William James Quotes

It's sort of what the Johnny and Devi stories are about, the idea of always being a slave to something.

Well you don’t have to do it.

It is never easy to cleanly distinguish freedom and duty, consent and bondage, choice and compulsion.

Freedom is completely without meaning unless it is related to necessity, unless it represents victory over necessity.

If there were really serious consequences if I did not accept, then of course I would do whatever was necessary. But in general I really prefer some freedom.

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

But once you allow yourself to recognize necessity, you find two things: One you find your options so restricted that the only course of action is obvious, and, two, that a great sense of freedom comes with the decision.

Deep down, everybody wants to do what they want to be doing. They just feel that they can't.

The compelled mother loves her child as the caged bird sings. The song does not justify the cage nor the love the enforcement.

Man cannot be free if he does not know that he is subject to necessity, because his freedom is always won in his never wholly successful attempts to liberate himself from necessity.

Man is born free, yet he is everywhere in chains.

It’s often safer to be in chains than to be free.

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

We are in bondage to the law so that we may be free.

Freedom is the recognition of necessity

...to make a pledge of any kind is to declare war against nature; for a pledge is a chain that is always clanking and reminding the wearer of it that he is not a free man.

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

I've never taught one, because if I taught one, I'd have to teach others... I would give myself over to a slavery, whereas I want to stay a free man.

What we know to be true is that comfort isn't always freedom. People confuse the two.

No man loveth his fetters, be they made of gold.

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

Not until we have learned to be useful can we afford to do what we like.

No, really. I free you.' I don't want to be free.

To make a vow for life is to make oneself a slave.

Knowing that everything is possible suddenly nothing is necessary.