Ayaan Hirsi Ali Quotes

It took me a long, long time to break the chains that's inside me.

I considered myself liberated long before it became the fashion. First I liberated myself from debilitating habits, and went on to free myself of combative, aggressive thoughts. I have also cast aside any unnecessary possessions. This, I feel, is true liberation.

I was always free because I felt free. It's very important to be free inside. The most important thing is to feel free.

We all have our demons. When we finally learn to let them go, we get to live and be free.

The moment we find the reason behind an emotion … the wall is breached, and the positive memories it has kept from us return too. That's why it pays to ask those painful questions. The answers can set you free.

Forgiving isn't something you do for someone else. It's something you do for yourself. It's saying, 'You're not important enough to have a stranglehold on me.' It's saying, 'You don't get to trap me in the past. I am worthy of a future.

You cannot be a prisoner of your past against your will. Because you can only live in the past inside your mind.

Your past is just a story. And once you realize this it has no power over you.

Forgiving someone does not mean you condone their behavior. The act of forgiveness takes place in your own mind. It really has nothing to do with the other person. The reality of true forgiveness lies in setting ourselves free from holding on to the pain. It is simply an act of releasing yourself from the negative energy.

Freedom is not letting your yesterday affect your today.

It takes a huge effort to free yourself from memory.

We are products of our past, but we don't have to be prisoners of it.

The weight is off my shoulders. I don't live in the past anymore. I look forward, instead of back.

The past has no power over us. It doesn't matter how long we have had a negative pattern. The point of power is in the present moment. What a wonderful thing to realize! We can begin to be free in this moment!

Allow yourself to release the emotions you have struggled all your life to contain.

As long as we define ourselves in terms of our pain and our problems, we will never be free from them.

The secret of forgiveness is not to procrastinate, but to free yourself immediately of stress by totally forgiving this instant.

Forgiving is, first of all, a way of helping yourself to get free of the unfair pain somebody caused you.

Letting go is freedom. When you find yourself in a useless battle, you merely walk off the battlefield.

It isn't running away they're afraid of. We wouldn't get far. It's those other escapes, the ones you can open in yourself, given a cutting edge.

People want you to be happy. Don't keep serving them your pain! If you could untie your wings and free your soul of jealousy, you and everyone around you would fly up like doves.

The past can be a terrible weight bound to you by an unbreakable chain. You can drag it with you, forever looking over your shoulder at what holds you back. Or you can let it go and move forward. It’s your choice.

When you release the wrongdoer from the wrong, you cut a malignant tumor out of your inner life. You set a prisoner free, but you discover that the real prisoner was yourself.

You are free when you gain back yourself,” Madame Wu said. “You can be as free within these walls as you could be in the whole world. And how could you be free if, however far you wander, you still carry inside yourself the constant thought of him? See where you belong in the stream of life. Let it flow through you, cool and strong. Do not dam it with your two hands, lest he break the dam and so escape you. Let him go free, and you will be free.

It took many years of vomiting up all the filth I’d been taught about myself, and half-believed, before I was able to walk on the earth as though I had a right to be here.