Freedom SpeaksEscaping prisons of mind, body, and spirit

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What imprisons us?

lovehopeforgivenessdemocracycourageeducationimaginationfaithgratitudepeace

What frees us?

Gianmaria Visconti

"Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation."

- Viktor Emil Frankl

Photo by Rüdiger Wölk, Münster.

"As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn't leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I'd still be in prison."

- Nelson Mandela

"Only in the darkness can you see the stars." - Martin Luther King Jr.

"Hope -- Hope in the face of difficulty. Hope in the face of uncertainty. The audacity of hope! In the end, that is God’s greatest gift to us."

- Barack Obama

- From The Economist, Obituary, Sept. 16th, 2006

"Deprived of pen and ink in Hungary's Stalinist concentration camp, Gyorgy Faludy used a broom-bristle to write in blood on toilet paper."

“Learn by heart this poem of mine;books only last a little timeand this one will be borrowed, scarred,burned by Hungarian border guards,”

- Gyorgy Faludy

“I have come to believe that genuine democracy cannot exist without the freedom to imagine and the right to use imaginative works without any restrictions.”

- Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran

"Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave." - Frederick Douglass

“The internet is God's present to China. It is the best tool for the Chinese people in their project to cast off slavery and strive for freedom.”- Liu Xiaobo, political prisoner and Nobel Laureate

"The caged bird sings with a fearful trill, of things unknown, but longed for still, and his tune is heard on the distant hill, for the caged bird sings of freedom."

- Maya Angelou

Locked in his own body following a massive stroke, Jean-Dominique Bauby wrote his autobiography by blinking one eye.

"My diving bell becomes less oppressive, and my mind takes flight like a butterfly." - Jean-Dominique Bauby

Photo by Cameron Cassan

"Dance, when you're broken open. Dance, if you've torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you're perfectly free."

- Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi

"I thank God for my handicaps. For through them, I have found myself, my work and my God."

- Helen Keller

"You should rejoice that you're in prison. Here you have time to think about your soul."

- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

“for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

- Apostle Paul, 2 Cor. 6:10

Attitude

Communication

Imagination

Gratitude

Freedom