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Liberation Quotes

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Liberation Quotes

“In 1963, I was sitting with a number of my students on the campus of Columbia University in New York. The morning was beautiful, the sun was shining, and we were talking to each other about the Buddhist practice of removing concepts. Suddenly someone passing by stopped and looking at me for a few seconds, and then he asked, "Are you a Buddhist?" I looked up and said, "No." Did I tell a lie? I hope that my students understood me at that moment. If I had said, "Yes, I am a Buddhist," then he would still be caught in his idea of what a Buddhist is, and that would not help him. So "No" was more helpful than "Yes." That is the language of Zen. When you do say or do something, it is to help undo the knots in people's minds, and not to bind them anymore. That is why the language we use should aim at liberation.”

“As long as you perceive that anyone is holding you back, you have not taken full responsibility for your own liberation. Liberation means that you stand free of making demands on others and on life to make you happy. When you discover yourself to be nothing but Freedom, you stop setting up conditions and requirements that need to be satisfied in order for you to be happy. It is in the absolute surrender of all conditions and requirements that Liberation is discovered to be who and what you Are. Then the love and wisdom that flows out of you have a liberating effect on others. (p. 119)”

“This (liberation) isn't something I can help you with. I can tell you what you need to do, but you have to do it. In the beginning, teachers can help a lot. But the deeper you go, all they can do is point, and clarify, and tell you what you need to do. Only you can take this step. Nobody can push you into this place. It's like Buddha's final night under the Bodhi tree. What did he do when confronted with this? He reached down and touched the ground and said, „I will not be moved.“ Finally – when everything that could be thrown at him was thrown, and he was still unmoved – it was done. He never looked back. (p. 99)”

“We do not allow others to control us, but we do understand and feel their pain when we realize that their controlling manner is a compulsion. Most controlling people cannot help themselves; they are not in control of the controlling. They are not insulting us by trying to control us; rather, they automatically take charge and dominate people and situations. They do this because of a chilling fear that they cannot handle letting the chips fall where they may. It takes a spiritual program to be liberated from the compulsion to be controlling - and to become compassionate toward controlling people.”

“Every time Nadia painted on the Artist here, Chad exploded. If all Nadia cared about was her sister, then I'm guessing Chad knew her sister, right?" "You're the person making up the story." The Body Artist put on a camisole and then pulled a heavy sweater over it. "Something about Nadia bothered him so much he shot her, and it could have been her cunt, since that's what most guys see when they look at a woman." "And so you display yours as a defiant statement: If that's all you think I am, that's what I'll be?”

“But if art is not a dangerous adventure, then what is it, and what is its justification? No, free artists cannot enjoy comfort any more than free people can. Free artists are those who, with great difficulty, create order themselves. The more chaos they must bring order to, the stricter their rules will be, and the more they will have affirmed their freedom. Gide said something that I have always agreed with, even though it might be misunderstood: “Art lives from constraint and dies from freedom.” That is true, but we must not draw the conclusion that art should be controlled. Art only lives through the constraints it places upon itself: it dies from any others. On the other hand, if art does not control itself, it descends into madness and is enslaved by its own illusions. The most liberated form of art, and the most rebellious, will thus be the most enduring; it will glorify the greatest effort. If a society and its artists do not accept this long, liberating task, if they yield to the comforts of entertainment or conformity, to the diversions of art for art’s sake or the moralizing of realistic art, its artists will remain entrenched in nihilism and sterility. Saying this means that a rebirth in art today depends on our courage and our desire to see clearly.”

“People tended to forgive only partially. They forgave in order to, one day, get a chance to remind those they’d forgiven about their failings. They forgave to feel righteous. That’s why forgiveness was so painful – because it meant conceding. It meant letting go of her case without a rebuttal. True forgiveness knew no justice. It was liberating, most probably… but freedom comes at a cost. Freedom is never free.”

“In learning a language, when from mere words we reach the laws of words, we have gained a great deal. But if we stop at that point and concern ourselves only with the marvels of the formation of a language, seeking the hidden reason of all its apparent caprices, we do not reach that end, for grammar is not literature… When we come to literature, we find that, though it conforms to the rules of grammar, it is yet a thing of joy; it is freedom itself. The beauty of a poem is bound by strict laws, yet it transcends them. The laws are its wings. They do not keep it weighed down. They carry it to freedom. Its form is in law, but its spirit is in beauty. Law is the first step toward freedom, and beauty is the complete liberation which stands on the pedestal of law. Beauty harmonizes in itself the limit and the beyond – the law and the liberty.”

“If we practice meditation, we can generate the energies of mindfulness and concentration. These energies will lead us to the insight that there is no birth and no death. We can truly remove our fear of death. When we understand that we cannot be destroyed, we are liberated from fear. It is a great relief. Non-fear is the ultimate joy.”

“For the liberal humanist legacy to which Ditchkins is in indebted, love can really be understood only in personal terms. It is not an item in his political lexicon, and would sound merely embarrassing were it to turn up there. For the liberal tradition, what seems to many men and women to lie at the core of human existence has a peripheral place in the affairs of the world, however vital a role it may play in the private life. The concept of political love, one imagines would make little sense to Ditchkins. Yet something like this is the ethical basis for socialism. It is just that it is hard to see what this might mean in a civilization where love has been almost wholly reduced to the erotic, romantic, or domestic. Ditchkins writes as he does partly because a legacy which offers an alternative to the liberal heritage on this question is today in danger of sinking without trace.”

“Whereas the violence of the oppressors prevents the oppressed from being fully human, the response of the latter to this violence is grounded in the desire to pursue the right to be human. As the oppressors dehumanize others and violate their rights, they themselves also become dehumanized. As the oppressed, fighting to be human, take away the oppressors' power to dominate and suppress, they restore to the oppressors the humanity they had lost in the exercise of oppression.”

“You become a slave if you fear to fight that's why the strong crave to conquer. If you want to be strong conquer yourself because if you can do that you can conquer the world. If you fear to address your thoughts then you will never address the thoughts of others, and if you can't do that then you'll never be able to make your mark known.”

“When is it considered a true desire of moksha (ultimate liberation)? When it remains a constant stream. But here, in one direction there is a desire for moksha and in the other direction, there are so many desires for worldly things. This creates a “plus-minus” effect and takes away the main desire [for liberation]. A desire must be constant in just one direction, only then will it be realized.”

“The family must come up together. The Raza movement is based on Brotherhood. ¿Qué no? We must look at each other as one large family. We must look at all of the children as belonging to all of us. We must strive for the fulfillment of all as equals with the full capability and right to develop as humans. When the man can look upon "his" woman as HUMAN and with the love of BROTHERHOOD and EQUALITY, then and only then, can he feel the true meaning of liberation and equality himself. When we talk of equality within the Mexican-American movement we better be talking about TOTAL equality beginning right where it all starts. AT HOME...”

“Yes, sex is troublesome and beautiful. And only when we drop our expectations, and know that we'll have moments of great sex and moments when our sexuality confounds, pains, or infuriates us, will we be liberated to enjoy it in a way that's true to ourselves.”