The nations of our time cannot prevent the conditions of men from becoming equal, but it depends upon themselves whether the principle of equality is to lead them to servitude or freedom, to knowledge or barbarism, to prosperity or wretchedness. [ Democracy in America . New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994, Vol. II, p. 334.]
Political freedom without economic freedom is almost worthless, and it is because the modern proletariat has the one kind of freedom without the other that its rebellion is now threatening the very structure of the modern world. [ The Crisis of Civilization, Being the Matter of a Course of Lectures Delivered at Fordham University, 1937 . Rockford, Illinois: Tan Books and Publishers, Inc., 1991, p. 133.]
Two-Factor Theory can make an important mental health contribution to unleash the individuality of the human brain….individual creative freedom which would become available to the great majority of man through the Two-Factor Economic System is limitless.
Just as to prohibit shouting fire in a crowded theater is a reasonable limitation on our universally appealing constitutional right to freedom of speech, the American people and their elected political representatives should debate whether to prohibit and punish speech that advocates violence against persons or groups engaging in non-violent speech and non-violent activities. The advocacy of violence against the non-violent ignites the passions of the “mad dogs” in every society and turns them loose against champions of new ideas intended to advance Peace, Prosperity and Freedom through Justice for all members of human society. The free and open marketplace for reasoned debate cannot function in an orderly way when invaded by suicide bombers or those who incite violence and killing of non-violent advocates of change. Ignoring such hate-mongering is a formula for spreading fear of free speech throughout society, leaving the pursuit of Truth, Love and Justice to those willing to martyr themselves for their commitment to the advance of civilization. What prompted a mentally unstable person like Jared Lee Loughner to shoot Rep. Gabielle Giffords, or John Hinckley, Jr. to shot Ronald Reagan? Who helped from afar to “pull the trigger” in the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., Medgar Evers and other champions of justice throughout human history? To what extent was the preaching of religious and ideological extremists responsible for 9/11 and for the killing of thousands of innocent people by hate-filled suicide bombers? How can the War of Ideas be won if the advocacy of violence against the non-violent is not suppressed as a social cancer threatening the sacred marketplace of free and open debate? [Message on signing Move-On petition on Jan. 11, 2011.]
Almighty Freedom! give my venturous song The force, the charm that to thy voice belong; Tis thine to shape my course, to light my way, To nerve my country with the patriot lay, To teach all men where all their interest lies, How rulers may be just and nations wise: Strong in thy strength I bend no suppliant knee, Invoke no miracle, no Muse but thee.
Nothing makes us feel so lonely as solitude, and nothing makes us so cheerful as freedom from evil companions.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants, it is the creed of slaves.
Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.
I do not want art for a few, any more than education for a few, or freedom for a few.
Life is not a goal; it is also an instrument, like death, like beauty, like virtue, like knowledge. Whose instrument? Of that God who fights for freedom. We are all one, we are all an imperiled essence.
They are slaves who fear to speak For the fallen and the weak. They are slaves who dare not be In the right with two or three.
Not by refraining from action does man attain freedom from action. Not by mere renunciation does he attain supreme perfection.
Protest against Industrial Capitalism from one aspect or another is universal: so was the protest against the condition of European religion at the beginning of the sixteenth century. One man in one mood will attack Industrial Capitalism for its destruction of beauty; another for its incompetence; another for the vileness of the men who chiefly prosper under it; another for its mere confusion and noise; another for its false values; it was until recently most fiercely attacked for its impoverishment of the workers, its margin of unemployment and the rest — indeed so fiercely that it was compelled to seek palliatives for the evil. With a mass of men it was attacked from a vague but strong sense of injustice; it allowed a few rich to exploit mankind. In the midst of all these innumerable forms of a common protest and universal ill-ease there has grown up one definite body of doctrine whose adherents are called Communists and who desired the total subversion of what had been, hitherto unquestioned among civilized European men, the general doctrines of property and individual freedom. [Hilaire Belloc, Cranmer: Archbishop of Canterbury 1533 – 1556 . Philadelphia & London: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1931, p. 56.]
Conscious faith is freedom. Emotional faith is slavery. Mechanical faith is foolishness.
When Freedom from her mountain-height Unfurled her standard to the air, She tore the azure robe of night, And set the stars of glory there. She mingled with its gorgeous dyes The milky baldric of the skies, And striped its pure, celestial white With streakings of the morning light. Flag of the free heart's hope and home! By angel hands to valour given! Thy stars have lit the welkin dome, And all thy hues were born in heaven. Forever float that standard sheet! Where breathes the foe but falls before us, With Freedom's soil beneath our feet, And Freedom's banner streaming o'er us?
Soldiers! what I have to offer you is fatigue, danger, struggle, and death; the chill of the cold night in the free air, and heat under the burning sun; no lodgings, no munitions, no provisions, but forced marches, dangerous watchposts, and the continual struggle with the bayonet against batteries. Those who love freedom and their country may follow me!= _Garibaldi to his Roman soldiers._ (That is the most glorious speech I ever heard in my life.
But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.
I sit by the window and watch the rain and the leaves and the snow collide. They take turns dancing in the wind, performing choreographed routines for unsuspecting masses. The soldiers stomp stomp stomp through the rain, crushing leaves and fallen snow under their feet. Their hands are wrapped in gloves wrapped around guns that could put a bullet through a million possibilities. They don’t bother to be bothered by the beauty that falls from the sky. They don’t understand the freedom in feeling the universe on their skin. They don’t care.
That which fundamentally distinguishes the slave is that he labors under coercion to satisfy another’s desires. [Quoted in Freedom Daily , March 1990.]
In the first place, it is obvious that not only is wealth concentrated in our times but an immense power and despotic economic dictatorship is consolidated in the hands of a few, who often are not owners but only the trustees and managing directors of invested funds which they administer according to their own arbitrary will and pleasure. This dictatorship is being most forcibly exercised by those who, since they hold the money and completely control it, control credit also and rule the lending of money. Hence they regulate the flow, so to speak, of the life-blood whereby the entire economic system lives, and have so firmly in their grasp the soul, as it were, of economic life that no one can breathe against their will. This concentration of power and might, the characteristic mark, as it were, of contemporary economic life, is the fruit that the unlimited freedom of struggle among competitors has of its own nature produced, and which lets only the strongest survive; and this is often the same as saying, those who fight the most violently, those who give least heed to their conscience. This accumulation of might and of power generates in turn three kinds of conflict. First, there is the struggle for economic supremacy itself; then there is the bitter fight to gain supremacy over the State in order to use in economic struggles its resources and authority; finally there is conflict between States themselves, not only because countries employ their power and shape their policies to promote every economic advantage of their citizens, but also because they seek to decide political controversies that arise among nations through the use of their economic supremacy and strength. [ Quadragesimo Anno (“On the Restructuring of the Social Order”), §109.] The ultimate consequences of the individualist spirit in economic life are those which you yourselves, Venerable Brethren and Beloved Children, see and deplore: Free competition has destroyed itself; economic dictatorship has supplanted the free market; unbridled ambition for power has likewise succeeded greed for gain; all economic life has become tragically hard, inexorable, and cruel. To these are to be added the grave evils that have resulted from an intermingling and shameful confusion of the functions and duties of public authority with those of the economic sphere — such as, one of the worst, the virtual degradation of the majesty of the State, which although it ought to sit on high like a queen and supreme arbitress, free from all partiality and intent upon the one common good and justice, is become a slave, surrendered and delivered to the passions and greed of men. And as to international relations, two different streams have issued from the one fountain-head: On the one hand, economic nationalism or even economic imperialism; on the other, a no less deadly and accursed internationalism of finance or international imperialism whose country is where profit is. [ Quadragesimo Anno (“On the Restructuring of the Social Order”), §§105-109, 1931.]
With freedom, books, flowers, and the moon, who could not be happy?
Das Gesetz nur kann uns Freiheit geben=--Only law can give us freedom.
Every poet, be his outward lot what it may, finds himself born in the midst of prose; he has to struggle from the littleness and obstruction of an actual world into the freedom and infinitude of an ideal.
Man muss, will man ein Gluck geniessen, / Die Freiheit zu behaupten wissen=--If we would enjoy what fortune gives us, we must know how to maintain our freedom.
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow, this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that 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.
The real glory of dreams lies in their atmosphere of unlimited freedom. It is not the freedom of the dictator, who enforces his own will on the world, but the freedom of the artist, who has no will, who is free of will.
Poverty with freedom from debt is great wealth.
The practical reason for freedom is that freedom seems to be the only condition under which any kind of substantial moral fiber can be developed — we have tried law, compulsion and authoritarianism of various kinds, and the result is nothing to be proud of.
Therefore the dignity of the human person normally demands the right to the use of earthly goods as the natural foundation for a livelihood; and to that right corresponds the fundamental obligation to grant private property, as far as possible, to all. The positive laws regulating private property may change and may grant a more or less restricted use of it; but if such legal provisions are to contribute to the peaceful state of the community, they must save the worker, who is or will be the father of a family, from being condemned to an economic dependence or slavery irreconcilable with his rights as a person. Whether this slavery arises from the tyranny of private capital or from the power of the State makes no difference to its effect; indeed under the oppression of a State which controls everything and regulates the whole of public and private life, which encroaches even upon the sphere of thought, conviction, and conscience, this lack of freedom may have consequences even more disastrous, as experience shows. [Christmas Broadcast, “The Rights of Man,” 1942.]
A man who takes away another man's freedom is a prisoner of hatred, he is locked behind the bars of prejudice and narrow-mindedness. I am not truly free if I am taking away someone else's freedom, just as surely as I am not free when my freedom is taken from me. The oppressed and the oppressor alike are robbed of their humanity. When I walked out of prison, that was my mission, to liberate the oppressed and the oppressor both. Some say that has now been achieved. But I know that that is not the case. The truth is that we are not yet free; we have merely achieved the freedom to be free, the right not to be oppressed. We have not taken the final step of our journey, but the first step on a longer and even more difficult road. For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others. The true test of our devotion to freedom is just beginning.
Time to leave now, get out of this room, go somewhere, anywhere; sharpen this feeling of happiness and freedom, stretch your limbs, fill your eyes, be awake, wider awake, vividly awake in every sense and every pore.
The old freedom sufficiently survives in the mind of the wage earner to give him the illusion that, while accepting insurance and maintenance from the capitalist state, he can still be a full citizen. He thinks he can have his cake and eat it too. He is mistaken. The great capitalists who procured these regulations from the politicians knew what they were at. They were catching their proletariat in a net, and now they hold it fast. [“The New Paganism,” Essays of a Catholic . Rockford, Illinois: Tan Books and Publishers, Inc., 1992, p. 9.]
seeming's enough for slaves of space and time — ours is the now and here of freedom. Come
What is freedom? Freedom is the right to choose: the right to create for oneself the alternatives of choice. Without the possibility of choice and the exercise of choice a man is not a man but a member, an instrument, a thing. [ A Declaration of Freedom .]
But if we are to retain freedom, then we can only do so by keeping the determining mass of the citizens the possessors of property with personal control over it, as individuals or as families. For property is the necessary condition of economic freedom in the full sense of that term. He that has not property is under economic servitude to him who has property, whether the possessor of it be another individual or the State. [ The Crisis of Civilization, Being the Matter of a Course of Lectures Delivered at Fordham University, 1937 . Rockford, Illinois: Tan Books and Publishers, Inc., 1991, p. 145.]
Our fathers' God, to thee; Author of liberty, To thee I sing; Long may our land be bright With freedom's holy light; Protect us by thy might, Great God, our King!
The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One’s right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections. [U.S. Supreme Court, W. Va. State Board of Education v. Barnette, 1943.]
If a man have freedom enough to live healthily and work at his craft, he has enough; and so much all can easily obtain.
When no risk is taken there is no freedom. It is thus that, in an industrial society, the plethora of laws made for our personal safety convert the land into a nursery, and policemen hired to protect us become selfserving busybodies.
We must be ready to dare all for our country. For history does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid. We must acquire proficiency in defense and display stamina in purpose. We must be willing, individually and as a Nation, to accept whatever sacrifices may be required of us. A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.
The problem of uniting the invisible and visible worlds presented itself under three principal aspects. The first was the problem of creation, or how the invisible Primal Cause could ever come in contact with visible matter and impart to it form and meaning. The second problem was the relation between God and the individual soul. The third problem was the return of the soul from the visible to the invisible world, from the prison of its mortal body to the freedom of a heavenly paradise. The individual soul as dwelling in a material body forms part of the created world, and the question of the return of the soul to God is therefore closely connected with that of its creation by, or its emanation from, God.
Philosophy is harmonized knowledge making a harmonious life; it is the self-discipline which lifts us to serenity and freedom. Knowledge is power, but only wisdom is liberty.
Man kann in wahrer Freiheit leben / Und doch nicht ungebunden sein=--One may enjoy true freedom, and yet be in chains.
September 11 was, and remains, above all an immense human tragedy. But September 11 also posed a momentous and deliberate challenge not just to America but to the world at large. The target of the terrorists was not only New York and Washington but the very values of freedom, tolerance and decency which underpin our way of life.
Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisioned by the enemy, don't we consider it his duty to escape?. . .If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we're partisans of liberty, then it's our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!
The basic question…is not whether there should be economic planning, but rather who should do it. Economic planning there will be. It will be done either by millions of individuals who are directly concerned, each making his own independent decisions, or it will be done by a central planning committee, given power to ignore the judgment of these individuals. [Quoted in Freedom Daily , March 1990.]
Life is freedom--life in the direct ratio of its amount.... The smallest candle fills a mile with its rays, and the pupill? of a man run out to every star.
Economic freedom is in our eyes a good. It is among the highest of temporal goods because it is necessary to the highest life of society through the dignity of man and through the multiplicity of his action, in which multiplicity is life. Through well-divided property alone can the units of society react upon the State. Through it alone can a public opinion flourish. Only where the bulk of the cells are healthy can the whole organism thrive. It is therefore our business to restore economic freedom through the restoration of the only institution under which it flourishes, which institution is Property. The problem before us is, how to restore Property so that it shall be, as it was not so long ago, a general institution. [ The Restoration of Property . New York: Sheed and Ward, 1936, p. 27.]
If we live on this earth only, if our thoughts are hemmed in by the narrow horizon of this life, then we lose indeed those whom death takes from us. But it is death itself which teaches us that there is a Beyond, we are lifted up and see a new world, far beyond what we had seen before. In that wide world we lead a new and larger life, a life which includes those we no longer see on earth, but whom we cannot surrender. The old Indian philosophers say that no one can find the truth whose heart is attached to his wife and children. No doubt perfect freedom from all affections would make life and death very easy. But may not the very love which we feel for those who belong to us, even when they are taken from us, bring light to our eyes, and make us see the truth that, by that very love, we belong to another world, and that from that world, however little we can here know about it, love will not be excluded. We believe what we desire--true--but why do we desire? Let us be ourselves, let us be what we are meant to be on earth, and trust to Him who made us what we are.
Individuality is the aim of political liberty. By leaving to the citizen as much freedom of action and of being, as comports with order and the rights of others, the institutions render him truly a freeman. He is left to pursue his means of happiness in his own manner.
Liberty is closely connected with property; this is true philosophically, not only in our bills of rights. It is common theory that the idea of property follows immediately from the idea of person. It is philosophically a necessary consequence of it. The right to property is simply an enlargement of the person, and the right of liberty is realized in the right of property. Therefore the institution of property, the suum as related to things, is presupposed by the legal order. The bills of rights do not create it, even as they are not competent to destroy it. The institution of property is like a dowry of the personality. Today this truth is easily proved. Where the institution of property is completely abolished, as in Soviet Russia, man has ceased to be a person and has become a mere tool of the superstate, a mere cog in a non-personal machine. Rightly, therefore, Leo XIII ( Rerum Novarum ) speaks of a slavish yoke that has been imposed on the propertyless modern proletarian. (1) It is morally impossible to exist as a free person without property. The sphere of freedom increases directly with the sphere of property, or contrariwise, as Linsenmann (2) so ably put it, the man who has no property easily becomes himself the property of another man. (3) It is, therefore, a conclusion from the principle of natural law that the institution of property ought to exist. The positive legal order guarantees the pre-existent right to property; it may regulate the use of property; it may constitute certain things to be public property, and so on. The capitalist and the feudalist property orders are but transitory; the institution of property is perennial. We may thus see that there exists a perennial kernel in the concept of suum which precedes its concrete determination in positive law. “Natural Rights of the Person and of the State”, The State in Catholic Thought, St. Louis, Missouri: B. Herder Book Company, 1947, I.vii.ii, pp. 188-189.