“In ancient Europe, Stoics asserted that a slave could be freer than a master who suffers from self-division. In China, Daoists imagined a type of sage who responded to the flow of events without weighing alternatives. Disciples of monotheistic faiths have believed something similar: freedom, they say, is obeying God’s will. What those who follow these traditions want most is not any kind of freedom of choice. Instead, what they long for is freedom from choice.”
The Faith of Puppets: The Freedom of the Marionette (p. 6-7)
The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Enquiry into Human Freedom (2015)
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John Gray164
British philosopher 1948Related quotes
Eric Hoffer book The True Believer
Section 93
The True Believer (1951), Part Three: United Action and Self-Sacrifice
Context: People whose lives are barren and insecure seem to show a greater willingness to obey than people who are self-sufficient and self-confident. To the frustrated, freedom from responsibility is more attractive than freedom from restraint. They are eager to barter their independence for relief of the burdens of willing, deciding and being responsible for inevitable failure. They willingly abdicate the directing of their lives to those who want to plan, command and shoulder all responsibility.
“He who seeks freedom for anything but freedom's self is made to be a slave.”
Alexis De Tocqueville book The Old Regime and the Revolution
Original text: Qui cherche dans la liberté autre chose qu'elle-même est fait pour servir. <br class="br">Variant translation: The man who asks of freedom anything other than itself is born to be a slave. <br class="br">Old Regime (1856), p. 204 http://books.google.com/books?id=N50aibeL8BAC&pg=PA204&vq=%22He+who+seeks+freedom%22&source=gbs_search_r&cad=1_1 <br class="br">1850s and later
Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician
Speech in Perth, Scotland (13 May 1983), quoted in New York Times (14 May 1983) "British Vote Campaign Gets Off to Angry Start"
First term as Prime Minister
Henry Giroux (1943) American academic
Interview with Media For Us, 2019
Samuel R. Delany book The Jewels of Aptor
Source: The Jewels of Aptor (1962), Chapter X (p. 133)
Context: A lesson which history should have taught us thousands of years ago was finally driven home. No man can wield absolute power over other men and still retain his own mind. For no matter how good his intentions are when he takes up the power, his alternate reason is that freedom, the freedom of other people and ultimately his own, terrifies him. Only a man afraid of freedom would want this power, who could conceive of wielding it. And that fear of freedom will turn him into a slave of this power.
Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States
Source: 1850s, Letter to Henry L. Pierce (1859), p. 377