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A free culture supports and protects creators and innovators. It does this directly by granting intellectual property rights. But it does so indirectly by limiting the reach of those rights, to guarantee that follow-on creators and innovators remain as free as possible from the control of the past. A free culture is not a culture without property, just as a free market is not a market in which everything is free. The opposite of a free culture is a "permission culture" -- a culture in which creators get to create only with the permission of the powerful, or of creators from the past.
Lawrence LessigThe best things in life are free. Sunsets and sunrises are free. Air is free. Love is free. Death is free. The best things in life are free.
Frederick LenzIn action, in desire, we must submit perpetually to the tyranny of outside forces; but in thought, in aspiration, we are free, free from our fellowmen, free from the petty planet on which our bodies impotently crawl, free even, while we live, from the tyranny of death.
Bertrand RussellAmerica has an important role to play as the world leader in creating a global order, free trade, free waterways, free commerce, free movement of people. That happens because of U.S. military might.
David BrooksI don't want to do free jazz! Because free jazz - which is the musical equivalent of free marketeering - isn't actually free at all. It's just constrained by what your muscles can do.
Brian EnoWe know what works: freedom works. We know what's right: freedom is right. We know how to secure a more and just and prosperous life for man on earth: through free markets, free speech, free elections and the exercise of free will unhampered by the state.
George H. W. BushOf course each citizen should try to educate him or herself, but only after receiving some essential, basic blocks of knowledge. Formal education should always be free; from kindergarten to PhD. It is free in many European countries, and in several Latin American ones (including Cuba, Mexico and Argentina). China is returning to free education, as it is returning to universal health care. In countries like Chile, people are on the streets right now fighting for free education, and they are winning!
Andre VltchekWe are ever free if we would only believe it, only have faith enough. You are the soul, free and eternal, ever free, ever blessed. Have faith enough and you will be free in a minute.
Swami VivekanandaWhen the psychiatrist approves of a person's actions, he judges that person to have acted with "free choice"; when he disapproves,he judges him to have acted without "free choice." It is small wonder that people find "free choice" a confusing idea: "free choice" appears to refer to what the person being judged (often called the "patient") does, whereas it is actually what the person making the judgment (often a psychiatrist or other mental health worker) thinks.
Thomas SzaszWe must show that liberty is not merely one particular value but that it is the source and condition of most moral values. What a free society offers to the individual is much more than what he would be able to do if only he were free. We can therefore not fully appreciate the value of freedom until we know how a society of free men as a whole differs from one in which unfreedom prevails.
Friedrich August von HayekWe have become the new american slaves: but there is a revolution coming. It is a revolution of individual liberty. It will free us without violence. It will begin with the self. It will spread to the workplace. It will turn our corporate masters into our servants. It will free us of government's tyranny. The revolution will spread to all corners of the nation, and at last, we shall be free.
Gerry SpenceWe live in a free society, and freedom means freedom for everybody. We shouldn't be able to choose and say, 'You get to live free and you don't.' That means people should be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to enter into. Like Joe (Lieberman), I'm also wrestling with the extent to which there ought to be legal sanction of those relationships. I think we ought to do everything we can to tolerate and accommodate whatever kind of relationships people want to enter into.
Dick CheneyI have free will, but not of my own choice. I have never freely chosen to have free will. I have to have free will, whether I like it or not!
Raymond SmullyanIn Africa, you only have an independent media in only eight African countries, so there is very little transparency. The best gift that rich countries can give Africa is Radio Free Africa and Radio Free Africa will do for Africa what Radio Free Europe did for Europe.
George W. BushThe American feels too rich in his opportunities for free expression that he often no longer knows what he is free from. Neither does he know where he is not free; he does not recognize his native autocrats when he sees them.
Erik EriksonMan has reason, discrimination and free-will such as it is. The brute has no such thing. It is not a free agent, and knows no distinction between virtue and vice, good and evil. Man, being a free agent, knows these distinctions, and when he follows his higher nature, shows himself far superior to the brute, but when he follows his baser nature can show himself lower than the brute.
Mahatma GandhiGoebbels was in favor of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If youโre really in favor of free speech, then youโre in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise. Otherwise, youโre not in favor of free speech.
Noam ChomskyFreedom can never be true of name and form; it is the clay out of which we (the pots) are made; then it is limited and not free, so that freedom can never be true of the related. One pot can never say "I am free" as a pot; only as it loses all ideas of form does it become free.
Swami VivekanandaI'm a free person; I feel terribly free. They could put me in chains and I still would be free because my thoughts would be mine - and that's all I want to have.
Arthur RubinsteinIn other countries, rich and poor, education remains substantially free, with educational standards that rank high in global comparisons. Even in the US, higher education was almost free during the economically successful years before the neoliberal reaction - and it was a much poorer country then. The GI bill provided free education to huge numbers of people - white men overwhelmingly - who would probably never have gone to college, a great benefit to them personally and to the whole society. Tuition at private colleges was far below today's exorbitant costs.
Noam ChomskyNo one has to come see my shows who doesn't like me talking about white Christians. They are free not buy a ticket. They're free to leave at any time. So I'm not imposing anything on anyone. Therefore I feel free to cross the line.
George CarlinIt wasn't that people wanted things for free and asked for advertising to fund it - it's that these companies wanted to amass an audience whose "eyeballs" they could sell, and they gave people things for free to do that. Free services and content has been foisted upon us because there wasn't the will power to explore other options.
Astra TaylorIndividual freedom and drug laws contradict each other. In a genuinely free society, people are free to ingest whatever they want to ingest, no matter how harmful or destructive. What people ingest is none of the government's business. If drug users or drug addicts wish to get help, a free society provides the means to do so.
Jacob G. HornbergerFree speech is against governments, not against the NBA. So the players and coaches and indeed owners have been fined for their speech, which is costly rather than free. I sort of acknowledge that there is not free speech when you agree to work in the NBA.
David SternWhen you hear a lobby called Partnership for a Drug-Free America, just remember - they do not want a drug free America. They want an America free of drugs that are their competitors.
Bill MaherI have a dream! To be free at last! Free at last! Free at last. And if a man has nothing to die for, Then his life is worth nothing.
Martin Luther King, Jr.I can't say that I was my happiest on court, but I felt completely free. Free from family obligations, free from my own torment. In a real sense I was a different person. It was a place where I could not tolerate the idea of being beaten. I psyched myself up into a state where I felt something close to hatred towards my opponent, a state where I detested the idea of someone making his name at the expense of Jimmy Connors. I was in my element on court, measuring myself against someone else. I was not competitive for show. It came from deep within.
Jimmy ConnorsI prefer to work for my country in a free and independent way. I was born free, and I want to die free. I am always suspicious of ideology. Instead, I respect men with ideas.
Andrea BocelliThe radicals...want speech regulated by codes that proscribe certain language. They see free speech as at best a delusion, at worst a threat to the welfare of minorities and women....The most obvious (and cynical) explanation for the switched positions is the switched situations. Protesting students became established professors and administrators. For outsiders, free speech is bread and butter; for insiders, indigestion. To the new academics, unregulated free speech spells trouble.
Russell JacobyLanguage is a process of free creation; its laws and principles are fixed, but the manner in which the principles of generation are used is free and infinitely varied. Even the interpretation and use of words involves a process of free creation.
Noam ChomskyShe followed the pleasure where it led. She had no weight, no name, no thoughts, no history. Then came a burst of phosphorescence, as though a firework had discharged behind her eyes, and it was over. She felt quiet and warm. For the first conscious moment of her life, her mind was free from wonder, free from worry, free from work or puzzlement. Then, from the middle of that marvelous furred stillness, a thought took shape, took hold, took over. I shall have to do this again.
Elizabeth GilbertAs a conservative who believes in limited government, I believe the only check on government power in real time is a free and independent press. A free press ensures the flow of information to the public, and let me say, during a time when the role of government in our lives and in our enterprises seems to grow every day--both at home and abroad - ensuring the vitality of a free and independent press is more important than ever.
Mike PenceWriting non-free software is not an ethically legitimate activity, so if people who do this run into trouble, that's good! All businesses based on non-free software ought to fail, and the sooner the better.
Richard StallmanI just got in music because it was a hobby. I got into clubs for free, got to drink for free and left with the hottest girl from the night. I never dreamed it would be for me to go on this kind of ride at all.
ShaggyI just want to be remembered as someone who wanted people to think free and wanted people to be free, whether it's at the end of the day, or at the end of the mortal coil.
Immortal TechniqueThe Occupy Wall Street collective is confused about what it wants but it wants it now! Some of the loonier demands from its independent thinkers: Striking all existing public and private debt from the books across the "entire planet"; elimination of all international borders; free college education; a guaranteed "living wage" for all regardless of employment; an end to free trade; trillions in additional spending for infrastructure and ecological restoration; and ending the fossil fuel economy.
Mike RosenNow, you receive all your ideas; therefore you receive your wish, you wish therefore necessarily. The word "liberty" does not therefore belong in any way to your will....The will, therefore, is not a faculty that one can call free. A free will is an expression absolutely void of sense, and what the scholastics have called will of indifference, that is to say willing without cause, is a chimera unworthy of being combated.
VoltaireThere are "extremists" in the free software world, but that's one major reason why I don't call what I do "free software" any more. I don't want to be associated with the people for whom it's about exclusion and hatred.
Linus TorvaldsWe must make the building of a free society once more an intellectual adventure, a deed of courage. Unless we can make the philosophic foundations of a free society once more a living intellectual issue, and its implementation a task which challenges the ingenuity and imagination of our liveliest minds, the prospects of freedom are indeed dark. But if we can regain that belief in the power of ideas which was the mark of liberalism at its best, the battle is not lost.
Friedrich August von HayekIf the whole world I once could see On free soil stand, with the people free Then to the moment might I say, Linger awhile. . .so fair thou art.
Johann Wolfgang von GoetheThe truth shall set you free. When you hear the truth, it sets you free. So mathematics is truth. It adds up. There's no error. Only time there's an error is when man miscalculates his own problems or his own equations.
RZAThere must be no barriers for freedom of inquiry... There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors.
J. Robert OppenheimerThe threat to free television. The reason television is free is because it is a life support system for commercials. That fundamental aspect is about to change.
Dick WolfBefore I had my daughter I actually wanted to do something that I could put out for free, like a mixtape, but it wasn't going to really be a mixtape, it was just going to be songs that I wrote and release for free.
Jhene AikoWe no longer have a free market in the United States, we have a government controlled free market.
Jim BunningThe Government's power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.
Hugo Black