A Plea For Liberty by Robert G Ingersoll

Music:
Evanthia Reboutsika -We will meet again



Robert Green Ingersoll on Liberty
(1838-1899)

I know not what discoveries, what inventions, what thoughts may leap from the brain of the world. I know not what garments of glory may be woven by the years to come. I cannot dream of the victories to be won upon the fields of thought; but I do know, that coming from the infinite sea of the future, there will never touch this "bank and shoal of time" a richer gift, a rarer blessing than liberty for man, for woman, and for child.

I would not wish to live in a world where I could not express my honest opinions. Men who deny to others the right of speech are not fit to live with honest men.

A man has a right to work with his hands, to plow the earth, to sow the seed, and that man has a right to reap the harvest. If we have not that right, then all are slaves except those who take these rights from their fellow-men.

If you have the right to work with your hands and to gather the harvest for yourself and your children, have you not a right to cultivate your brain? Have you not the right to read, to observe, to investigate — and when you have so read and so investigated, have you not the right to reap that field?

And what is it to reap that field? It is simply to express what you have ascertained — simply to give your thoughts to your fellow-men.

If there is one subject in this world worthy of being discussed, worthy of being understood, it is the question of intellectual liberty. Without that, we are simply painted clay; without that, we are poor, miserable serfs and slaves. For thousands of years people have been trying to force other people to think their way. Did they succeed? No. Will they succeed? No. Why? Because brute force is not an argument.

Liberty cannot be sacrificed for the sake of anything.Yet some people would destroy the sun to prevent the growth of weeds. Liberty sustains the same relation to all the virtues that the sun does to life.

Standing in the presence of the Unknown, all have the same right to think, and all are equally interested in the great questions of origin and destiny. All I claim, all I plead for, is liberty of thought and expression.

That is all. I do not pretend to tell what is absolutely true, but what I think is true. I do not pretend to tell all the truth. I do not claim that I have floated level with the heights of thought, or that I have descended to the very depths of things. I simply claim that what ideas I have, I have a right to express; and that any man who denies that right to me is an intellectual thief and robber.

I am a believer in liberty.To give to every other human being every right that I claim for myself, and I grant to every other human being, not the right — because it is his right — but instead of granting I declare that it is his right, to attack every doctrine that I maintain, to answer every argument that I may urge .

I will not attack your doctrines nor your creeds if they accord liberty to me. If they hold thought to be dangerous - if they aver that doubt is a crime, then I attack them one and all, because they enslave the minds of men.

They say to me, do you know more than all the theologians dead? Being a perfectly modest man I say I think I do. Now we have come to the conclusion that every man has a right to think.

Would God give a bird wings and make it a crime to fly? Would he give me brains and make it a crime to think? Any God that would damn one of his children for the expression of his honest thought wouldn't make a decent thief.

Most men are followers, and implicitly rely upon the judgment of others. They mistake solemnity for wisdom, and regard a grave countenance as the title page and Preface to a most learned volume.

So they are easily imposed upon by forms, strange garments, and solemn ceremonies. And when the teaching of parents, the customs of neighbors, and the general tongue approve and justify a belief or creed, no matter how absurd, it is hard even for the strongest to hold the citadel of his soul. In each country, in defence of each religion, the same arguments would be urged.

Why should man be afraid to think, and why should he fear to express his thoughts? Is it possible that an infinite Deity is unwilling that a man should investigate the phenomena by which he is surrounded?

Is it possible that a god delights in threatening and terrifying men? What glory, what honor and renown a god must win on such a field! The ocean raving at a drop; a star envious of a candle; the sun jealous of a fire-fly.

You cannot change the conclusion of the brain by torture; nor by social ostracism. But I will tell you what you can do by these, and what you have done.

You can make hypocrites by the million. You can make a man say that he has changed his mind; but he remains of the same opinion still. Put fetters all over him; crush his feet in iron boots; stretch him to the last gasp upon the holy rack; burn him, if you please, but his ashes will be of the same opinion still.

The greatest men the world has produced have known but little. They had a few facts, mingled with mistakes without number. In some departments they towered above their fellows, while in others they fell below the common level of mankind.

Volumes might be written upon the follies of great men. A full rounded man — a man of sterling sense and natural logic — is just as rare as a great painter, poet, or sculptor. If you tell your friend that he is not a painter, that he has no genius for poetry, he will probably admit the truth of what you say, without feeling that he has been insulted in the least. But if you tell him that he is not a logician, that he has but little idea of the value of a fact, that he has no real conception of what evidence is, and that he never had an original thought in his life, he will cut your acquaintance.

I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample under foot. Men are not superior by reason of the accidents of race or color. They are superior who have the best heart — the best brain.

The superior man is the providence of the inferior. He is eyes for the blind, strength for the weak, and a shield for the defenseless. He stands erect by bending above the fallen. He rises by lifting others.

The life and death of Christ are worth the example, the moral force, the heroism of benevolence.

Whoever has an opinion of his own, and honestly expresses it, will be guilty of heresy and blasphemy.They have not thought and suffered and died in vain.They have extend the hospitalities of the brain to a new thought.

What is real blasphemy?
Blasphemy is what an old mistake says of
a newly discovered truth.

Blasphemy is what a withered last year's leaf
says to a this year's bud.

Blasphemy is the bulwark of religious prejudice.
Blasphemy is the breastplate of the heartless.

No man can blaspheme a book. No man can commit blasphemy
by telling his honest thought. No man can blaspheme a God.
The Infinite cannot be blasphemed.

To live on the unpaid labor of other men
that is blasphemy.

To enslave your fellow-man, to put chains
upon his body — that is blasphemy.

To enslave the minds of men, to put manacles
upon the brain,padlocks upon the lips —that is blasphemy.

To deny what you believe to be true, to admit to be true
what you believe to be a lie — that is blasphemy.

To strike the weak and unprotected, in order that you
may gain the applause of the ignorant and superstitious
mob — that is blasphemy.

To persecute the intelligent few, at the command of
the ignorant many — that is blasphemy.

To forge chains, to build dungeons, for your honest
fellow-men — that is blasphemy.
To violate your conscience — that is blasphemy.

The jury that gives an unjust verdict, and the judge
who pronounces an unjust sentence, are blasphemers.
The man who bows to public opinion against his better
judgment and against his honest conviction, is a blasphemer.

And now the question arises, what is worship? Who is a worshiper?
Good, honest, faithful work, is worship. The man who ploughs the fields and fells the forests; the man who works in mines, the man who battles with the winds and waves out on the wide sea, controlling the commerce of the world; these men are worshipers. The man who goes into the forest, leading his wife by the hand, who builds him a cabin, who makes a home in the wilderness, who helps to people and civilize and cultivate a continent, is a worshiper.

Whoever increases the sum of human joy, is a worshiper. He who adds to the sum of human misery, is a blasphemer.

No statute can ever convince me, that there is any infinite Being in this universe who hates an honest man. It is impossible to satisfy me that there is any God, or can be any God, who holds in abhorrence a soul that has the courage to express his thought. Neither can the whole world convince me that any man should be punished, either in this world or in the next, for being candid with his fellow-men.

If you send men to the penitentiary for speaking their thoughts, for endeavoring to enlighten their fellows, then the penitentiary will become a place of honor, and the victim will step from it — not stained, not disgraced, but clad in robes of glory.

Let us take one more step.

What is holy, what is sacred? I reply that human happiness is holy, human rights are holy. The body and soul of man — these are sacred.

What we want is the truth, and does any one suppose that all of the truth is confined in one book — that the mysteries of the whole world are explained by one volume? All that is — all that conveys information to man — all that has been produced by the past — all that now exists — should be considered by an intelligent man. All the known truths of this world — all the philosophy, all the poems, all the pictures, all the statues, all the entrancing music — the prattle of babes, the lullaby of mothers, the words of honest men, the trumpet calls to duty — all these make up the bible of the world — everything that is noble and true and free, you will find in this great book.

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Wisdom quotes by Anatole France


All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.

One thing above all gives charm to men's thoughts, and this is unrest. A mind that is not uneasy irritates and bores me.

Suffering! We owe to it all that is good in us, all that gives value to life; we owe to it pity, we owe to it courage, we owe to it all the virtues.

The average man does not know what to do with this life, yet wants another one which will last forever.

The poor have to labour in the face of the majestic equality of the law, which forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to work by working; in just the same way, you learn to love by loving.

To accomplish great things we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.

Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe.

I prefer the errors of enthusiasm to the indifference of wisdom.

It is the certainty that they possess the truth that makes men cruel.

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Equality by maya angelou


Equality
Maya Angelou
You declare you see me dimly
through a glass which will not shine,
though I stand before you boldly,
trim in rank and marking time.
You do own to hear me faintly
as a whisper out of range,
while my drums beat out the message
and the rhythms never change.

Equality, and I will be free.
Equality, and I will be free.

You announce my ways are wanton,
that I fly from man to man,
but if I’m just a shadow to you,
could you ever understand ?

We have lived a painful history,
we know the shameful past,
but I keep on marching forward,
and you keep on coming last.

Equality, and I will be free.
Equality, and I will be free.

Take the blinders from your vision,
take the padding from your ears,
and confess you’ve heard me crying,
and admit you’ve seen my tears.

Hear the tempo so compelling,
hear the blood throb in my veins.
Yes, my drums are beating nightly,
and the rhythms never change.

Equality, and I will be free.
Equality, and I will be free.

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Riches I hold in light esteem by Emily Jane Brontë


Richard Johnson Art

Riches I hold in light esteem
Emily Jane Brontë

Riches I hold in light esteem
And Love I laugh to scorn
And lust of Fame was but a dream
That vanished with the morn–
And if I pray, the only prayer
That moves my lips for me
Is–'Leave the heart that now I bear
And give me liberty.'

Yes, as my swift days near their goal
'Tis all that I implore
Through life and death, a chainless soul
With courage to endure!

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Le petit garçon paroles de Serge Reggiani

Music:Le petit garçon lyrics
de Serge Reggiani


Ce soir mon petit garçon
Mon enfant, mon amour
Il pleut sur la maison
Mon garçon, mon amour
Comme tu lui ressembles!
On reste tous les deux
On va bien jouer ensemble
On est là tous les deux
Seuls

Ce soir elle ne rentre pas
Je n'sais plus, je n'sais pas
Elle écrira demain peut-être
Nous aurons une lettre
Il pleut sur le jardin
Je vais faire du feu
Je n'ai pas de chagrin
On est là tous les deux
Seuls

Attend, je sais des histoires
Il était une fois
Il pleut dans ma mémoire
Je crois, ne pleure pas
Attends, je sais des histoires
Mais il fait un peu froid, ce soir
Une histoire de gens qui s'aiment
Une histoire de gens qui s'aiment

Tu vas voir
Ne t'en vas pas
Ne me laisse pas

Je ne sais plus faire du feu
Mon enfant, mon amour
Je ne peux plus grand-chose
Mon garçon, mon amour
Comme tu lui ressembles!
On est là tous les deux
Perdus parmi les choses
Dans cette grande chambre
Seuls
On va jouer à la guerre
Et tu t'endormiras
Ce soir, elle ne sera pas là
Je n'sais plus, je n'sais pas
Je n'aime pas l'hiver
Il n'y a plus de feu
Il n'y a plus rien à faire
Qu'à jouer tous les deux
Seuls

Attends, je sais des histoires
Il était une fois
Je n'ai plus de mémoire
Je crois, ne pleure pas
Attends, je sais des histoires
Mais il est un peu tard, ce soir
L'histoire des gens qui s'aimèrent
Et qui jouèrent à la guerre

Ecoute-moi
Elle n'est plus là
Non... ne pleure pas...!

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Spiritual and life reflective inspirational poems:Listen Deeply poem,Falling Down poem by Nanna Aida Svendsen/Sweet Darkness by David Whyte,The Journey by PMary Oliver

Music:
Igor Krutoy - You are in my september



Listen Deeply
Nanna Aida Svendsen
From Of Water Lilies and Warm Hearts

Listen deeply
to the soft voice
of your soul.
It knows who
you are.


Even when lonely
how intimately
you belong.

Its wisdom resounds
beneath the nagging
of your shame, guilt and fear.


The tender presence
of your core brings solace
when needed.
A sense of rightness
when remembered.
Communion when close.


The sound
of your original voice
calls you to essence
over and over again,
sometimes with such
vital vulnerability
you would weep.
Sometimes with such
fiery ferocity you would cry.

Sometimes with such softness
it calls for your surrender.


Yes,
listen deeply
to the gifted grace
of your soul.
And in the listening
may the beauty
of your life
be revealed.

Sweet Darkness
David Whyte
(House of Belonging)

When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.
When your vision has gone...
no part of the world can find you.
Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognize its own.


There you can be sure
you are not beyond love.
The dark will be your womb tonight.
The night will give you a horizon
further than you can see.
You must learn one thing:
the world was made to be free in.


Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.
Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness to learn
anything or anyone that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.


Falling Down
by Nanna Aida Svendsen
From ‘Of Water Lilies and Warm Hearts’

We try so hard
To stay up
To keep from falling down
Yet there is a falling
Into ourselves,
That is of the essence.


There is a tumbling
Into the heart
That means we must open
To our beauty and our pain.
Without a willingness
To surrender
To a flow of feelings
Receive them with compassion
We may never come to know
That sweet sense
Of oneness with ourselves.


That simple bliss
In being
Beneath all our distress.
Without a willingness
To surrender
And turn attention
To the quiet
That underlies the turmoil
Of the mind
We may never come know
That sweet sense
of oneness
With existence.


That sweet sense
of love and trust and flow.
We try so hard to stay up
Yet there is a falling down,
That is of the essence.

The Journey
Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice-
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.

"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy was terrible.

It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen branches and stones.
but little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do-
determined to save
the only life you could save

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Where Dolphins Dance by Hafiz


Where Dolphins Dance
by Hafiz
excerpted from the book
The Subject Tonight Is Love
by Daniel Ladinsky.

Again, the work starts as soon as you open your eyes in the morning. Hopefully you got some good rest last night.

Why go into the city or the fields without first kissing the Friend who always stands at your door? It takes only a second.

Habits are human nature. Why not create some that will mint gold? Your arms are violin bows always moving. I have become very conscious upon whom we all play.

Thus my eyes have filled with warm soft oceans of divine music where jeweled dolphins dance, then leap into this world.

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Art Quote by Joseph Conrad


Gabriel Picart Art

A work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line...To snatch in a moment of courage, from the remorseless rush of time, a passing phase of life is only the beginning of the task. The task approached in tenderness and faith is to hold up unquestioningly, without choice and without fear, the rescued fragment before all eyes and in the light of a sincere mood. It is to show its vibration, its colour, its form; and through its movement, its form, and its colour, reveal the substance of its truth -- disclose its inspiring secret: the stress and passion within the core of each convincing moment. In a single-minded attempt of that kind, if one be deserving and fortunate, one may perchance attain to such clearness of sincerity that at last the presented vision of regret or pity, of terror or mirth, shall awaken in the hearts of the beholders that feeling of unavoidable solidarity; of the solidarity in mysterious origin, in toil, in joy, in hope, in uncertain fate, which binds men to each other and all mankind to the visible world.
Joseph Conrad

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The House of Clouds by Elizabeth Barrett Browning


Maxfield Parrish painting

The House of Clouds
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
(1806-1861)

I would build a cloudy House
For my thoughts to live in;
When for earth too fancy-loose
And too low for Heaven!
Hush! I talk my dream aloud
I build it bright to see,
I build it on the moonlit cloud,
To which I looked with thee.

Cloud-walls of the morning's grey,
Faced with amber column,
Crowned with crimson cupola
From a sunset solemn!
May mists, for the casements, fetch,
Pale and glimmering;
With a sunbeam hid in each,
And a smell of spring.

Build the entrance high and proud,
Darkening and then brightening,
If a riven thunder-cloud,
Veined by the lightning.
Use one with an iris-stain,
For the door within;
Turning to a sound like rain,
As I enter in.

Build a spacious hall thereby:
Boldly, never fearing.
Use the blue place of the sky,
Which the wind is clearing;
Branched with corridors sublime,
Flecked with winding stairs
Such as children wish to climb,
Following their own prayers.

In the mutest of the house,
I will have my chamber:
Silence at the door shall use
Evening's light of amber,
Solemnising every mood,
Softemng in degree,
Turning sadness into good,
As I turn the key.

Poet's thought,-not poet's sigh!
'Las, they come together!
Cloudy walls divide and fly,
As in April weather!
Cupola and column proud,
Structure bright to see
Gone---except that moonlit cloud,
To which I looked with thee!

Let them! Wipe such visionings
From the Fancy's cartel
Love secures some fairer things
Dowered with his immortal.
The sun may darken,-heaven be bowed-
But still, unchanged shall be,
Here in my soul,---that moonlit cloud,
To which I looked with THEE!

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What Jesus Said by by Robert Bly


What Jesus Said
by Robert Bly
From: Eating The Honey of Words.

The wind blows where it likes: that is what
Everyone is like who is born from the wind.
Oh now it’s getting serious. We are the ones
Born from the wind that blows along the plains
And over the sea where no one has a home.
And that Upsetting Rabbi, didn’t he say:
‘Take nothing with you, no blanket, no bread.
When evening comes, sleep wherever you are.
And if the owners say no, shake out the dust
From your sandals; leave the dust on their doorstep.’
Don’t hope for what will never come. Give up hope,
Dear friends, the joists of life are laid on the winds

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Liberty quote by Abraham Lincoln


What constitutes the bulwark of our own liberty and independence? It is not our frowning battlements, our bristling sea coasts, the guns of our war steamers, or the strength our gallant and disciplined army? These are not our reliance against a resumption of tyranny in our fair land. All of those may be turned against our liberties, without making us weaker or stronger for the struggle. Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in our bosoms. Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere. Destroy this spirit, and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors. Familiarize yourselves with the chains of bondage and you are preparing your own limbs to wear them. Accustomed to trample on the rights of those around you, you have lost the genius of your own independence, and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises.
Abraham Lincoln

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Wisdom quotes by Buddha


Make an island of yourself,
make yourself your refuge;
there is no other refuge.
Make truth your island,
make truth your refuge;
there is no other refuge.
Buddha,The Dhammapada

Conquer the angry man by love.
Conquer the ill-natured man by goodness.
Conquer the miser with generosity.
Conquer the liar with truth.
Buddha,The Dhammapada

Do not pursue the past.
Do not lose yourself in the future.
The past no longer is.
The future has not yet come.
Looking deeply at life as it is.
In the very here and now, the practitioner
dwells in stability and freedom.
We must be diligent today.
To wait until tomorrow is too late.
Death comes unexpectedly.
How can we bargain with it?
The sage calls a person who knows how to dwell
in mindfulness night and day,
'one who knows the better way to live alone.'

Buddha,Bhaddekaratta Sutta

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Things That Never Die by Charles Dickens,inspirational love,humanism,human character and life quotes by D.H. Lawrence,Hermann Hesse,C. JoyBell C.Victor Hugo

Music:
GIOVANNI MARRADI - Gracefully



Nydia Lozano Art

I believe a man is born first unto himself - for the happy developing of himself, while the world is a nursery, and the pretty things are to be snatched for, and pleasant things tasted; some people seem to exist thus right to the end. But most are born again on entering manhood; then they are born to humanity, to a consciousness of all the laughing, and the never-ceasing murmur of pain and sorrow that comes from the terrible multitudes of brothers.
D.H. Lawrence


To hold our tongues when everyone is gossiping, to smile without hostility at people and institutions, to compensate for the shortage of love in the world with more love in small, private matters; to be more faithful in our work, to show greater patience, to forgo the cheap revenge obtainable from mockery and criticism: all these are things we can do.
Hermann Hesse

Every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world's phenomena intersect, only once in this way, and never again. That is why every man's story is important, eternal, sacred; that is why every man, as long as he lives and fulfills the will of nature, is wondrous, and worthy of consideration. In each individual the spirit has become flesh, in each man the creation suffers, within each one a redeemer is nailed to the cross.
Hermann Hesse, Demian

We are sun and moon, dear friend; we are sea and land. It is not our purpose to become each other; it is to recognize each other, to learn to see the other and honor him for what he is: each the other's opposite and complement.
Hermann Hesse, Narcissus and Goldmund
Nydia Lozano Art

The person in life that you will always be with the most, is yourself. Because even when you are with others, you are still with yourself, too! When you wake up in the morning, you are with yourself, laying in bed at night you are with yourself, walking down the street in the sunlight you are with yourself.What kind of person do you want to walk down the street with? What kind of person do you want to wake up in the morning with? What kind of person do you want to see at the end of the day before you fall asleep? Because that person is yourself, and it's your responsibility to be that person you want to be with. I know I want to spend my life with a person who knows how to let things go, who's not full of hate, who's able to smile and be carefree. So that's who I have to be.”
C. JoyBell C.

Can human nature be so entirely transformed inside and out? Can man, created by God, be made wicked by man? Can a soul be so completely changed by its destiny, and turn evil when its fate is evil? Can the heart become distorted, contract incurable deformities and incurable infirmities, under the pressure of disproportionate grief, like the spinal column under a low ceiling? Is there not in every human soul a primitive spark, a divine element, incorruptible in this world and immortal in the next, which can be developed by goodness, kindled, lit up, and made to radiate, and which evil can never entirely extinguish.
Victor Hugo, Les Misérables


Things That Never Die
Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

The pure, the bright, the beautiful
that stirred our hearts in youth,
The impulses to wordless prayer,
The streams of love and truth,
The longing after something lost,
The spirit's longing cry,
The striving after better hopes-
These things can never die.

The timid hand stretched forth to aid
A brother in his need;
A kindly word in grief's dark hour
That proves a friend indeed;
The plea for mercy softly breathed,
When justice threatens high,
The sorrow of a contrite heart-
These things shall never die.

Let nothing pass, for every hand
Must find some work to do,
Lose not a chance to waken love-
Be firm and just and true.
So shall a light that cannot fade
Beam on thee from on high,
And angel voices say to thee-
"These things shall never die."

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