PHIL 1115 Lecture 15 Freedom

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PHIL 1115 Lecture 15 Freedom (overheads)

"Freedom is an inherent right of every human on earth."

Stone walls do not a prison make nor iron bars a cage;

minds innocent and quiet take that for an hermitage.

Richard Lovelace 1600s

Freedom is a suitcase word
It needs to be unpacked

"In the truest sense, freedom cannot be bestowed. It must be achieved."

- Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1941

The average man doesn't want to be free. He simply wants to be safe.

H. L. Mencken

Freedom's just another word ...For nothing left to lose...

Janis Joplin "Me and Bobby McGee"

Freedom and Responsibility:

Freedom is an inherent right of every human on earth.

Responsibility is the supporting foundation of freedom.

When a person ceases to be responsible, society has an obligation to terminate the offending person's freedom.

"People of society are free to trade certain freedoms in exchange for certain mutual benefits.

For example, you trade the freedom to motor through a busy intersection at any time, for the fair and consistent control of traffic with a signal light."

Found on the net...

Freedom is relative, not absolute.
Confined physically in my prison cell my mind can soar with blissful indulgence. In my lakeside estate I can wander at will, but find my thoughts constrained by a lifetime of conditioning. My neighbour thinks I am free because I am rich. I think my neighbour is free, because he is unemployed and has no commitments.

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I freed thousands of slaves. I could have freed thousands more if they had known they were slaves.
-- Harriet Tubman

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
-- Benjamin Franklin 1759

If you want to be free, there is but one way; it is to guarantee an equally full measure of liberty to all your neighbors. There is no other.

-- Carl Schurz (1829 - 1906)

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.

-- Soren Kierkegaard (1813 - 1855)

Men had better be without education than be educated by their rulers.
-- Thomas Hodgskin, 1823

Our schools have been scientifically designed to prevent over-education from happening. The average American [should be] content with their humble role in life, because they're not tempted to think about any other role.
-- William T. Harris, U.S. Commissioner of Education, 1889

What is the task of higher education? To make a man into a machine. What are the means employed? He is taught how to suffer being bored.
-- F. W. Nietzsche 1889

Our schools are, in a sense, factories, in which the raw products (children) are to be shaped and fashioned into products to meet the various demands of life. The specifications for manufacturing come from the demands of twentieth-century civilization, and it is the business of the school to build its pupils according to the specifications laid down.
-- Ellwood P. Cubberley, Dean of the StanfordUniversitySchool of Education

To be nobody but yourself -- in a world which is doing it's best, night and day, to make you like everybody else -- means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting.
-- e.e. cummings

No one here gets out alive.

-- Jim Morrison

Charlie Daniels: A brief candle; both ends burning
An endless mile; a bus wheel turning
A friend to share the lonesome times
A handshake and a sip of wine
So say it loud and let it ring
We are all a part of everything
The future, present and the past
Fly on proud bird
You're free at last.
-- written en route to the funeral for his friend, Ronnie Van Zant of the band, Lynyrd Skynyrd.

You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man's freedom. You can only be free if I am free.

-- Clarence Darrow

Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.

-- `Condemned to be free'

-- Jean-Paul Sartre

Years ago I recognized my kinship with all living things, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on the earth. I said then and I say now, that
while there is a lower class,
I am in it; while there is a
criminal element, I am of it;
while there is a soul in prison,
I am not free.

-- Eugene V. Debs

"Freedom is the will to
be responsible to ourselves"

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

"Freedom is not procured by a full enjoyment of what is desired, but by controlling the desire."

-- Epictetus

Americans are asking, why do they hate us?.They hate our freedoms -- our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.

-- George Bush

We have to believe in free will. We've got no choice.

-- Isaac Bashevis Singer