Dogmas are collective conceptual prisons. And the strange thing is that people love their prison cells because they give them a sense of security and a false sense of ‚I know.‘ Nothing has inflicted more suffering on humanity than its dogmas.

Let us ask ourselves, ‚What kind of people do we think we are?‘ And let us answer, ‚Free people, worthy of freedom and determined not only to remain so but to help others gain their freedom as well.‘

What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don’t like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don’t expect freedom to survive very long.

Baseball is like a poker game. Nobody wants to quit when he’s losing; nobody wants you to quit when you’re ahead.

For goodness sake, will they hear, will white people hear what we are trying to say? Please, all we are asking you to do is to recognize that we are humans, too.

What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.

For more than four decades, the Libyan people have been ruled by a tyrant – Moammar Gaddafi. He has denied his people freedom, exploited their wealth, murdered opponents at home and abroad, and terrorized innocent people around the world – including Americans who were killed by Libyan agents.

I learned to fly a few years ago in England. It’s the only place I’m completely alone – up in the air, detached from everything.

A Religion of Evolution: that, when all is said and done, is what Man needs ever more explicitly if he is to survive and ‚superlive,‘ as soon as he becomes conscious of his power to ultra-hominize himself and of his duty to do so.

The real power of the Buddha was that he had so much love. He saw people trapped in their notions of small separate self, feeling guilty or proud of that self, and he offered revolutionary teachings that resounded like a lion’s roar, like a great rising tide, helping people to wake up and break free from the prison of ignorance.

People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.

A man can be himself only so long as he is alone, and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom, for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.

Whatever we expect with confidence becomes our own self-fulfilling prophecy.

Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.

If a person gets his attitude toward money straight, it will help straighten out almost every other area in his life.

Without pain, there would be no suffering, without suffering we would never learn from our mistakes. To make it right, pain and suffering is the key to all windows, without it, there is no way of life.

We dissect failure a lot more than we dissect success.

If you’re treated a certain way you become a certain kind of person. If certain things are described to you as being real they’re real for you whether they’re real or not.

Act enthusiastic and you will be enthusiastic.

For me, being raised in a free America made all the difference.

I am a Marxist Leninist and I will be one until the last day of my life.

I’d rather be optimistic and wrong than pessimistic and right.

For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well-organized and armed militia is their best security.

For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s futures. And we are all mortal.

Lies are sufficient to breed opinion, and opinion brings on substance.

Age is whatever you think it is. You are as old as you think you are.

I did not set out to convert anyone to Christianity.

Only in our dreams are we free. The rest of the time we need wages.

Necessity is blind until it becomes conscious. Freedom is the consciousness of necessity.

Our daily deeds as ordinary South Africans must produce an actual South African reality that will reinforce humanity’s belief in justice, strengthen its confidence in the nobility of the human soul, and sustain all our hopes for a glorious life for all.

Every people have gods to suit their circumstances.

In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane.

If one by one we counted people out For the least sin, it wouldn’t take us long To get so we had no one left to live with. For to be social is to be forgiving.

I treated it like every day was my last day with a basketball.

Experience is not what happens to you; it’s what you do with what happens to you.

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.

Freedom has cost too much blood and agony to be relinquished at the cheap price of rhetoric.

Suffering is the positive element in this world, indeed it is the only link between this world and the positive.

As I approve of a youth that has something of the old man in him, so I am no less pleased with an old man that has something of the youth. He that follows this rule may be old in body, but can never be so in mind.

Excess of liberty, whether it lies in state or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery.

You can’t put democracy and freedom back into a box.

Men’s actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the victim and slave of his action.

I believe that Jesus was, you know, the Son of God. And I understand that… we need to be really, really respectful to people who find that ridiculous and… preposterous.

History isn’t just the story of bad people doing bad things. It’s quite as much a story of people trying to do good things. But somehow, something goes wrong.

The English think they are free. They are free only during the election of members of parliament.

The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds.

The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts.

We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

We can be thankful to a friend for a few acres, or a little money; and yet for the freedom and command of the whole earth, and for the great benefits of our being, our life, health, and reason, we look upon ourselves as under no obligation.

So many people have this idea: I want to achieve something great or be somebody great. And they neglect the step that leads to greatness. They don’t honor this step at this moment because they have this idea of some future moment where they are going to be great.

Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.

I just know that I’m a fan of all different kinds of genres. You’re supposed to be free doing music, and that’s how I feel.

The desire of gold is not for gold. It is for the means of freedom and benefit.

Liberty consists in the power of doing that which is permitted by the law.

You know that being an American is more than a matter of where your parents came from. It is a belief that all men are created free and equal and that everyone deserves an even break.

When I don’t feel free and can’t do what I want I just react. I go against it.

Great talents are the most lovely and often the most dangerous fruits on the tree of humanity. They hang upon the most slender twigs that are easily snapped off.

Man is not a machine that can be remodelled for quite other purposes as occasion demands, in the hope that it will go on functioning as regularly as before but in a quite different way. He carries his whole history with him; in his very structure is written the history of mankind.

In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than just ideals to be valued – they may be essential to survival.

Happiness is a how; not a what. A talent, not an object.

The mind of a 19-year-old is very different from the mind of a 26-year-old. You grow. You get into better relationships. You experience more, meet more people, better people. But when you’re in a dark hole at an earlier point in your life – you write about the mindset you’re in at that moment.