Thoughts Are Free Quotes & Sayings

I'm not sure," she said. "There's no one answer to that. You have to
find your own way. Sometimes I try to erase myself. I imagine a big
pink soft soap eraser, and it's going back and forth, back and forth,
and it starts down at my toes, back and forth, back and forth, and
there they go-poof!-my toes are gone. And then my feet. And then my
ankles. But that's the easy part. The hard part is erasing my senses-my
eyes, my ears, my nose, my tongue. And last to go is my brain. My
thoughts, memories, all the voices inside my head. That's the hardest,
erasing my thoughts." She chuckled faintly. "My pumpkin. And then, if
I've done a good job, I'm erased. I'm gone. I'm nothing. And then the
world is free to flow into me like water into an empty bowl. — Jerry Spinelli

Happy the innocent whose equal thoughts are free from anguish as they are from faults. — Edmund Waller

Information in the heads of crazy people is a contagion. Information sets you free from craziness too, it's the only antidote, but I mean people's thoughts are like their body odor, it can carry. — Ethan Indigo Smith

It is pleasant to observe how free the present age is in laying taxes on the next. "Future ages shall talk of this; they shall be famous to all posterity;" whereas their time and thoughts will be taken up about present things, as ours are now. — Jonathan Swift

The conduct to be observed in the night of sense is this: in nowise have recourse to meditations, for, as I have said, the time is now past, let the soul be quiet and at rest, though they may think they are doing nothing, that they are losing time, and that their lukewarmness is the reason of their unwillingness to employ their thoughts. They will do enough if they keep patience, and persevere in prayer; all they have to do is to keep their soul free, unembarrassed, and at rest from all thoughts and all knowledge, not anxious about their meditation, contenting themselves simply with directing their attention lovingly and calmly towards God; and all this without anxiety or effort, or desire to feel and taste His presence. For all such efforts disquiet the soul, and distract it from the calm repose and sweet tranquility of contemplation to which they are now admitted. — San Juan De La Cruz

Some days my thoughts are just cocoons
all cold, and dull, and blind, They hang from dripping branches in the grey woods of my mind; And other days they drift and shine
such free and flying things! I find the gold-dust in my hair, left by their brushing wings. — Karle Wilson Baker

O all fair lovers about the world,
There is none of you, none, that shall comfort me.
My thoughts are as dead things, wrecked and whirled
Round and round in a gulf of the sea;
And still, through the sound and the straining stream,
Through the coil and chafe, they gleam in a dream,
The bright fine lips so cruelly curled,
And strange swift eyes where the soul sits free. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

Today is a new day! Let today be the day you free your mind from the prison of self doubt. Your thoughts can either hinder you or propel you to the next level. Precautions are necessary to maintain your safety and well-being. But fear and precautions are two different things. When you are afraid your doubt is increased. Do what makes you happy in order to satisfy the core of your existence.
Fear: to be afraid of something or someone whether the threat is real or imagined
Precaution: a measure taken in advance to prevent something from happening, prudent foresight
Doubt:a feeling of uncertainty or lack of conviction — Amaka Imani Nkosazana

Now days are dragon-ridden, the nightmare
Rides upon sleep: a drunken soldiery
Can leave the mother, murdered at her door,
To crawl in her own blood, and go scott-free;
The night can sweat with terror as before
We pieced our thoughts into philosophy,
And planned to bring the world under rule,
Who are but weasels fighting in a hole. — W.B.Yeats

Humanity is an organism, inherently rejecting all that is deleterious, that is, wrong, and absorbing after trial what is beneficial, that is, right. If so disposed, the Architect of the Universe, we must assume, might have made the world and man perfect, free from evil and from pain, as angels in heaven are thought to be; but although this was not done, man has been given the power of advancement rather than of retrogression. The Old and New Testaments remain, like other sacred writings of other lands, of value as records of the past and for such good lessons as they inculcate. Like the ancient writers of the Bible our thoughts should rest upon this life and our duties here. "To perform the duties of this world well, troubling not about another, is the prime wisdom," says Confucius, great sage and teacher. The next world and its duties we shall consider when we are placed in it. — Andrew Carnegie

Your story is not a picture of life; it lacks the elements of truth. And why? Simply because you run straight on to the end; because you do not analyze. Your heroes do this thing or that from this or that motive, which you assign without ever a thought of dissecting their mental and moral natures. Our feelings, you must remember, are far more complex than all that. In real life every act is the
resultant of a hundred thoughts that come and go, and these
you must study, each by itself, if you would create a living
character. 'But,' you will say, 'in order to note these fleeting
thoughts one must know them, must be able to follow them in their capricious meanderings.You have simply to make use of hypnotism, electrical or human, which gives one a two-fold being, setting free the witness-personality so that it may see, understand, and remember the reasons which determine the personality that acts. — Jules Verne

Do not struggle against your thoughts; they are stronger than you are. If you want to be free of them, accept them. — Paulo Coelho

There are very few friends that will lie down with you on empty streets in the middle of the night, without a word. No questions, no asking why, just quietly lay there with you, observing the stars, until you're ready to get back up on your feet again and walk the last bit home, softly holding your hand as a quiet way of saying "I'm here".
It was a beautiful night. — Charlotte Eriksson

The death of God has set the angels free. And they are terrible. There are principalities and powers. Angels are the thoughts of God. Now he had been dissolved into his thoughts which are beyond our conception in their nature and their multiplicity and their power. God was at least the name of something which we thought was good. Now even the name has gone and the spiritual world is scattered. There is nothing any more to prevent the magnetism of many spirits. — Iris Murdoch

Secret thoughts are only half free: they fly undisturbed in the skies of the inner freedom, but they can never leave them. — Fausto Cercignani

When you have emptied all content - thoughts, desires, memories, projections, hopes - when all is gone, for the first time you find yourself, because you are nothing but that pure space, that virgin space within you. Unburdened by anything, that contentless consciousness, that's what you are! Seeing it, realizing it, one is free. One is freedom, one is joy, one is bliss. — Rajneesh

That peril is that the human intellect is free to destroy itself. Just as one generation could prevent the very existence of the next generation, by all entering a monastery or jumping into the sea, so one set of thinkers can in some degree prevent further thinking by teaching the next generation that there is no validity in any human thought. It is idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith. Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all. If you are merely a sceptic, you must sooner or later ask yourself the question, "Why should anything go right; even observation and deduction? Why should not good logic be as misleading as bad logic? They are both movements in the brain of a bewildered ape?" The young sceptic says, "I have a right to think for myself." But the old sceptic, the complete sceptic, says, "I have no right to think for myself. I have no right to think at all." There — G.K. Chesterton

Wine and women make wise men dote and forsake God's law and do wrong.
However, the fault is not in the wine, and often not in the woman. The fault is in the one who misuses the wine or the woman or other of God's crations. Even if you get drunk on the wine and through this greed you lapse into lechery, the wine is not to blame but you are, in being unable or unwilling to discipline yourself. And even if you look at a woman and become caught up in her beauty and assent to sin [= adultery; extramarital sex], the woman is not to blame nor is the beauty given her by God to be disparaged: rather, you are to blame for not keeping your heart more clear of wicked thoughts ... If you feel yourself tempted by the sight of a woman, control your gaze better ... You are free to leave her. Nothing constrains you to commit lechery but your own lecherous heart. — Anonymous

Your thoughts are as free as any bird — Michael Jackson

Take time to be quiet. This is something that we don't do enough in this busy world of ours. We rush, rush, rush, and we are constantly listening to noise all around us. The human heart was meant for times of quiet, to peer deep within. It is when we do this that our hearts are set free to soar and take flight on the wings of our own dreams! Schedule some quiet "dream time" this week. No other people. No cell phone. No computer. Just you, a pad, a pen, and your thoughts. — Jim Rohn

All sins are committed in secrecy. The moment we realize that God witnesses even our thoughts, we shall be free. — Mahatma Gandhi

You must pray when you are in the heat of temptation - when your mind is preoccupied with thoughts of lust or revenge. If someone urges you to pray under these circumstances, your mind often insists that it's too impure - as if your dirty thoughts leave no room for prayer. But you must not wait for temptation to end or the thoughts of lust and other sins to totally disappear from your mind before you pray. At precisely the moment when you feel the strongest temptation and are least prepared to pray, go to a place where you can be alone. Pray the Lord's Prayer or any other prayer you can think of to defend against the devil and his temptations. Then you will feel the temptation decrease, and Satan will run away. Those who think you should wait until your mind is free from impure thoughts to pray only help Satan, who is already far too strong. Waiting to pray is an unchristian approach to prayer. It's a teaching that comes from the devil. — Martin Luther

Descartes was very interested in anatomy and physiology and regarded a tiny organ in the center of the brain, called the pineal gland, as the principal seat of the soul. That gland, he believed, was the place where all our thoughts are formed, the wellspring of our free will. — Anonymous

Philosophy, though unable to tell us with certainty what is the true answer to the doubts which it raises, is able to suggest many possiblities which enlarge our thoughts and free them from the tyranny of custom. Thus, while diminishing our feeling of certainty as to what things are, it greatly increases our knowledge as to what the may be; it removes the somewhat arrogant dogmatism of those who have never travelled into the region of liberating doubt, and it keeps alive our sense of wonder by showing familar things in an unfamilar aspect — Bertrand Russell

You are free. Your mind belongs to you. Your thoughts are yours. Honor the sacred territory of your freedom and individuality. — Bryant McGill

This notion of rest, it's attractive to her, but I don't think she would like it. They are all like that, these women. Waiting for the ease, the space that need not be filled with anything other than the drift of their own thoughts. But they wouldn't like it. They are busy and thinking of ways to be busier because such a space of nothing pressing to do would knock them down. No fields of cowslips will rush into that opening, nor mornings free of flies and heat when the light is shy. No. Not at all. They fill their mind and hands with soap and repair and dicey confrontations because what is waiting for them, in a suddenly idle moment, is the seep of rage. Molten. Thick and slow-moving. Mindful and particular about what in its path it chooses to bury. Or else, into a beat of time, and sideways under their breasts, slips a sorrow they don't know where from. — Toni Morrison

It is generally argued that our experience of free will presents a compelling mystery: On the one hand, we can't make sense of it in scientific terms; on the other, we feel that we are the authors of our own thoughts and actions. — Sam Harris

What is important is that Marx's theory of history is a vision of human beings in a state of alienation. Human beings cannot be free if they are subject to forces that determine their thoughts, their ideas, their very nature as human beings. — Anonymous

Old things climb out through my mouth and set themselves free in the air. On the high moor there are patterns and in my small mind there are patterns. [...] All the centuries drop away, and I am in the presence of something that does not know time. — Paul Kingsnorth

Who is journeying for freedom? The one who is already free. Thoughts are impediments to seeing your own face. Don't give rise to any thought, and discover who you are. — H.W.L. Poonja

You are only as free as you think you are and freedom will always be as real as you believe it to be. — Robert M. Drake

What do we value most? What would we most hate to lose? What do our thoughts turn to most frequently when we are free to think of what we will? And finally, what affords us the greatest pleasure? — Aiden Wilson Tozer

However small we are, we should always fight for what we believe to be right. And I don't mean fight with the power of our fists or the power of our swords ... I mean the power of our brains and our thoughts and our dreams.
And as small and quiet and unimportant as our fighting may look, perhaps we might all work together ... and break out of the prisons of our own making. Perhaps we might be able to keep this fierce and beautiful world of ours as free for all of us as it seemed to be on that blue afternoon of my childhood. — Cressida Cowell

Your mind is the channel of it all. It feeds your soul, your heart, everything. It comes from your thoughts. The kind of person you are comes from the way you think. And it bleeds into the way you feel. And such forth. If the mind is not free, then we won't be free. — Stephen Marley

My ma used to say that crying is good for you. Tears are the path that free your mind of sorrowful thoughts. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

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

You have to know yourself, and that once you know yourself, then you cannot be bound by - because sometimes we are bound by other people's thoughts, because we are not sure about ourselves. But once you know yourself ... I guess it is really an expression of the biblical statements that the truth will make you free! When you know, then you are free, your mind is free. — Wangari Maathai

Let us turn our thoughts today to Martin Luther King and recognize that there are ties between us, all men and women living on the Earth. Ties of hope and love, sister and brotherhood, that we are bound together in our desire to see the world become a place in which our children can grow free and strong. We are bound together by the task that stands before us and the road that lies ahead. We are bound and we are bound. — James Taylor

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

The key to accessing love, joy, peace and compassion is to be free from the dominant state of compulsive thinking. Once we are able to flow into mindfulness and still our thoughts, happiness manifests. — Christopher Dines

As for me, I delight in the every day Way Among mist-wrapped vines and rocky caves Here in the wilderness I am completely free With my friends, the white clouds, idling forever There are roads, but they do not reach the world Since I am mindless, who can rouse my thoughts On a bed of stone I sit, alone in the night While a round moon climbs up Cold Mountain — Hanshan

I have attended church-service in the garrisons, and tried hard ... to join in the prayers ... but never could raise within me the solemn feelings and true affection that I feel when alone with God in the forest. There I seem to stand face to face with my Master; all around me is fresh and beautiful, as it came from His hand; and there is no nicety or doctrine to chill the feelings. No no; the woods are the true temple after all, for there the thoughts are free to mount higher even than the clouds. — James Fenimore Cooper

In these times of Darkness, I keep dreaming of a better tomorrow, and praying my soul won't be corrupted.
These are Gudrun's words and thoughts. She is living in a troubled world, where only the strong can be free.
She is a Fantasy character you find on The Art of Isis Sousa & Guests! — Isis Sousa

A spring never free from the pressure of some foreign body at last loses its elasticity; and so does the mind if other people's thoughts are constantly forced upon it. — Arthur Schopenhauer

What critics miss, however, is that there is no such thing as non-narrative thought, free of possible worlds and ongoing enactments. There are always multiple narratives at work, framing our perceptions, memories, active thoughts, decisions and actions. — Venkatesh G. Rao

Those who are free of resentful thoughts surely find peace. — Buddha

It is just this characteristic way in which the brute gives itself up entirely to the present moment that contributes so much to the delight we take in our domestic pets. They are the present moment personified, and in some respects they make us feel the value of every hour that is free from trouble and annoyance, which we, with our thoughts and preoccupations, mostly disregard. — Arthur Schopenhauer

The State has always one purpose: to limit, control, subordinate the individual and subject him to the general purpose Through its censorship, its supervision, and its police the State tries to obstruct all free activity and sees this repression as its duty, because the instinct of self-preservation demands it. The State does not permit me to use my thoughts to their full value and communicate them to other men unless they are its own Otherwise it shuts me up. — Max Stirner

The kiss, dear maid ! thy lip has left

Shall never part from mine,

Till happier hours restore the gift

Untainted back to thine.


Thy parting glance, which fondly beams,

An equal love may see:

The tear that from thine eyelid streams

Can weep no change in me.


I ask no pledge to make me blest

In gazing when alone;

Nor one memorial for a breast,

Whose thoughts are all thine own.


Nor need I write --- to tell the tale

My pen were doubly weak:

Oh ! what can idle words avail,

Unless the heart could speak ?


By day or night, in weal or woe,

That heart, no longer free,

Must bear the love it cannot show,

And silent ache for thee. — George Gordon Byron

It is subversive to set up inquisitions like this, state or national, into the thoughts and consciences of Americans ... It is subversive for commissions like this to spread hysteria and intimidation throughout the land that Americans are afraid to sign petitions, afraid to read progressive magazines, afraid to make out checks for liberal causes, afraid to join organizations, afraid to speak their mind on public issues. Americans dare not be free citizens! This is the destruction of democracy. — Florence Luscomb

You cannot will yourself to be happy while believing that you have no right to happiness, or that you are unworthy of it. You cannot tell yourself to release aggressive thoughts if you think it is wrong to free them, so you must come to grips with your beliefs in all instances. — Jane Roberts

From all my lame defeats and oh! much more
From all the victories I seemed to score;
From cleverness shot forth on Thy behalf
At which, while angels weep, the audience laugh;
From all my proofs of Thy divinity,
Thou, who wouldst give no sign, deliver me.

Thoughts are but coins. Let me not trust, instead
Of Thee, their thin-worn image of Thy head.
From all my thoughts, even from my thoughts of Thee,
O thou fair Silence, fall, and set me free.
Lord of the narrow gate and the needle's eye,
Take from me all my trumpery lest I die. — C.S. Lewis

When our thoughts, at times, wander into darkness ... remember we are human and have been imbued with free will to choose the light. — Christopher Earle

Allowing both negative and positive thoughts to arise in life and acknowledging them for what they are, a secondary reaction within to what is happening outside, we grant our emotions free passage within without allowing external influences to impede our personal happiness. We cannot have control over everything that occurs in life, but that is simply not the goal, for we have control only over our relationship that we have with life. — Forrest Curran

Not get caught in their habitual patterning, to see thoughts for what they are, impersonal events, and instead be the knowing that awareness already is. Then, in that moment at least, we are already free, ready to act with greater clarity and kindness within the constantly changing field of events that is nothing other than life unfolding - not always as we think it should, but definitely as it is. — Jon Kabat-Zinn

Our spirit requires freedom in every area of our lives. The barriers that stop our soul from free expression are doubt, guilt, resentment, and thoughts of lack or limitation. — Hina Hashmi

All thoughts are beautiful when they're free. — Marty Rubin

It is of mercy that we are not in hell. It is of mercy that we have the hope of heaven. It is of mercy that we live in a land of spiritual light. It is of mercy that we have been called by the Spirit, and not left to reap the fruit of our own ways. It is of mercy that we still live and have opportunities of glorifying God actively or passively. Surely these thoughts should crowd on our minds whenever we speak with God. Surely we should never open our lips in prayer without blessing God for that free grace by which we live, and for that loving kindness which endureth for ever. — J.C. Ryle

You are free to think thoughts of worry or joy, and whatever you choose will attract the same kind back to you. Worry attracts worry. Joy attracts joy. — Rhonda Byrne

Our minds are information vacuums. Either we fill them with thoughts of our choosing or someone else will. — Ray A. Davis

The things I carry are my thoughts. That's it. They are the only weight. My thoughts determine whether I am free and light or burdened. — Kamal Ravikant

Those ... who find delight in freedom from attachment in the renunciation of clinging, free from the inflow of thoughts, they are like shining lights, having reached final liberation in the world. — Gautama Buddha

Pape called Basil his sanctuary. In truth we all exist in our own sanctuaries-but I don't mean cathedrals or prisons. I'm talking about our hearts and minds, which imprison us in anxiety, dear, insecurity, anger and other forms of misery. The walls & bars that keep most in a constant state of suffering are thoughts and emotions, not concrete & steel. It's a disease. Insanity. Most are afflicted by it, regardless of which side of the law they find themselves on or where they lay their heads at night. To be free of this, Renee, is to be free indeed. — Ted Dekker

I have no routines or personal history. One day I found out that they were no longer necessary for me and, like drinking, I dropped them. One must have the desire to drop them and then one must proceed harmoniously to chop them off, little by little. If you have no personal history, no explanations are needed; nobody is angry or disillusioned with your acts. And above all no one pins you down with their thoughts. It is best to erase all personal history because that makes us free from the encumbering thoughts of other people. I have, little by little, created a fog around me and my life. And now nobody knows for sure who I am or what I do. Not even I. How can I know who I am, when I am all this? — Carlos Castaneda

The popular conception of free will seems to rest on two assumptions: (1) that each of us could have behaved differently than we did in the past, and (2) that we are the conscious source of most of our thoughts and actions in the present. — Sam Harris

Our angels often come to us in the times when we are unconscious because those are the times we are free of the continual thoughts of our mind. It is here that we remember who we really are. We remember who we are in our soul. We are greater than the physical life we have been living on earth. — Kate McGahan

Because federal hate-crime laws criminalize thoughts, they are incompatible with a free society. — Ron Paul

I have hair that drifts like seaweed when I swim. I have eyes that shine like rock pools. My ears are like scallop shells. The ripples on my skin are like the ripples on the sand when the tide has turned back again. At night I gleam and glow like sea beneath the stars and moon. Thoughts dart and dance inside like little minnows in the shallows. They race and flash like mackerel farther out. My wonderings roll in the deep like sails. Dreams dive each night into the dark like dolphins do and break out happy and free into the morning light. These are the things I know about myself and that I see when I look in the rock pools at myself. — David Almond

What I am proposing here is an experiment in practical Spinozism. Try it for yourself and see if it works. No matter what happens, say to yourself, "This could not be otherwise," and see what happens to your mood. See if you are less or more affected by causes opposed to your nature. See if your thoughts become more your own or are continually sidetracked by external thoughts that intrude on you. In short, see if this makes you more or less free. — Brent Adkins

[Gonturan] is a true friend, but a friend with thoughts of her own, and the thoughts of others are dangerous. — Robin McKinley

Deep down, we all have our dark thoughts, Kathy. Mine are no different than any others. My life was planned for me, like my body was engineered to be what it is, a Prime Elite. But underneath it all I am still a man. Though I did not want this bonding at the beginning, it is now a part of me . . . and a part of you. We will work things out, my wife and we will do it together, that is what I accept. Also," he adjusted his arm around her, feeling her discomfort. "I know that without you there is an emptiness that I cannot put into words. It is an emptiness that I will not live with. Thus, I do not wish to be free of you . . . ever. — K.L. Tharp

When you have a command over your thoughts and how they are creating, you are the center of your creation. When you put your responsibility outside of yourself and subject yourself as a victim of the universe, you are disempowered and are going to struggle. Live life free and responsibly. Then you will align with your soul's love. It is a matter of acknowledging your power and truly living it. — Jason Nelson

Thoughts are free, talk is cheap, and action is expensive. What's your worth? — Noel DeJesus

Becoming sensitive to the background causes of one's thoughts and feelings can - paradoxically - allow for greater creative control over one's life. It is one thing to bicker with your wife because you are in a bad mood; it is another to realize that your mood and behavior have been caused by low blood sugar. This understanding reveals you to be a biochemical puppet, of course, but it also allows you to grab hold of one of your strings: A bit of food may be all that your personality requires. Getting behind our concious thoughts and feelings can allow us to steer a more intelligent course through our lives (while knowing, of course, that we are ultimately being steered). — Sam Harris

The adoption of the required attitude of mind towards ideas that seem to emerge "of their own free will" and the abandonment of the critical function that is normally in operation against them seem to be hard of achievement for some people. The "involuntary thoughts" are liable to release a most violent resistance, which seeks to prevent their emergence. If we may trust that great poet and philosopher Friedrich Schiller, however, poetic creation must demand an exactly similar attitude. — Sigmund Freud

I had learned that some people feel that books are "intrusive," in the sense that books put things in their heads that they don't want there. Some people call these things "ideas." Maybe they're right. Sometimes these ideas sprout into what are known as "thoughts," and you know my feelings about school, government, and big businesses
thoughts are the last things they want rattling around inside people's heads because thoughts inevitably lead to consumer protection, free speech and hippies. — Gary Reilly

Each and every one of us has been born into a given historical reality, ruled by particular norms and values, and managed by a unique economic and political system. We take this reality for granted, thinking it is natural, inevitable and immutable. We forget that our world was created by an accidental chain of events, and that history shaped not only our technology, politics and society, but also our thoughts, fears and dreams. The cold hand of the past emerges from the grave of our ancestors, grips us by the neck and directs our gaze towards a single future. We have felt that grip from the moment we were born, so we assume that it is a natural and inescapable part of who we are. Therefore we seldom try to shake ourselves free, and envision alternative futures. — Yuval Noah Harari

Embodiments know not what slavery may be where minds in shackles and chains put nature to shame
Mind, shallow or neat, are found where thoughts may run deep, a family whereacceptance is free, and readers where reception is key.
Say minds may run free. — Dew Platt

Our thoughts are free. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

You do not have a mind belongs to yourself! Your thoughts are the thoughts of your culture! When you speak, it is not you but your culture, your religion, your traditions, your political or spiritual leaders speak! If not you but your culture, your religion etc. are speaking on behalf of you, then what are you, who are you? A stupid puppet? Get a mind which belongs to yourself! Only then you will be able to speak with your own thoughts on behalf of your own self! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

To know that we are only angels weighed down by filth, free of guilt? The bacteria in our bellies are responsible for the farts which shame us, tiny monsters shitting in their billions all over our pure skin create the acid reek of "our" sweat. And Slade: when the "inner voices" tell us we're unworthy or instruct us to "love" and "hate," despite our best instincts ... are these incessant distracting thoughts our own? Or do we only hear the voice of the eternal germ screaming in our heads? — Grant Morrison

Walking, ideally, is a state in which the mind, the body, and the world are aligned, as though they were three characters finally in conversation together, three notes suddenly making a chord. Walking allows us to be in our bodies and in the world without being made busy by them. It leaves us free to think without being wholly lost in our thoughts. — Rebecca Solnit

I do not know how you have done this to me. I thought that if I returned the help you had given me that I would be free of the inexplicable influence you have over me. But it does not seem to be working, and you say you cannot break the thread."
Mari realized that her mouth had fallen open as she stared at Mage Alain. "Are you serious?"
"What would I be if not serious?"
"You're saying that I put a spell on you that controls your thoughts and actions?"
"Why else am I here?" The Mage asked.
"Because it was the right thing to do!"
"The ... what? I am still uncertain about what right thing means - " the trace of puzzlement had retired to him.
"Listen ... Mage Alain! I don't ... put spells on boys! Or men! Or anybody! I have no idea why you think that you are thinking about me, but I assure you that it has nothing to do with me thinking about you or making you think that you want to think about me! — Jack Campbell

Let the awe [the teacher] has upon [children's] minds be so tempered with the constant marks of tenderness and good will, that affection may spur them to their duty, and make them find a pleasure in complying with his dictates. This will bring them with satisfaction to their tutor; make them hearken to him, as to one who is their friend, that cherishes them, and takes pains for their good; this will keep their thoughts easy and free, whilst they are with him, the only temper wherein the mind is capable of receiving new information, and of admitting into itself those impressions. — John Locke

You are the one who must decide whose thoughts you will entertain. You are free to choose-but you are not free to alter the consequences of those choices. You will be what you think about what you consistently allow to occupy the stage of your mind. — Ezra Taft Benson

The experiences, the lessons, and the defeats,
They were all necessary for me to be me,
took me a while being blind before i could see,
had to crawl on my knees before i stood on my feet,
once i stood on my feet i found out i had wings,
the flight is amazing, i felt like a king,
and when no one is listening, i found out i can sing,
what happy times and thoughts does it bring,
whatever it takes just make sure you are free,
free to live, and grow like a tree,
The people you love are the branches you need,
its not about the type, the color, or breed,
Live life with ambition, ambition indeed,
Thats what it took, and thats what i need. — Michael Perez

Thinking that the next person, the next relationship, the next experience will free you - these are foolish thoughts of people who are bound again and again to birth, death and rebrith for thousands and thousands of incarnations. — Frederick Lenz

The receptive attitude enables one mind to fix itself to another as by spiritual grappling-irons. When you see that every word you utter us taken in, and weighed, and measured by your listener, you cannot free yourself from the influence of his presence. You are compelled to have in your thoughts not only the words you utter, but the man to whom they are spoken. You must not only talk, and talk well, but you must talk to him. — Charles Dickens

I leave you free to be yourself: to think your thoughts, indulge your tastes, follow your inclinations, behave in ways that you decide are to your liking. — Anthony De Mello

My theory is that poems are written because of a state of emotional irritation. It may be present for some time before the poet is conscious of what is tormenting him. The emotional irritation springs, probably, from subconscious combinations of partly forgotten thoughts and feelings. Coming together, like electrical currents in a thunder storm, they produce a poem ... the poem is written to free the poet from an emotional burden. — Sara Teasdale

Thoughts are free and subject to no rule. On them rests the freedom of man, and they tower above the light of nature ... create a new heaven, a new firmament, a new source of energy from which new arts flow. — Paracelsus

The slave is doomed to worship Time and Fate and Death, because they are greater than anything he finds in himself, and because all his thoughts are of things which they devour. But, great as they are, to think of them greatly, to feel their passionless splendour, is greater still. And such thought makes us free men; we no longer bow before the inevitable in Oriental subjection, but we absorb it, and make it a part of ourselves. — Bertrand Russell

My thoughts are free to roam back to the way she leaned her head on my arm for a split second, as if wishing she could let herself go, let herself lean farther. But she didn't, and I can't help but respect her for that, even I know her strength is false, propped up by the shaky girders of Old Man Jack. One day soon, those girders will collapse, and her world will crumble, and I know I have to be there when that happens. — Jasinda Wilder

Our greatest human freedom is that, despite whatever our physical situation is in life, WE ARE ALWAYS FREE TO CHOOSE OUR THOUGHTS! — Viktor E. Frankl

Man, do you think yours is the only soul? Look around you. Everything that you see quivers with being. Though your thoughts are free, one thing you do not think about: the whole. Beasts have a mind; respect it. Flowers too- look at one. Nature brought forth each petal. There is a mystery that sleeps in metal. Everything feels, and has power over you. — Gerard De Nerval

The sun and the air are God's free gifts to all, we say; but are they so? In yonder city's dingy alleys the sun shines not, and the air is foul. Oh, man, how dost thou forget and obstruct thy brother man, and say, "Give us this day our daily bread," when he has none! Oh, would that men would leave the city, its splendour and its tumult and its gold, and return to wood and field and simple, honest living! Then would their children grow stately as noble trees, and their thoughts sweet and pure as wayside flowers. — Helen Keller

The result is that much reading robs the mind of all elasticity, as the continual pressure of a weight does a spring, and that the surest way of never having any thoughts of your own is to pick up a book every time you have a free moment. The practice of doing this is the reason erudition makes most men duller and sillier than they are by nature and robs their writings of all effectiveness: they are in Pope's words: For ever reading, never to be read. — Arthur Schopenhauer

We are mindful of desire when we experience it with an embodied awareness, recognizing the sensations and thoughts of wanting as arising and passing phenomena. While this isn't easy, as we cultivate the clear seeing and compassion of Radical Acceptance, we discover we can open fully to this natural force, and remain free in its midst. — Tara Brach

you should also take care in preventing people from dumping negative thoughts into your brain. Healthy bodies require healthy diets that are free of junk, and cultivating a healthy mind requires much the same. — Mike Mitchell