Freedom - Quotes from The Asylum

This begins a new feature on The Asylum: Quotes from The Asylum. Will always include an image and transcription. Maybe commentary if I've had my tea.

Transcription

“Freedom is not something you get as a present,” said Pietro. “You can live in a dictatorship and be free—on one condition: that you fight the dictatorship. The man who thinks with his own mind and keeps it uncorrupted is free. The man who fights for what he thinks is right is free. But you can live in the most democratic country on earth, and if you’re lazy, obtuse or servile within yourself, you’re not free. Even without any violent coercion, you’re a slave. You can’t beg your freedom from someone. You have to seize it—everyone as much as he can.”

— Ignazio Silone, Bread and Wine¹

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Notes

1. Silone, Ignazio, Bread and Wine, translated by Harvey Fergusson II, A Signet Classic published by The New American Library of World Literature, Inc., New York, N.Y., 1963, p. 43.