Hope these quotes stimulate your thinking.
For those who stubbornly seek freedom, there can be no more urgent task than to come to understand the mechanisms and practices of indoctrination. These are easy to perceive in the totalitarian societies, much less so in the system of Œbrainwashing under freedom¹ to which we are subjected and which all too often we serve as willing or unwitting instruments. - Noam Chomsky
There are two visions of America. One precedes our founding fathers and finds its roots in the harshness of our puritan past. It is very suspicious of freedom, uncomfortable with diversity, hostile to science, unfriendly to reason, contemptuous of personal autonomy. It sees America as a religious nation. It views patriotism as allegiance to God. It secretly adores coercion and conformity. Despite our constitution, despite the legacy of the Enlightenment, it appeals to millions of Americans and threatens our freedom.
The other vision finds its roots in the spirit of our founding revolution and in the leaders of this nation who embraced the age of reason. It loves freedom, encourages diversity, embraces science and affirms the dignity and rights of every individual. It sees America as a moral nation, neither completely religious nor completely secular. It defines patriotism as love of country and of the people who make it strong. It defends all citizens against unjust coercion and irrational conformity.
This second vision is our vision. It is the vision of a free society. We must be bold enough to proclaim it and strong enough to defend it against all its enemies. -Rabbi Sherwin Wine
If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too. -Somerset Maugham
Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us. William O. Douglas
Freedom is not merely the opportunity to do as one pleases; neither is it merely the opportunity to choose between set alternatives. Freedom is, first of all, the chance to formulate the available choices, to argue over them ‹ and then, the opportunity to choose. -C. Wright Mills
We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home. -Edward R. Murrow
The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over the government. Franklin Delano Roosevelt
We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people. -John F. Kennedy
None who have always been free can understand the terrible fascinating power of the hope of freedom to those who are not free. - Pearl S. Buck
People hardly ever make use of the freedom they have. For example, the freedom of thought. Instead they demand freedom of speech as a compensation. -Søren Kierkegaard
We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms ‹ to choose one¹s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one¹s own way. -Viktor Frankl
So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men. -Voltaire
Linda Sapadin, Ph.D., a psychologist in private practice, specializes in helping people enrich their lives, enhance their relationships and overcome self-defeating patterns of behavior. For more information about her work, visit her website at www.PsychWisdom.com.
