Progress, Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom (1968)
Context: Intellectual freedom is essential to human society — freedom to obtain and distribute information, freedom for open-minded and unfearing debate, and freedom from pressure by officialdom and prejudices. Such a trinity of freedom of thought is the only guarantee against an infection of people by mass myths, which, in the hands of treacherous hypocrites and demagogues, can be transformed into bloody dictatorship. Freedom of thought is the only guarantee of the feasibility of a scientific democratic approach to politics, economy, and culture.
But freedom of thought is under a triple threat in modern society—from the deliberate opium of mass culture, from cowardly, egotistic, and philistine ideologies, and from the ossified dogmatism of a bureaucratic oligarchy and its favorite weapon, ideological censorship. Therefore, freedom of thought requires the defense of all thinking and honest people.
"Irish Essays. A Speech at Eton" (1882)
Source: Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy (1958), Chapter Ten, Sartre, p. 215
Volume 1, p. 191
The Prophets (1962)
With No Apologies (1979)
Context: My faith in the future rests squarely on the belief that man, if he doesn't first destroy himself, will find new answers in the universe, new technologies, new disciplines, which will contribute to a vastly different and better world in the twenty-first century. Recalling what has happened in my short lifetime in the fields of communication and transportation and the life sciences, I marvel at the pessimists who tell us that we have reached the end of our productive capacity, who project a future of primarily dividing up what we now have and making do with less. To my mind the single essential element on which all discoveries will be dependent is human freedom.
Jayaprakash Narayan, (said at the height of the Emergency when Indira Gandhi stated that ‘food is more important than freedom’), quoted in L.K. Advani, My Country My Life (2008), also quoted at http://www.thestatesman.com/opinion/celebrating-a-legacy-96135.html
Quotes by JP
“I know but one freedom and that is the freedom of the mind.”
As quoted in Morrow's International Dictionary of Contemporary Quotations (1982) by Jonathon Green
“Without freedom the human mind is prevented from unleashing its creative force.”
Remarks by German Chancellor Angela Merkel before a joint session of Congress on November 04, 2009. http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,659196,00.html
Dokumentation: Angela Merkels Rede im US-Kongress im Wortlaut http://www.welt.de/politik/ausland/article5079678/Angela-Merkels-Rede-im-US-Kongress-im-Wortlaut.html
Context: Freedom is the very essence of our economy and society. Without freedom the human mind is prevented from unleashing its creative force. But what is also clear is that this freedom does not stand alone. It is freedom in responsibility and freedom to exercise responsibility.
