Richard Linklater Quotes

I like things to be orderly.

I love people who try to keep the world in control - because the world is inherently not in control.

You can have fantasies about having control over the world, but I know I can barely control my kitchen sink. That is the grace I'm given. Because when one can control things, one is limited to one's own vision.

A kite needs to be tied down in order to fly. I learned how important restrictions can sometimes be in order to experience freedom.

Order doesn't come by itself.

Meticulous planning will enable everything a man does to appear spontaneous.

If men are not kept straight by duty, they must be by fear. The more they are kept by fear, the less they are free.

What we want is not freedom but its appearances.

There is no subjugation so perfect as that which keeps the appearance of freedom, for in that way one captures volition itself.

If we allow the passions of our men to get full command then indeed will this war become a reproach to the names of liberty and civilization.

The second I was on the tennis court, I had the structure I wanted. I was in complete control of what I was doing.

Every step into freedom contains within it the potential for greater bondage.

You will have no sensation of a leash around your neck if you sit by the peg. It is only when you stray that you feel the restraining tug.

Man is to be held only by the slightest chains; with the idea that he can break them at pleasure, he submits to them in sport.

A puppet is free as long as he loves his strings.

There is no subjection so perfect as that which keeps the appearance of freedom.

Liberty is the luxury of self-discipline, that those nations historically who have failed to discipline themselves have had discipline imposed by others.

There's a part of me that wants to go streak and run outside and jump around and go swim in the ocean and do everything. The other part of me wants to bear down and repeat this kind of performance next year and in the years to come.

It is a big mistake to think that the best way to express yourself is to do whatever you want, acting as you please. This is not expressing yourself. If you know what to do exactly, and you do it, then you can express yourself fully.

A people unused to restraint must be led, they will not be drove.

Liberty is not to be enjoyed, indeed it cannot exist, without the habits of just subordination; it consists, not so much in removing all restraint from the orderly, as in imposing it on the violent.

The old proverb, applied to fire and water, may with equal truth be applied to the imagination - it is a good servant, but a bad master.

For it is easier to shout 'Stop', than to do it

The victim of mind-manipulation does not know that he is a victim. To him, the walls of his prison are invisible, and he believes himself to be free.

The girl doesn’t need a violin,” he added. “She needs to have her hands bound so she can never touch an instrument again.