is the one who has least to fear from life. — Tom Hodgkinson

When we are unwilling to draw clear moral lines between free societies and fear societies, when we are unwilling to call the former good and the latter evil, we will not be able to advance the cause of peace because peace cannot be disconnected from freedom. — Natan Sharansky

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 best antidote to worry is action. If there is an action that will lessen the likelihood of a dreaded outcome occurring, and if that action doesn't cost too much in terms of effort or freedom, then take it. The worry about whether we remembered to close the baby gate at the top of the stairs can be stopped in an instant by checking. Then it isn't a worry anymore; it's just a brief impulse. Almost all of the worry parents feel about keeping their children safe evolves from the conflict between intuition and inaction.
Your choices when worrying are clear: take action, have faith, pray, seek comfort, or keep worrying. — Gavin De Becker

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

Was Adam safe? Was any child, even his own dearest Anna, ever free from danger? As soon as a son or daughter was placed in the care of others a parent had made an act of trust. If that was misplaced or mistaken, it could soon come to be seen as carelessness or neglect. Perhaps being a parent was to live in a state of constant fear, where the cost of the freedom of youth lay in the anxiety of those who protected it? Because — James Runcie

Is there any country, sir," pursued the history student, "where submission to Government is not due to fear?" "The freedom that exists in any country," I replied, "may be measured by the extent of this reign of fear. Where its threat is confined to those who would hurt or plunder, there the Government may claim to have freed man from the violence of man. But if fear is to regulate how people are to dress, where they shall trade, or what they must eat, then is man's freedom of will utterly ignored, and manhood destroyed at the root. — Rabindranath Tagore

Julian recognized that the strength of the orthodox Church rested to a great extent on the imperial discrimination in its favour. According to Ammianus, he tried to atomize the Church by ending the system:
'He ordered the priests of the different Christian sects, and their supporters to be admitted to the palace, and politely expressed his wish that, their quarrels being over, each might follow his own beliefs without hindrance or fear. He thought that freedom to argue their beliefs would simply deepen their differences, so that he would never be faced by a united common people. He found from experience that no wild beasts are as hostile to men, as Christians are to each other.' — Paul Johnson

Creator and Sustainer. Men are to make their own mistakes and successes. Each man is to work out his salvation (or damnation) in fear and trembling (Philippians 2:12). Other men are to sit in judgment over him only when he commits public evil. They are not to command him as imitation gods. They are not to issue comprehensive commands and monitor him constantly. That is God's job, not man's. Thus, God's hierarchy produces social freedom. It relieves mankind from any pretended autonomy from God's total sovereignty. Men are not to seek to create predestinating hierarchies. They can leave their fellow men alone, so long as God's institutional laws are obeyed in public. — Gary North

Things I learned from a man called "The Nazarene"
1- Being poor does not equal being miserable.
2- People will judge you, but their judgment should not define who you are.
3- Going against what others hold as true is not necessarily a bad thing.
4- Everyone is sacred.
5- Life is sometimes a lonely and dry place, like desert, but those times are there to help us meditate on what is truly important in our lives.
6- Complaining or getting angry because there is a storm in our lives solves nothing; embrace the storm and keep calm.
7- Treasure and protect the children of the world, they hold the key of what is pure and innocent; they are the way to freedom.
8- We are free to be who we want to be, it is our choice to be slaves or kings.
9- Fear nothing.
10- The person you don't like is also your neighbor.
11- The words following "I AM" define who we are, we must choose wisely. — Martin Suarez

Isn't it important for your friends close by and far away to know the high cost of these insights? Wouldn't they find it a source of consolation to see that light and darkness, hope and despair, love and fear are never very far from each other, and that spiritual freedom often requires a fierce spiritual battle? — Henri J.M. Nouwen

From the earliest ages of history to the present day there have never been thirteen millions of people associated in one political body who enjoyed so much freedom and happiness as the people of these United States. You have no longer any cause to fear dangers from abroad ... It is from within, among yourselves - from cupidity, from corruption, from disappointed ambition and inordinate thirst for power - that factions will be formed and liberty endangered ... — Andrew Jackson

Freedom from stress, freedom from anxiety, freedom from depression; freedom is autonomy from all that stagnates growth in this ever complex and noisy world. By the fear of being in the unknown, we often overlook and forget the serene view of being on the raft: the glowing virgin stars, the gentle ways that the waves moves, and the endless possibilities that exist under the sun. The fundamental principle of freedom is to be lost and our state of mind never differs too far from this analogy of being stranded in the middle of the ocean. — Forrest Curran

We are the Amazons" said Myrina."We are the killers of beasts and men. Wild ourselves, we inhabit the wild places. Freedom courses in our blood, and death whispers at the tip of our arrows. We fear nothing, fear runs from us. Try to stop us, and you will feel our rage. — Anne Fortier

The fusty showman fumbles, must
Fit in a particle of dust
The universe, for fear it gain
Its freedom from my cube of brain.
Yet dust bears seeds that grow to grace
Behind my crude-striped wooden face
As I, a puppet tinsel-pink
Leap on my springs, learn how to think
Till like the trembling golden stalk
Of some long-petalled star, I walk
Through the dark heavens, and the dew
Falls on my eyes and sense thrills through. — Edith Sitwell

Existential anguish derives from the human freedom to think and act, experience love for life, and fear death. We must decide whether we wish to embrace all experience and encounters in life or seek escape from various aspect of human nature. How we resolve to address existential anguish becomes a large part of our personal story. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Countless others, however, failed to escape the relentless pursuit of the auditors, who assured society that law would prevail. They hunted those who tried to circumvent their rules, which were harsh to prevent the city's power supply from failing. The rules had to be harsh to avoid bad precedents.
Nobody had the freedom to spontaneously use their imagination. This was the order of things. — Alexandre A. Loch

We humans, male and female, exist behind emotional barriers as lonely, autonomous souls longing for freedom and love. Our yearning or Sehnsucht is for release from isolation, rejection, and death. We are autonomous but not free. We nevertheless fear intimacy and its theological counterpart, holiness. If it breaks through to us, it may destroy us. If we fall into a sea of holiness, we may drown. We have eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, have recognized our nakedness, and have clothed ourselves. We do not want to be found naked, and we know that if intimacy breaks through our barriers, our shame will be made visible. We cannot bear to let go of the false freedom of being an autonomous agent. — Duane Garrett

We believe in bravery. We believe in taking action. We believe in freedom from fear and in acquiring the skills to force the bad out of our world so that the good can prosper and thrive. If you also believe in those things, we welcome you. — Veronica Roth

One of the things my service in Iraq did give me was this freedom from fear of failure or any kind of expectations that I had to take a standard path. — Kevin Powers

Contrary to what I had thought, I did not need easing circumstances, relief from difficulty, and distance from pain in order to be free. I was learning that the freedom Jesus secured for me is not freedom from pain and suffering here and now. Rather, it's freedom from bitterness, anger, fear, resentment, self-pity, offense, and hopelessness in the crucible of present pain and suffering; it is freedom from my burdensome sense of "I deserve better," the encumbrance of entitlement. I was realizing that only the gospel can free us from the enslaving pressure to defend ourselves. That's real freedom - God-sized freedom! — Tullian Tchividjian

10:13 Your situation is not unique! Every human life faces contradictions! Here is the good news: God believes in your freedom! He has made it possible for you to triumph in every situation that you will ever encounter! 10:14 My 1dearly loved friends! Escape into his image and likeness in you where the 2distorted image (2idolatry) loses its attraction! (Dearly loved friends, translated as 1agapetos; to know the agape love of God is to know our true identity! The word, agape, comes from agoo, meaning to lead as a shepherd guides his sheep, and pao, to rest, like in Psalm 23, "he leads me beside still waters where my soul is restored; by the waters of reflection my soul remembers who I am! Now I can face the valley of the shadow of death and fear no evil!") — Francois Du Toit

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

Gandhi is the other person. I believe Gandhi is the only person who knew about real democracy - not democracy as the right to go and buy what you want, but democracy as the responsibility to be accountable to everyone around you. Democracy begins with freedom from hunger, freedom from unemployment, freedom from fear, and freedom from hatred. To me, those are the real freedoms on the basis of which good human societies are based. — Vandana Shiva

We all say we hate being misunderstood and how we desperately want to find people who understand us. But it is not lack of compatible people that keeps us lonely. There is no shortage of people on your journey. The real, secret obstacle that we have against finding authentic, genuine relationships with people is our subconscious fear of growth. If we stick around in the bin of broken toys playing the queen or the king, at least we get to feel some sense of accomplishment at being the most evolved person we know. To find our tribe means finding people we can learn from, people who are better at some things than we are, people who have something to teach. We say we want it, but how many of us fear being a beginner more than loneliness and much more than being in the wrong crowd? There is a strange comfort, a sense of safety, to suffering and loneliness. To be happy, to find our family, we must be willing to let that go. — Vironika Tugaleva

You said that love could not be feigned and could not be stolen" she said passionately. "And now you say I am to be your queen. And yet you imprison me and give me no freedom. You know what it is like to be caged, It is a death. You tell me I cannot hide from you and yet you punish me for hiding.You say you do not want me to fear you and you treat me like I am a slave. Forgive me my Lord"-and here she bowed her head sadly, contrite and meek-"I don not understand why you are punishing me for something you say I cannot do. I do not understand your love, if this is the love you offer me. — Alison Croggon

Each new step into his new human existence is frightening. It always means to give up a secure state, which was relatively known, for one which is new, which one has not yet mastered. Undoubtedly, if the infant could think at the moment of the severance of the umbilical cord, he would experience the fear of dying. A loving fate protects us from this first panic. But at any new step, at any new stage of our birth, we are afraid again. We are never free from two conflicting tendencies: one to emerge from the womb, from the animal form of existence into a more human existence, from bondage to freedom; another, to return to the womb, to nature, to certainty and security. — Erich Fromm

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.

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

Freedom from fear and injustice and oppression will be ours only in the measure that men who value such freedom are ready to sustain its possession - to defend it against every thrust from within or without. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

I found myself grinning until my cheeks hurt, my scalp prickling till I thought it might lift off my head. My tongue ran away from me, giddy with freedom. This, and this, and this, I said to him. I did not have to fear that I spoke too much. I did not have to worry that I was too slender, or too slow. This and this and this! I taught him how to skip stones, and he taught me how to carve wood. I could feel every nerve in my body, every brush of air against my skin. — Madeline Miller

Not only should we observe moderation with food, but we must also abstain from every other sin so that just as we fast with our stomach, we should fast with our tongue. Likewise, we should fast with our eyes; i.e. not look at agitating things, not allow your eyes freedom to roam, not to look shamelessly and without fear. Similarly, arms and legs should be restrained from doing any evil acts. — Dorotheus Of Gaza

What first truly stirred my soul was not fear or pain, nor was it pleasure or games; it was the yearning for freedom. I had to gain freedom - but from what, from whom? Little by little, in the course of time, I mounted freedom's rough unaccommodating ascent. To gain freedom first of all from the Turk, that was the initial step; after that, later, this new struggle began: to gain freedom from the inner Turk - from ignorance, malice and envy, from fear and laziness, from dazzling false ideas; and finally from idols, all of them, even the most revered and beloved. — Nikos Kazantzakis

The more time you invest in thinking about the project - where to begin and how to pull it all together - the more original, successful, and enjoyable the project will be. There is always an element of fear here - everyone is afraid of failing. Don't be! The truth is that you are going to fail in some way, but this is something to be embraced and viewed as a learning experience. There is freedom in recognizing you will fail - you'll be inspired to push yourself. With every finished project you will probably have a list of things you would do differently next time. Expect this from the beginning and the journey will be more rewarding. — Nathan Smith