#freed

It is easier to live through someone else than to complete yourself. The freedom to lead and plan your own life is frightening if you have never faced it before. It is frightening when a woman finally realizes that there is no answer to the question 'who am I' except the voice inside herself. ↗

— Betty Friedan

#feminism #identity #independence #living-vicariously #self-discovery

A man can be himself only so long as he is alone; and if hes does not love solitude, he will not love freedom; for it is only when he is alone that he is really free. ↗

— Arthur Schopenhauer

#solitude #freedom

We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom. We lived in the gaps between the stories. ↗

— Margaret Atwood

#stories #freedom

Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky. Conscious breathing is my anchor. ↗

— Thich Nhat Hanh

#breathing #feelings #meditation #mindfulness #freedom

The man that I named the Giver passed along to the boy knowledge, history, memories, color, pain, laughter, love, and truth. Every time you place a book in the hands of a child, you do the same thing. It is very risky. But each time a child opens a book, he pushes open the gate that separates him from Elsewhere. It gives him choices. It gives him freedom. Those are magnificent, wonderfully unsafe things. [from her Newberry Award acceptance speech] ↗

— Lois Lowry

#on-writing #freedom

If everyone is thinking alike, then no one is thinking. ↗

— Benjamin Franklin

#freedom-of-thought #individuality #freedom

Nice people don't necessarily fall in love with nice people. ↗

— Jonathan Franzen

#co-dependence #divorce #idealism #idealists #marriage

Freedom is not something that anybody can be given. Freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be ↗

— James Baldwin

#liberty #freedom

Christian, Jew, Muslim, shaman, Zoroastrian, stone, ground, mountain, river, each has a secret way of being with the mystery, unique and not to be judged ↗

— Rumi

#religious-freedom #tolerance #freedom

I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow, than a man swear he loves me. ↗

— William Shakespeare

#courtship #empowerment #freedom #happiness #husbands