The masses think that is is easy to flee from reality, when it is the most difficult thing in the world.
What we want is not freedom but its appearances.
Everybody, everybody everywhere, has his own movie going, his own scenario, and everybody is acting his movie out like mad, only most people don’t know that is what they’re trapped by, their little script.
[Referring to the Philippines:] Freedom and its blessings are a reality for a minority and an illusion for the many.
There is often no greater obstacle to freedom than the assumption that it has already been attained.
How pleasant,' Dona said, peeling her fruit; 'the rest of us can only run away from time to time, and however much we pretend to be free, we know it is only for a little while - our hands and our feet are tied.
As the places where Americans dwell become evermore depressing and impossible, Disneyworld is where they escape to worship the nation in the abstract, a cartoon capital of a cartoon republic enshrining the falsehoods, half-truths, and delusions that prop up the squishy thing the national character has become--for instance, that we are a nation of families; that we care about our fellow citizens; that history matters; that there is a place called home.
Only the self-deceived will claim perfect freedom from fear.
Earthly possessions dazzle our eyes and delude us into thinking that they can provide security and freedom from anxiety. Yet all the time they are the very source of anxiety.
How strange now, looks the life he makes us lead; So free we seem, so fettered fast we are!
As long as anything in this world means anything to you, your freedom is only a word. You are like a bird that is held by a leash; you can only fly so far.
In them, she saw the sham of her life laid out like a book, the foolish belief that she, that anyone, could escape the consequences of this world, could flee from death. That was the deceit. The true serpent in the garden.
Happiness is the most insidious prison of all.
