If the events of September 11, 2001, have proven anything, it's that the terrorists can attack us, but they can't take away what makes us American - our freedom, our liberty, our civil rights. No, only Attorney General John Ashcroft can do that.
Every general increase of freedom is accompanied by some degeneracy, attributable to the same causes as the freedom.
Drag is a chicken suit, and you're very emboldened. Whatever you do or say or fail at or succeed at is attributed to your costume and not you as a person. So there's a lot of freedom.
My generation of Americans, the scions of daring dreamers, the children of the fearlessly faithful and the offspring of many of history's most audacious actors - we, together, drink deeply from wells of freedom, liberty and opportunity that we did not dig.
The house of Austria has publicly used every effort to deprive the country of its legitimate Independence and Constitution, designing to reduce it to a level with the other provinces long since deprived of all freedom, and to unite all in a common sink of slavery.
Without culture, and the relative freedom it implies, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle. This is why any authentic creation is a gift to the future.
Somebody could look at me and go, 'She's dressed black,' or 'She's behaving in the stereotypical way of a black lesbian.' But this is how I feel most comfortable. This is my authentic self. I want the freedom to be that regardless of how someone interprets it.
Here was buried Thomas Jefferson Author of the Declaration of American Independence Of the Statute of Virginia for religious freedom & Father of the University of Virginia.
I was interested by the idea that artists working in a totalitarian dictatorship or tsarist autocracy are secretly and slightly shamefully envied by artists who work in freedom. They have the gratification of intense interest: the authorities want to put them in jail, while there are younger readers for whom what they write is pure oxygen.
Freedom of conscience entails more dangers than authority and despotism.
For years, I was watching other people have so much fun playing out their version of authorship, like Louis C.K. and Larry David. As I watched them do their thing, I began to pine for the days when I had a lot less expected of me and, often, a lot more creative freedom. The courage that those guys have is always captivating to me.
I read everything, but generally more fact than fiction - especially autobiographies and biographies. I've read 'Long Walk to Freedom' by Nelson Mandela at least twice on holiday. Every time, I'm totally awed by his vision, strength and forgiveness. I feel honoured to have got to know him and his wonderful wife Graca over the years.
The sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality.
So long as you do not achieve social liberty, whatever freedom is provided by the law is of no avail to you.
I actually read 'The Last Jedi' before 'The Force Awakens' came out. It totally helped me, though! The idea of this franchise that I already knew was such a big cultural thing, I was sort of given this freedom to be honest with that character and not have this pressure of making her something else that we had already seen in this universe.
Freedom is not given to us by anyone; we have to cultivate it ourselves. It is a daily practice... No one can prevent you from being aware of each step you take or each breath in and breath out.
Every human has four endowments - self awareness, conscience, independent will and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom... The power to choose, to respond, to change.
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.
If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.
I think that growing up in a crowded continent like Europe with an awful lot of competing claims, ideas... cultures... and systems of thought, we have, perforce, developed a more sophisticated notion of what the word 'freedom' means than I see much evidence of in America.
