A Quote by Nathaniel Branden

Freedom is still the most radical idea of all. — © Nathaniel Branden
Freedom is still the most radical idea of all.
When we got organized as a country, [and] wrote a fairly radical Constitution, with a radical Bill of Rights, giving radical amounts of freedom to Americans, it was assumed that Americans who had that freedom would use it responsibly...When personal freedom is being abused, you have to move to limit it.
When we got organized as a country and we wrote a fairly radical Constitution with a radical Bill of Rights, giving a radical amount of individual freedom to Americans, it was assumed that the Americans who had that freedom would use it responsibly.
Two radical ideas have been introduced into human thought. One of them is that energy and matter are pretty much the same sort of stuff. That's Einstein. The other is that revenge is a bad idea. Revenge is an enormously popular idea but, of course, Jesus came along with the radical idea of forgiveness. If you're insulted, you have to square accounts. So this invention by Jesus is as radical as Einstein's.
I say to Americans who love our country - young and old - be a radical for freedom. Be a radical for liberty. Be a radical for our republic. For which I stand.
Most of the time we like the idea of our own freedom. There are times when we do not at all like the idea of the freedom of others. If we suffer because of their freedom, let us remember that they suffer because of ours.
Even in an intensely mediated world, in a world that offers at least the illusion of radical self-invention and radical freedom of choice, I as a novelist am drawn to the things you can't get away from. Because much of the promise of radical self-invention, of defining yourself through this marvelous freedom of choice, it's just a lie. It's a lie that we all buy into, because it helps the economy run.
Students throughout the totalitarian world risk life and limb for freedom of expression, many American college students are demanding that big brother restrict their freedom of speech on campus. This demand for enhanced censorship is not emanating only from the usual corner - the know-nothing fundamentalist right - it is coming from the radical, and increasingly not-so-radical left as well.
Democracy is still a radical idea in a world where we often confuse images with realities, words with actions.
Most Christians are more than content to live out their lives surrounded by the trappings of our world, rather than to risk losing them in becoming a radical Christian. A radical Christian (by my definition) is one who will put God first in all decisions, even when putting God first is costly. In the business world, this means putting God first even when doing so costs money. That is true freedom - spiritual freedom - as opposed to business bondage.
Most Americans pay lip service to the idea of freedom, but can't handle real freedom.
Freedom of the press is perhaps the freedom that has suffered the most from the gradual degradation of the idea of liberty.
Is there an idea more radical in the history of the human race than turning your children over to total strangers whom you know nothing about, and having those strangers work on your child's mind, out of your sight, for a period of twelve years? Could there be a more radical idea than that? Back in Colonial days in America, if you proposed that kind of idea, they'd burn you at the stake, you mad person! It's a mad idea!
As I have said so often before, the long memory is the most radical idea in America...
I'm talking of the idea, basically very widespread in America, that the less government the better, which is obviously being used to the advantage of the big corporations, but none-the-less has very radical implications. The idea of a people that exercises a great deal of federalist or confederalist control, the ideal of a grass-roots type of democracy, the idea of the freedom of the individual which is not to get lost in the mazes of anarcho-egotism à la Stirner, or for that matter right-wing libertarianism.
We want freedom. We want freedom from the constraints of the cycles of the sun and the moon. We want freedom from drought and weather, freedom from the movement of game, the growth of plants, freedom from control from mendacious popes and kings, freedom from ideology, freedom from want. This idea of freeing ourselves has become the compass of the human journey.
I've been very lucky in the freedom that I've been given. Every artist needs two types of freedom: You need the freedom to - the freedom to come up with an idea or treatment - and then you need the other half of the freedom, and that's freedom from - somebody saying, 'This is great. This is how I want you to do it'.
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