#liberty

Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ↗

— John Stuart Mill

#philosophy #society #tyranny #life

What good does it do me, after all, if an ever-watchful authority keeps an eye out to ensure that my pleasures will be tranquil and races ahead of me to ward off all danger, sparing me the need even to think about such things, if that authority, even as it removes the smallest thorns from my path, is also absolute master of my liberty and my life; if it monopolizes vitality and existence to such a degree that when it languishes, everything around it must also languish; when it sleeps, everything must also sleep; and when it dies, everything must also perish? ↗

— Alexis de Tocqueville

#life

In particular those who are condemned to stagnation are often pronounced happy on the pretext that happiness consists in being at rest. This notion we reject, for our perspective is that of existentialist ethics. Every subject plays his part as such specifically through exploits or projects that serve as a mode of transcendence; he achieves liberty only through a continual reaching out towards other liberties. There is no justification for present existence other than its expansion into an indefinitely open future. Every time transcendence falls back into immanence, stagnation, there is a degradation of existence into the ‘en-sois’ – the brutish life of subjection to given conditions – and of liberty into constraint and contingence. This downfall represents a moral fault if the subject consents to it; if it is inflicted upon him, it spells frustration and oppression. In both cases it is an absolute evil. Every individual concerned to justify his existence feels that his existence involves an undefined need to transcend himself, to engage in freely chosen projects. ↗

— Simone de Beauvoir

#philosophy #life

Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of those who threaten it. ↗

— United States Department of the Navy

#liberty #life #patriotism #life

My education was the liberty I had to read indiscriminately and all the time, with my eyes hanging out. ↗

— Dylan Thomas

#eyes #had #hanging #i #indiscriminately

China has to go along with world trends. That's democracy, liberty, individual freedom. China sooner or later has to go that way. It cannot go backward. ↗

— Dalai Lama

#backward #cannot #china #democracy #freedom

We shall never achieve harmony with land, any more than we shall achieve absolute justice or liberty for people. In these higher aspirations, the important thing is not to achieve but to strive. ↗

— Aldo Leopold

#achieve #any #aspirations #harmony #higher

I say, traitors; as some men live upon the reward of treachery, for their quiet and liberty; if it may be called a liberty, as it is redeemed with the betraying of the interest of Christ, and the blood of His people. ↗

— Donald Cargill

#blood #called #christ #his #i

Our country may be likened to a new house. We lack many things, but we possess the most precious of all - liberty! ↗

— James Monroe

#house #lack #liberty #likened #many

Amending the U.S. Constitution, the document most sacred to those who love freedom and liberty, is a delicate endeavor and should be done only on the basis of the most clear and convincing evidence that a proposed amendment is necessary. ↗

— Ben Nelson

#amendment #basis #clear #constitution #convincing