A Quote by Louisa May Alcott
There is very little real liberty in the world; even those who seem freest are often the most tightly bound. Law, custom, public opinion, fear or shame make slaves of us all, as you will find when you try your experiment.
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Feelings and stories of unworthiness and shame are perhaps the most binding element in the trance of fear. When we believe something is wrong with us, we are convinced we are in danger. Our shame fuels ongoing fear, and our fear fuels more shame. The very fact that we feel fear seems to prove that we are broken or incapable. When we are trapped in trance, being fearful and bad seem to define who we are. The anxiety in our body, the stories, the ways we make excuses, withdraw or lash out—these become to us the self that is most real.
...How can Americans living in the freest country in the world be 'slaves'? We don't even enjoy the liberty of serfs. ( A serf paid only 25% of his earnings to his feudal lord. How much income tax do you pay?) Don't kid yourselves, we're slaves. Slaves with weekends off.
We are slaves, all of us...Some are slaves to fear. Others are slaves to reason—or base desire. It is our lot to be slaves...and the question must be to what shall we owe our indenture? Will it be to truth or to falsehood, hope or despair, light or darkness? I choose to serve the light, even though that bondage often lies in darkness.
The relative freedom which we enjoy depends of public opinion. The law is no protection. Governments make laws, but whether they are carried out, and how the police behave, depends on the general temper in the country. If large numbers of people are interested in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it; if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them.
The laws of custom make our [returning a visit] necessary. O how I hate this vile custom which obliges us to make slaves of ourselves! to sell the most precious property we boast, our time;--and to sacrifice it to every prattling impertinent who chooses to demand it!
Is the relinquishment of the trial by jury and the liberty of the press necessary for your liberty? Will the abandonment of your most sacred rights tend to the security of your liberty? Liberty, the greatest of all earlthy blessings - give us that precious jewel, and you may take every things else! . . . Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel.
Thus, cases of injustice, and oppression, and tyranny, and the most extravagant bigotry, are in constant occurrence among us every day. It is the custom to trumpet forth much wonder and astonishment at the chief actors therein setting at defiance so completely the opinion of the world; but there is no greater fallacy; it is precisely because they do consult the opinion of their own little world that such things take place at all, and strike the great world dumb with amazement.
We are bound to maintain public liberty, and, by the example of our own systems, to convince the world that order and law, religion and morality, the rights of conscience, the rights of persons, and the rights of property, may all be preserved and secured, in the most perfect manner, by a government entirely and purely elective. If we fail in this, our disaster will be significant, and will furnish an argument, stronger than has yet been found, in support of those opinions which maintain that government can rest safely on nothing but power and coercion.
One of the things about being a law student is that the academic discipline of law is very often removed from the practical reality of law. How to complain, who to complain to, and whether or not you even need to invoke the law is very different in the real world from how it's examined in the lecture theatre.
I realize that my opinion is my opinion, not everybody has to believe it and I never tried to shove anything down anyone's throat, but I was willing to take that to the trenches if you know what I mean. I took that opinion to the wall, often in public, often had to... I often had to fight in public with the very same people who I was trying to convince to play my records!
Though liberty is established by law, we must be vigilant, for liberty to enslave us is always present under that very liberty. Our Constitution speaks of the "general welfare of the people." Under that phrase all sorts of excesses can be employed by lusting tyrants to make us bondsmen.
A [desire] to abolish slavery prevails in North America, many of the Pennsylvanians have set their slaves at liberty, and [Virginia legislators] have petitioned the King for permission to make a law for preventing the importation of more [slaves] into that colony. This request, however, will probably not be granted, as their former laws of that kind have always been repealed.
For in the absence of debate unrestricted utterance leads to the degradation of opinion. By a kind of Greshams law the more rational is overcome by the less rational, and the opinions that will prevail will be those which are held most ardently by those with the most passionate will. For that reason the freedom to speak can never be maintained merely by objecting to interference with the liberty of the press, of printing, of broadcasting, of the screen. It can be maintained only by promoting debate.
If the public are bound to yield obedience to laws to which they cannot give their approbation, they are slaves to those who make such laws and enforce them.
It is easy to speak words of love, or to meditate lovingly upon those people with whom you are in harmony. But it is those people who seem most difficult, who may even seem hostile, that need your radiation of love most. Their very hostility is but their soul's cry for loving recognition. When you generate sufficient love to them, the discord will fade away.
I think it's very dangerous for people who do anything that's public to venture on the Web and check out what people are saying about them. Yes, you're bound to find things that will delight you - but you also find things that will make you brood and feel bad about yourself. Why would you intentionally invite that into your life?
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