“It seems that, free-will is not free at all, as we cannot even identify nor understand our truest passions in life.”

“In action, in desire, we must submit perpetually to the tyranny of outside forces; but in thought, in aspiration, we are free, free from our fellowmen, free from the petty planet on which our bodies impotently crawl, free even, while we live, from the tyranny of death.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

“It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

“Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

“It seems to me that the free man, i.e., the man freed in Christ, ought to take part in all movements that aim at human freedom. He obviously ought to oppose all dictatorship and oppression and all the fatalities which crush man. The Christian cannot bear it that others should be slaves. His great passion in the world ought to be a passion for the liberation of men.”

Jacques Ellul (1912–1994) French sociologist, technology critic, and Christian anarchist

“The right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness means that each of us is free to go our own way, even if the ways some of us may choose to go seem sinful or shocking to our fellow citizens.”

Dan Savage book Skipping Towards Gomorrah

“Good slaves are free, but bad free men are slaves of many passions.”

Bion of Borysthenes (-325–-246 BC) ancient greek philosopher

“The truest worship is a life;
All dreaming we resign;
We lay our offerings at Thy feet, —
Our lives, O God, are Thine!”

John Weiss (1818–1879) United States clergyman and abolitionist

“What, then, shall we do? someone may ask. What else, indeed, than devote ourselves to the care of our souls, keeping all our leisure free from other things. Accordingly, we should not be slaves of the body, except so far as is strictly necessary; but our souls we should supply with all things that are best, through philosophy freeing them, as from a prison, from association with the passions of the body.”

Basil of Caesarea (329–379) Christian Saint

“Only get rid altogether of your nonsensical trash about the beautiful, which I nor anybody else, nor yourself to boot, could ever understand,—only free yourself of that, and your success in life is as sure as daylight.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) American novelist and short story writer (1804 – 1879)