“(…) Freedom to do what one likes is really bondage, while being free to do what one must, what is right, is real freedom.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

Freedom
Source: I am That, P.114.

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Nisargadatta Maharaj 138

Indian guru 1897–1981

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“To know how to free oneself is nothing; the arduous thing is to know what to do with one's freedom.”

André Gide book The Immoralist

Savoir se libérer n'est rien; l'ardu, c'est savoir être libre.
The Immoralist, Chapter 1 http://books.google.com/books?id=MPmRAAAAIAAJ&q=%22Savoir+se+lib%C3%A9rer+n'est+rien+l'ardu+c'est+savoir+%C3%AAtre+libre%22&jtp=17#v=onepage (1902)
The Immoralist (1902)

“Whoever will be free must make himself free. Freedom is no fairy gift to fall into a man's lap. What is freedom? To have the will to be responsible for one's self.”

Max Stirner (1806–1856) German philosopher

Attributed in Forbes Vol 38 Iss. 2 (1936) p. 18, and in Lifetime Speaker's Encyclopedia (1962) by Jacob Morton Braude, p. 275

“We have defined freedom in the West as the freedom to choose between options and preferences. That’s not primal freedom. That’s a secondary or even tertiary freedom. The primal freedom is the freedom to be the self, the freedom to live in the truth despite all circumstances. That’s what great religion offers us. That’s what real prayer offers us. That’s why the saints could be imprisoned and not lose their souls. They could be put down and persecuted like Jesus and still not lose their joy, their heart, or their perspective. Secular freedom is having to do what you want to do. Religious freedom is wanting to do what you have to do.”

Richard Rohr (1943) American spiritual writer, speaker, teacher, Catholic Franciscan priest

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“Not to do what you feel like doing is freedom”

Chinmayananda Saraswati (1916–1993) Indian spiritual teacher

Quotations from Gurudev’s teachings, Chinmya Mission Chicago
Variant: Not to do what you feel like doing is freedom

“May we think of freedom not as the right to do as we please but as the opportunity to do what is right.”

Peter Marshall (1902–1949) American preacher

“It is not that one ought not to do just what one pleases; it is simply that one cannot do other than what each of us has to do, has to be. The only way out is to refuse to do what has to be done, but this does not set us free to do something else just because it pleases us. In this matter we only possess a negative freedom of will, a noluntas.”

José Ortega Y Gasset book The Revolt of the Masses

We can quite well turn away from our true destiny, but only to fall a prisoner in the deeper dungeons of our destiny. … Theoretic truths not only are disputable, but their whole meaning and force lie in their being disputed, they spring from discussion. They live as long as they are discussed, and they are made exclusively for discussion. But destiny — what from a vital point of view one has to be or has not to be — is not discussed, it is either accepted or rejected. If we accept it, we are genuine; if not, we are the negation, the falsification of ourselves. Destiny does not consist in what we feel we should like to do; rather is it recognised in its clear features in the consciousness that we must do what we do not feel like doing.
Source: The Revolt of the Masses (1929), Chapter XI: The Self-Satisfied Age

“And that, in a way, was the burden of being a philosopher: one knew what one had to do, but it was so often the opposite of what one really wanted to do.”

Alexander McCall Smith book The Careful Use of Compliments

The Careful Use of Compliments, chapter 2.
The Sunday Philosophy Club series

“Surely it is important for America that the moral truths which make freedom possible should be passed on to each new generation. Every generation of Americans needs to know that freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought.”

Pope John Paul II (1920–2005) 264th Pope of the Catholic Church, saint

Source http://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/homilies/1995/documents/hf_jp-ii_hom_19951008_baltimore.html Oriole Park at Camden Yards, Baltimore, Sunday, 8 October 1995
Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20220416100400/https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/homilies/1995/documents/hf_jp-ii_hom_19951008_baltimore.html Archived] from [https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/homilies/1995/documents/hf_jp-ii_hom_19951008_baltimore.html the original

“Old-fashioned determinism was what we may call hard determinism. It did not shrink from such words as fatality, bondage of the will, necessitation, and the like. Nowadays, we have a soft determinism which abhors harsh words, and, repudiating fatality, necessity, and even predetermination, says that its real name is freedom; for freedom is only necessity understood, and bondage to the highest is identical with true freedom”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

The Dilemma of Determinism (1884) republished in The Will to Believe, Dover, 1956, p. 149
1880s

“Freedom is what we do with what is done to us.”

Jean Paul Sartre (1905–1980) French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and …

Variant: Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.

“(…) Freedom to do what one likes is really bondage, while being free to do what one must, what is right, is real freedom.”

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Nisargadatta Maharaj 138

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