A Quote by Fulton J. Sheen

Freedom does not mean that right to do whatever we please, but rather to do as we ought. The right to do whatever we please reduces freedom to a physical power and forgets that freedom is a moral power.

Fulton J. Sheen

Quote Topics

Does Forgets Freedom Mean Moral Ought Physical Please Power Rather Right Whatever

Quote Author

Fulton J. Sheen
American - Priest
May 8, 1895 - December 9, 1979

The industrial and social injustice of our era is the tragic aftermath of democracy's overemphasis on freedom as the "right to do whatever you please." No, freedom means the right to do what you ought, and ought implies law, and law implies justice, and justice implies God. So too in war, a nation that fights for freedom divorced from justice has no right to war, because it does not know why it wants to be free, or why it wants anyone else to be free.

Fulton J. Sheen

Freedom isn't the right or ability to do whatever you please. Freedom comes from understanding the limits of our own power and the inherent limits set in place by nature. By accepting life's limits and inevitabilities and working with them rather than fighting them, you become truly free.

Epictetus

Freedom is not simply the circumstances that allow you to do whatever you want. Freedom is not only the opportunity to choose. Freedom is the strength of character to choose and to do what is right. With that in mind, our age is not an age of freedom, but an age of slavery. It is subtle, but it is real. The foundation of freedom is not power or choice. Freedom is upheld not by men and women in government, but by people who govern themselves.

Matthew Kelly

Freedom, in a political context, means freedom from government coercion. It does not mean freedom from the landlord, from the employer, or freedom from the laws of nature which do not provide men with automatic prosperity. It means freedom from the coercive power of the state ' and nothing else

Ayn Rand

Political freedom means the absence of coercion of a man by his fellow men. The fundamental threat to freedom is power to coerce, be it in the hands of a monarch, a dictator, an oligarchy, or a momentary majority. The preservation of freedom requires the elimination of such concentration of power to the fullest possible extent and the dispersal and distribution of whatever power cannot be eliminated — a system of checks and balances.

Milton Friedman

In any society freedom of thought will probably be of direct significance for a small minority. But this does not mean that anyone is competent, or ought to have power, to select those to whom this freedom is to be reserved.

Friedrich August von Hayek

Negative freedom is freedom from - freedom from oppression, whether it's a colonial power or addiction to alcohol oppressing you. You need to be freed from negative freedom. Positive freedom is freedom for, freedom to be. And that's what's routinely ignored today.

Os Guinness

I live in America. I have the right to write whatever I want. And it's equaled by another right just as powerful: the right not to read it. Freedom of speech includes the freedom to offend people.

Brad Thor

True freedom is not advanced in the permissive society, which confuses freedom with license to do anything whatever and which in the name of freedom proclaims a kind of general amorality. It is a caricature of freedom to claim that people are free to organize their lives with no reference to moral values, and to say that society does not have to ensure the protection and advancement of ethical values. Such an attitude is destructive of freedom and peace.

Pope John Paul II

We are resolved to protect individual freedom of belief. This freedom must include the child as well as the parent. The freedom for which we stand is not freedom of belief as we please,... not freedom to evade responsibility, ...but freedom to be honest in speech and action, freedom to respect one's own integrity of thought and feeling, freedom to question, to investigate, to try, to understand life and the universe in which life abounds, freedom to search anywhere and everywhere to find the meaning of Being, freedom to experiment with new ways of living that seem better than the old.

Sophia Lyon Fahs

To struggle against censorship, whatever its nature, and whatever the power under which it exists, is my duty as a writer, as are calls for freedom of the press. I am a passionate supporter of that freedom, and I consider that if any writer were to imagine that he could prove he didn't need that freedom, then he would be like a fish affirming in public that it didn't need water.

Mikhail Bulgakov

Whether it's freedom to express, freedom to live, freedom to earn, freedom to thrive, freedom to learn, whatever it is, I want to make sure that I'm a part of these spaces and opening doors.

Angela Rye

There are no categories in contemporary art. There are no rules. Artists are given the freedom to make and create whatever they please and call it whatever they please. I identify with that system, or lack of system, much more than I do the landscape of contemporary publishing.

James Frey

Freedom is not the capacity to do whatever we please; freedom is the capacity to make intelligent choices.

Frances Moore Lappé

The economic freedom which is the prerequisite of any other freedom cannot be the freedom from economic care which the socialist promise us, and which can be obtained only by relieving the individual at the same time of the necessity and of the power of choice: it must be the freedom of economic activity which, with the right of choice, inevitably also carries the risk and the responsibility of that right

Friedrich August von Hayek

Freedom is not the right to live as we please, but the right to find how we ought to live in order to fulfill our potential.