“Make your own rules or be a slave to another man's.”
William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist
Related quotes
“Desire makes slaves out of kings, and patience makes kings out of slaves.”
Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (1058–1111) Persian Muslim theologian, jurist, philosopher, and mystic
al-Ghazali https://awakenthegreatnesswithin.com/35-inspirational-imam-al-ghazali-quotes-on-success/
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer
Source: The Liberty of Man, Woman and Child (1877)
Context: Only a few years ago there was a great awakening of the human mind. Men began to inquire by what right a crowned robber made them work for him? The man who asked this question was called a traitor. Others asked by what right does a robed hypocrite rule my thought? Such men were called infidels. The priest said, and the king said, where is this spirit of investigation to stop? They said then and they say now, that it is dangerous for man to be free. I deny it. Out on the intellectual sea there is room enough for every sail. In the intellectual air there is space enough for every wing.
The man who does not do his own thinking is a slave, and is a traitor to himself and to his fellow-men.
“Only in thought is man a God; in action and desire we are the slaves of circumstance.”
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist
Letter to Lucy Donnely, November 25, 1902
1900s
“The dearest ambition of a slave is not liberty but to have a slave of his own.”
Richard Francis Burton (1821–1890) British explorer, geographer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, cartographer, ethnologist, spy, lin…
The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night (1885) When it was the Three Hundred and Sixtieth Night, footnote
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) German philosopher
The Spirit of Christianity and its Fate (1799)
“Most prisons are of our own making. A man makes his own freedom, too.”
Robin Hobb book Assassin's Apprentice
Source: Assassin's Apprentice
“Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.”
Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman
Sarada Devi (1853–1920) Hindu religious figure, spiritual consort of Ramakrishna
[Swami Tapasyananda, Swami Nikhilananda, Sri Sarada Devi, the Holy Mother; Life and Conversations, 292]
