Internal Freedom Quotes & Sayings

Zombies are familiar characters in philosophical thought experiments. They are like people in every way except they have no internal experience ...
If there are enough zombies recruited into our world, I worry about the potential for a self-fulfilling prophecy. Maybe if people pretend they are not conscious or do not have free will - or that the cloud of online people is a person; if they pretend there is nothing special about the perspective of the individual - then perhaps we have the power to make it so. We might be able to collectively achieve antimagic.
Humans are free. We can commmit suicide for the benefit of a Singularity. We can engineer our genes to better support an imaginary hive mind. We can make culture and journalism into second-rate activities and spend centuries remixing the detritus of the 1960s and other eras from before individual creativity went out of fashion.
Or we can believe in ourselves. By chance, it might turn out we are real. — Jaron Lanier

We have our difficulties, true; but we are a wiser and a tougher nation than we were in 1932. Never have there been six years of such far flung internal preparedness in all of history. And this has been done without any dictator's power to command, without conscription of labor or confiscation of capital, without concentration camps and without a scratch on freedom of speech, freedom of the press or the rest of the Bill of Rights. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

Almost all modern governments are highly conscious of what journalism calls 'world opinion.' For sound reasons, mostly of an economic nature, they cannot afford to be condemned in the United Nations, they do not like to be visited by Human Rights Commissions or Freedom of the Press Committees; their need of foreign investment, foreign loans, foreign markets, satisfactory trade relationships, and so on, requires that they be members in more or less good standing of a larger community of interests. Often, too, they are members of military alliances. Consequently, they must maintain some appearance of stability, in order to assure the other members of the community or of the alliance that contracts will continue to be honored, that treaties will be upheld, that loans will be repaid with interest, that investments will continue to produce profits and be safe. "Protracted internal war threatens all of this ... no ally wishes to treat with a government that is on the point of eviction. — Sebastian Marshall

The external freedom won't be given to us but in the exact measure as we've known at a given moment, to developing our internal freedom. — Mahatma Gandhi

Freedom in intellectual work is found to be the basis of internal discipline. — Maria Montessori

We gain internal freedom through external actions. — Ram Dass

Let there be freedom from perturbations with respect to the things which come from the external cause; and let there be justice in the things done by virtue of the internal cause, that is, let there be movement and action terminating in this, in social acts, for this is according to thy nature. — Marcus Aurelius

The end toward which mankind is inexorably developing by the constant overcoming of internal antagonisms is not the enjoyment, ownership, or use of goods, but self-realization, creativity based upon the incorporation into the individual personality of the whole previous development of humanity. Freedom is creative universality, not utility. — C.L.R. James

The more internal freedom you achieve, the more you want: it is more fun to be happy than sad, more enjoyable to choose your own emotions than to have them inflicted on you by mechanical glandular processes, more pleasurable to solve your problems than to be stuck with them forever. — Robert J. Wilson

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

It is all very well to have some internal sense of oneself as an individual, but that sense must correspond to an external reality. Part of that external reality is property. The fact that something belongs to me and not to everyone increases my sense of myself as someone in particular. For Hegel that sense of individual particularity is intrinsic to the modern moral order. Indeed "the right of the subject's particularity to find satisfaction, or
to put it differently
the right of subjective freedom, is the pivotal and focal point in the difference between antiquity and the modern age." The fact that others do not take my property
that they regard it as mine
is also a way in which they recognize me as an individual. It is precisely this recognition that the slave, the bondsman, and the serf lack. That the right to own private property, to control some corner of the world, is universal in the modern state is for Hegel part of its glory. (p. 155) — Jerry Z. Muller

Freedom in society is gauged by our success in getting what we want and conditioned by status and power, by race, class and gender. In the internal world of the psyche, however, freedom means something very different. It is the ability to opt for our long-term physical and spiritual well-being as opposed to our immediate urges. Absent that ability, any talk of 'free will' or 'choice' becomes nearly meaningless. — Gabor Mate

If you take a look at Afghan history, usually they have united to defend against an outside enemy, and as soon as that's accomplished, they turn and start killing each other. This internal instability is a constant invitation to outside forces to come in. I have to think that after the awful years of the Taliban, most Afghans would want to remain at peace, and get the benefits of the new freedom they've found. But I can't be sure that old habits won't reassert themselves. — Lawrence Eagleburger

Our mission is not to impose our peculiar institutions upon other nations by physical force or diplomatic treachery but rather by internal peace and prosperity to solve the problem of self-government and reconcile democratic freedom with national stability. — Benjamin Harrison

Freedom is an internal achievement rather than an external adjustment. — Powell Clayton

In many ways, it's easier to write a book. You have more latitude with structure, and you have the freedom to luxuriate within the internal lives and musings of your characters. But where a screenplay does not always demand great prose, a novel lives or dies by it. — John Fusco

All force strives forward to work far and wide
To live and grow and ever to expand;
Yet we are checked and thwarted on each side
By the world's flux and swept along like sand:
In this internal storm and outward tide
We hear a promise, hard to understand:
From the compulsion that all creatures binds,
Who overcomes himself, his freedom finds. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

When the cities are gone, he thought, and all the ruckus has died away, when sunflowers push up through the concrete and asphalt of the forgotten interstate freeways, when the Kremlin and the Pentagon are turned into nursing homes for generals, presidents and other such shitheads, when the glass-aluminum skyscraper tombs of Phoenix Arizona barely show above the sand dunes, why then, why then, why then by God maybe free men and wild women on horses, free women and wild men, can roam the sagebrush canyonlands in freedom - goddammit! - herding the feral cattle into box canyons, and gorge on bloody meat and bleeding fucking internal organs, and dance all night to the music of fiddles! banjos! steel guitars! by the light of a reborn moon! - by God, yes! Until, he reflected soberly, and bitterly, and sadly, until the next age of ice and iron comes down, and the engineers and the farmers — Edward Abbey

There could never be enough rules so finely crafted as to anticipate and cover every situation, and even if there were, enforcement would be impossibly expensive and burdensome. This approach leads to diminished freedom for everyone ... In the end, it is only an internal moral compass in each individual that can effectively deal with the root causes as well as the symptoms of societal decay. Societies will struggle in vain to establish the common good until sin is denounced as sin and moral discipline takes its place in the pantheon of civic virtues. — D. Todd Christofferson

A world government can intervene militarily in the internal affairs of any nation when it disapproves of their activities. — Kofi Annan

1883 ... The teaching of the Church has elaborated the principle of subsidiarity, according to which a community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions, but rather should support it in case of need and help to co-ordinate its activity with the activities of the rest of society, always with a view to the common good. — The Catholic Church

The poet lives and writes at the frontier between deep internal experience and the revelations of the outer world. There is no going back for the poet once this frontier has been reached; a new territory is visible and what has been said cannot be unsaid. The discipline of poetry is in overhearing yourself say difficult truths from which it is impossible to retreat. Poetry is a break for freedom. In a sense all poems are good; all poems are an emblem of courage and the attempt to say the unsayable; but only a few are able to speak to something universal yet personal and distinct at the same time; to create a door through which others can walk into what previously seemed unobtainable realms, in the passage of a few short lines. — David Whyte

Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.
[Special Message to the Congress on the Internal Security of the United States, August 8, 1950] — Harry Truman

In suffocating the voice of conscience, passion carries with itself a restlessness of the body and the senses: it is the restlessness of the "external man." When the internal man has been reduced to silence, then passion, once it has been given freedom of action, so to speak, exhibits itself as an insistent tendency to satisfy the senses and the body. — Pope John Paul II

The legitimate functions of government are actually conducive to freedom. Maintaining internal order, keeping foreign foes at bay, administering justice, removing obstacles to the free interchange of goods - the exercise of these powers makes it possible for men to follow their chosen pursuits with maximum freedom. But note that the very instrument by which these desirable ends are achieved can be the instrument for achieving undesirable ends - that government can, instead of extending freedom, restrict freedom. — Barry M. Goldwater

The kind of work that should be the main part of life is the kind of work you would want to do if you weren't being paid for it. It's work that comes out of your own internal needs, interests and concerns. — Noam Chomsky

Democracy is essentially a means, a utilitarian device for safeguarding internal peace and individual freedom. As such it is by no means infallible or certain. Nor must we forget that there has often been much more cultural and spiritual freedom under an autocratic rule than under some democracies and it is at least conceivable that under the government of a very homogeneous and doctrinaire majority democratic government might be as oppressive as the worst dictatorship. — Friedrich Hayek

The secret is in realizing your internal gifts and then setting them free. — Bryant McGill

Freedom is not only the absence of external restraints. It is also the absence of irresistible internal compulsions, unmanageable passion, and uncensorable highlights. — George Will

The nation demands a movement which has written upon its banner the internal and external national freedom that it will act as if it were the spiritual, social and political conscience of the nation. — Franz Von Papen

Body scan meditation is mentally scanning through each part of the body with presence. It helps us be one with the body. Thus, we can feel if we are holding on to any tension or heaviness or any static emotions. And by doing so, we can find relief and internal freedom. — Christopher Dines

From what deep springs of character our personal philosophies issue, we cannot be sure. In philosophers themselves we seem always able to notice some deep internal correspondence between the man and his philosophy. Are our philosophies, then, merely the inevitable outcome of the body of fate and personal circumstance that is thrust upon each of us? Or are these beliefs the means by which we freely create ourselves as the persons we become? Here, at the very outset, the question of freedom already hovers in the background. — William Barrett

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

If you wish to take shamatha all the way to its ground, however, it requires a supportive, serene environment, good diet, proper exercise, and very few preoccupations. The necessary internal conditions are minimal desires, few activities and concerns, contentment, pure ethical discipline, and freedom from obsessive, compulsive thinking. It is my feeling that the achievement of shamatha is so rare today because those circumstances are so rare. It is difficult to find a conducive environment in which to practice at length and without interference - even more so to have that and access to suitable spiritual friends for support and guidance. Therefore, if the causes are difficult to bring together, the result - shamatha - is also necessarily rare. — B. Alan Wallace

Made from divinity must mean mindstate to create is intrinsic - no fiction. Stop playin' with your power, your inner 'G', and build on purpose - accordingly. Being free is for free, so force the issue. — T.F. Hodge

In the process of meditation, fetters are undone; internal blocks of suffering such as resentment, fear, anger, despair, and hatred are transformed; relationships with humans and nature become easier; freedom and joy can penetrate us. We become aware of what is inside and around us; — Thich Nhat Hanh

The point all these people had in common was how little freedom they seemed to enjoy. They were grappling with their beliefs, and these beliefs restricted their choices by dictating their behavior. — Laurent Gounelle

I think, from the broad political spectrum, not just the Freedom Caucus, I think there is a need for internal reform that is how we bring bills up, getting back to regular order, how we offer amendments or don't offer amendments. — Jason Chaffetz

The stability of the internal medium is a primary condition for the freedom and independence of certain living bodies in relation to the environment surrounding them. — Claude Bernard

The ability to do perform Reiki comes from an internal freedom. The power to be free from stress, tension, and anger. — Nikita Dudani

Just as sex is a God-given instinct for the prolongation of the human race, so the desire for property as a prolongation of one's ego is a natural right sanctioned by natural law. A person is free on the inside because he can call his soul his own; he is free on the outside because he can call property his own. Internal freedom is based upon the fact that "I am"; external freedom is based on the fact that "I have." But just as the excesses of flesh produce lust, for lust is sex in the wrong place, so there can be a deordination of the desire for property until it becomes greed, avarice, and capitalistic aggression. — Fulton J. Sheen

They [Nazi captors]had more liberty, more options to choose from in their environment; but he [Viktor Frankl] had more freedom, more internal power to exercise his options. — Stephen R. Covey

I hung a picture of him above my bed and learned by hand the internal workings of the female combustion engine. — Shannon Celebi

The worst prison is not made of metal bars. The worst prison is when your internal reality does not match your external reality. — Yasmin Mogahed

We seek healing both from the internal wounds of distorted self-understandings and feelings of inadequacy, and from the outward wounds of alienation from others and exclusion from our communities. We desire the freedom to be ourselves and to love others as ourselves. — Adam S. McHugh

true freedom was an internal condition not subject to the vagaries of politics. Freedom could not be owned. Therefore, it could not be appropriated. — Tom Robbins

Freedom like charity, begins at home. No man is worthy to fight in the cause of freedom unless he has conquered his internal masters. He must learn control and discipline over the disastrous passions that would lead him to folly and ruin. He must conquer inordinate vanity and anger, self-deception, fear, and inhibition. — Jack Whiteside Parsons

There is no free society without silence, without the internal and external spaces of solitude in which the individual freedom can develop. — Herbert Marcuse

The September 11 attacks were major atrocities ... This was a horrendous crime ... The primary victims ... were working people: janitors, secretaries, firemen, etc. It is likely to prove to be a crushing blow to Palestinians ... It is also likely to lead to harsh security controls, with many possible ramifications for undermining civil liberties and internal freedom. — Noam Chomsky

John Marshall's warning that the power to tax is the power to destroy has taken on far greater meaning ... more specifically, the power of the Internal Revenue Service is threatening to destroy the freedom of religion , guaranteed by the First Amendment. As part of that guarantee, Congress has granted tax exemptions for churches to avoid excessive interference in their religious activities. — Chuck Grassley