Lila Abu-Lughod Quotes

Well you don’t have to do it.

Necessity is blind until it becomes conscious. Freedom is the consciousness of necessity.

We are unable to recognize the laws of necessity if we believe we are free

A wise man will see to it that his act always seems voluntary and not done be compulsion, however much he may be compelled by necessity.

It must always be remembered that you can never do right until you are first free to do wrong; since the doing of a thing under compulsion is evidence neither of good nor bad intent; and if under compulsion, who shall decide what would be the substituted rule of action under full freedom?

I have my choice: who can wish for more? Free will enables us to do everything well while imposition makes a light burden heavy.

Unless someone truly has the power to say no, they never truly have the power to say yes.

McCabe's Law: Nobody has to do anything.

I am certainly an ought and not a must.

Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.

If you are living out of a sense of obligation you are slave.

He that complies against his will is of his own opinion still.

By the will art thou lost, by the will art thou found, by the will art thou free, captive, and bound.

Play is always voluntary. What might otherwise be play is work if it's forced.

Freedom is the recognition of necessity

I'd much rather have the freedom, and the obligation to use it responsibly, than be put in a box.

If a motive affects me, and I am compelled to act on it because it proves to be the 'strongest' of its kind, then the thought of freedom ceases to have any meaning. How should it matter to me whether I can do a thing or not, if I am forced by the motive to do it?

There is a distinction between total control and enjoying total freedom.

You don't ever have to feel pushed into anything.

If you are not free to say no, your yes is meaningless.

No lasting gain has ever come from compulsion.

To some, freedom means the opportunity to do what they want to do; to most it means not to do what they do not want to do. It is perhaps true that those who can grow will feel free under any condition.

Look. I brought you here to give you a choice-" "You didn't bring us here," said Nick. "You're here," said Bod. "I wanted you here. I came here. You followed me. Same thing.

I have never believed that man's freedom consisted in doing what he wants, but rather in never doing what he does not want to do.

The freedom of Mankind does not lie in the fact that can do what we want, but that we do not have to do that which we do not want.