Percy Bysshe Shelley Quotes

It is the mind that makes one wise or ignorant, bound or emancipated.

A sense of freedom is something that, happily, comes with age and life experience.

Maturity and experience are part of my liberation.

Knowledge is the most democratic source of power.

Perhaps the mission of those who love mankind is to make people laugh at the truth, to make truth laugh, because the only truth lies in learning to free ourselves from insane passion for the truth.

Only the educated are free.

I believe that it is better to tell the truth than a lie. I believe it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe it is better to know than to be ignorant.

To have found a great people sunk in the lowest depths of slavery and superstition, to have so ruled them as to have made them desirous and capable of all the privileges of citizens, would indeed be a title to glory all our own.

The first step in freeing men from external chains was to emancipate them from the internal chains of false beliefs and ideals.

A man is saved no faster than he gets knowledge, for if he does not get knowledge, he will be brought into captivity by some evil power

[Napoleon Bonaparte] Bonaparte instituted the setting of merit above birth, and also so completely stripped the divinity from royalty that, whereas crowned heads in Europe were gods before, they are only men since, and can never be gods again, but only figure-heads, and answerable for their acts like common clay. Such benefactions as these compensate the temporary harm which Bonaparte and the Revolution did, and leave the world in debt to them for these great and permanent services to liberty, humanity, and progress.

The much abused “shopkeepers” have abolished slavery and serfdom, made woman the companion of man with equal rights, proclaimed equality before the law and freedom of thought and opinion, declared war on war, abolished torture, and mitigated the cruelty of punishment. What cultural force can boast of similar achievements?

My social philosophy may be said to be enshrined in three words: liberty, equality and fraternity. Let no one, however, say that I have borrowed by philosophy from the French Revolution. I have not. My philosophy has roots in religion and not in political science. I have derived them from the teachings of my Master, the Buddha.

For such is the nature of men, that howsoever they may acknowledge many others to be more witty, or more eloquent, or more learned, yet they will hardly believe there be many so wise as themselves, for they see their own wit at hand, and other men's at a distance. But this proveth rather that men are in that point equal, than unequal. For there is not ordinarily a greater sign of the equal distribution of any thing than that every man is contented with his share.

Words mean little unless you realize the truth of it yourself. And when you do, you'll be free at last.

The Buddha said that if we know how to look deeply into our suffering and recognize what feeds it, we are already on the path of emancipation.

I once read that people who study others are wise but those who study themselves are enlightened.

It is the delight of vulgar talent to dazzle and to bind the beholder. But true genius seeks to defend us from itself. True geniuswill not impoverish, but will liberate, and add new sense. If a wise man should appear in our village, he would create, in those who conversed with him, a new consciousness of wealth, by opening their eyes to unobserved advantages; he would establish a sense of immovable equality, calm us with assurances that we could not be cheated; as every one would discern the checks and guarantees of condition.

We must become free. We are free; the work is to know it. We must give up all slavery, all bondage of whatever kind. We must not only give up our bondage to earth and everything and everybody on earth, but also to all ideas of heaven and happiness.

Knowledge is an addiction, as drink; knowledge does not bring understanding. Knowledge can be taught, but not wisdom; there must be freedom from knowledge for the coming of wisdom.

We could almost say that being willing to be a fool is one of the first wisdoms. So acknowledging foolishness is always a very important and powerful experience. The phenomenal world can be perceived and seen properly if we see it from the perspective of being a fool. There is very little distance between being a fool and being wise; they are extremely close. When we are really, truly fools, when we actually acknowledge our foolishness, then we are way ahead. We are not even in the process of becoming wise — we are already wise.

The disadvantage of becoming wise is that you realize how foolish you've been.

When you feel this knowledge and this spark in yourself, you've gotta continue feeding it. The best thing is to spend time around other wise men, that keeps it burning. That keeps it in every degree sharp as steel, but make sure you absorb enough to find out how it sparks from yourself, how the self starts the self. Once you've got that you should be free. That's freedom, to me.

Buddha says: Meditation brings two things. It brings wisdom, it brings freedom. These two flowers grow out of meditation. When you become silent, utterly silent, beyond the mind, two flowers bloom in you. One is of wisdom: you know what is and what is not. And the other is of freedom: you know now there are no more any limitations on you, either of time or of space. You become liberated. Meditation is the key to liberation, to freedom, to wisdom.

If you want to make an ordinary man happy, or think that he is happy, give him money, power, flattery, gifts, honours. If you want to make a wise man happy - improve yourself!