Liberation Quotes - Page 7

• It is the hero alone, not the coward, who has liberation within his easy reach.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Hero, Coward, Easy

  Swami Vivekananda, Vivekananda Kendra (2009). “Swami Vivekananda's Rousing Call to Hindu Nation”, p.166, Vivekananda Kendra

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• The psychoanalytic liberation of memory explodes the rationality of the repressed individual. As cognition gives way to re-cognition, the forbidden images and impulses of childhood begin to tell the truth that reason denies.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Memories, Giving, Childhood

  Herbert Marcuse (2015). “Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud”, p.19, Beacon Press

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• I didn't care about anything. And there's a freedom in apathy, a wild, dizzying liberation on which you can almost get drunk. You can do anything. Ask Kevin.

  Lionel Shriver

  Drunk, Apathy, Care

  Lionel Shriver (2010). “We Need To Talk About Kevin”, p.174, Profile Books

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• And as paralyzing and upsetting as all the never agains were, the final leaving felt perfect. Pure. The most distilled possible form of liberation.

  John Green

  Perfect, Upset, Leaving

  John Green (2013). “The John Green Collection”, p.572, Penguin

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• There is only one way of attaining liberation and of obtaining the omniscience of enlightenment: following an authentic spiritual master.

  Sogyal Rinpoche

  Spiritual, Enlightenment, Way

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• In Iraq #1 we stayed within U.N. mandates, limited our response, went home after Kuwait was freed - and were censured for allowing Shiites and Kurds to be butchered and not going to Baghdad when the road was open and the dictator tottering. In Iraq #2 we removed the tyrant at less cost than the liberation of Kuwait during the earlier war, stayed on to ensure freedom and fair representation for various groups - and are being castigated for either using too little force to ensure needed order or too much power that stifles indigenous aspirations and turns popular opinion against us.

  Victor Davis Hanson

  War, Home, Kuwait

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• It is a sad hardship and slavery to people who live in towns, that in their movements they know of one dimension only; they walk along the line as if they were led on a string. The transition from the line to the plane into the two dimensions, when you wander across a field or through a wood, is a splendid liberation to the slaves, like the French Revolution. But in the air you are taken into the full freedom of the three dimensions; after long ages of exile and dreams the homesick heart throws itself into the arms of space.

  Isak Dinesen

  Dream, Taken, Heart

  Isak Dinesen (1938). “Out of Africa”

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• Because that day with Willem, I may have pretended to be someone named Lulu, but I had never been more honest in my life. Maybe that's the thing with liberation. It comes at a price.

  Gayle Forman

  May, Honest

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• What I secretly longed for was to disentangle myself of all those lives which had woven themselves into the pattern of my own life and were making my destiny a part of theirs. To shake myself free of these accumulating experiences which were mine only by force of inertia required a violent effort. Now and then I lunged and tore at the net, but only to become more enmeshed. My liberation seemed to involve pain and suffering to those near and dear to me. Every move I made for my own private good brought about reproach and condemnation. I was a traitor a thousand times over.

  Henry Miller

  Pain, Moving, Destiny

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• How can the oppressed, as divided, unauthentic beings, participate in developing the pedagogy of their liberation? Only as they discover themselves to be 'hosts' of the oppressor can they contribute to the midwifery of their liberating pedagogy. As long as they live in the duality in which to be is to be like and to be like is to be like the oppressor, this contribution is impossible. The pedagogy of the oppressed is an instrument for their critical discovery that both they and their oppressors are manifestations of dehumanization.

  Paulo Freire

  Discovery, Long, Impossible

  Paulo Freire (2014). “Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 30th Anniversary Edition”, p.48, Bloomsbury Publishing USA

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• The true liberation, the true path to freedom, lay in the ability to forgive.

  Alyson Noel

  Forgiving, Path, Ability

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• When Emily Dickinson writes, “Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul,” she reminds us, as the birds do, of the liberation and pragmatism of belief.

  Terry Tempest Williams

  Writing, Bird, Soul

  Terry Tempest Williams (2015). “Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place”, p.90, Vintage

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• I would not question the sincerity of vegetarians who take little interest in Animal Liberation because they give priority to other causes; but when nonvegetarians say that "human problems come first" I cannot help wondering what exactly it is that they are doing for human beings that compels them to continue to support the wasteful, ruthless exploitation of farm animals.

  Peter Singer

  Animal, Giving, Support

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• The oppressed, instead of striving for liberation, tend themselves to become oppressors.

  Paulo Freire

  Strive, Pedagogy Of The Oppressed, Oppressors

  Paulo Freire (2014). “Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 30th Anniversary Edition”, p.32, Bloomsbury Publishing USA

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• The God of Exodus is the God of history and of political liberation more than he is the God of nature.

  Gustavo Gutiérrez

  Political, Exodus

  Gustavo Gutiérrez (1973). “A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, and Salvation”

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• In Europe, the Enlightenment of the 18th century was seen as a battle against the desire of the Church to limit intellectual freedom, a battle against the Inquisition, a battle against religious censorship. And the victory of the Enlightenment in Europe was seen as pushing religion away from the center of power. In America, at the same time, the Enlightenment meant coming to a country where people were not going to persecute you by reason of your religion. So it meant a liberation into religion. In Europe, it was liberation out of religion.

  Salman Rushdie

  Country, Religious, America

  "The Iconoclast". Interview with Shikha Dalmia, reason.org. August 1, 2005.

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• Could women's liberation ever be a revolutionary movement, not rhetorically but on the ground?

  Andrea Dworkin

  Movement, Revolutionary

  Andrea Dworkin (2000). “Scapegoat: The Jews, Israel and Womens' Liberation”, p.248, Simon and Schuster

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• Understanding the often unconscious nature of genetic control is the first step toward understanding that—in many realms, not just sex—we’re all puppets, and our best hope for even partial liberation is to try to decipher the logic of the puppeteer.

  Robert Wright

  Sex, Understanding, Trying

  Robert Wright (2010). “The Moral Animal: Why We Are, the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology”, p.48, Vintage

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• The desire for a nonviolent and cooperative world is the healthiest of all psychological manifestations. This is the overarching principle of liberation and revolution. Undoubtedly, it seems the highest order of contradiction that, in order to achieve nonviolence, we must first break with it in overcoming its root causes. Therein lies our only hope.

  Ward Churchill

  Lying, Order, Roots

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• With the eventual acceptance of Darwin's theory we reach a modern understanding of nature, one which has since then changed in detail rather than in fundamentals. Only those who prefer religious faith to beliefs based on reasoning and evidence can still maintain that the human species is the special darling of the entire universe, or that other animals were created to provide us with food, or that we have divine authority over them, and divine permission to kill them.

  Peter Singer

  Religious, Acceptance, Animal

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• If animals are no longer quite outside the moral sphere, they are still in a special section near the outer rim. Their interests are allowed to count only when they do not clash with human interests. If there is a clash - even a clash between a lifetime of suffering for a nonhuman animal and the gastronomic preference of a human being - the interests of the nonhuman are disregarded. The moral attitudes of the past are too deeply embedded in our thought and our practices to be upset by a mere change in our knowledge of ourselves and of other animals.

  Peter Singer

  Attitude, Animal, Past

  Peter Singer (2015). “Animal Liberation”, p.195, Random House

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• It is an indication of the extent to which people are now isolated from the animals they eat that children brought up on storybooks that lead them to think of a farm as a place where animals wander around freely in idyllic conditions might be able to live out their entire lives without ever being forced to revise this rosy image.

  Peter Singer

  Children, Animal, Thinking

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• The newspapers do little better. Their coverage of nonhuman animals is dominated by "human interest" events like the birth of a baby gorilla at the zoo, or by threats to endangered species; but developments in farming techniques that deprive millions of animals of freedom of movement go unreported.

  Peter Singer

  Baby, Zoos, Animal

  Peter Singer (1975). “Animal liberation: a new ethics for our treatment of animals”

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• Even people who are aware that the traditional family farm has been taken over by big business interests, and that some questionable experiments go on in laboratories, cling to a vague belief that conditions cannot be too bad, or else the government or the animal welfare societies would have done something about it.

  Peter Singer

  Taken, Animal, Government

  Peter Singer (1975). “Animal liberation: a new ethics for our treatment of animals”

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• No consideration at all is given to the interests of the "pests" - the very word "pest" seems to exclude any concern for the animals themselves. But the classification "pest" is our own, and a rabbit that is a pest is as capable of suffering, and as deserving of consideration, as a white rabbit who is a beloved companion animal.

  Peter Singer

  Animal, White, Suffering

  Peter Singer (2015). “Animal Liberation”, p.212, Random House

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