“Tyrannies make anxiety seem normal. They attach a threat to a group (in this case Blacks) whom the authorities don’t really fear, then boast to their supporters of having protected them from that threat. They substitute relief from fear for freedom and teach citizens to confuse the two. The cycle of anxiety and release is not liberation, of course, but manipulation. It is not immobilizing the way that prison is. It is nevertheless a policy of immobility that extends from the Black bodies on the inside to other American minds on the outside.”
― On Freedom
― On Freedom
“The absence of freedom threatens life, just as threats to life undermine freedom.”
― On Freedom
― On Freedom
“The oligarchical turn made mobility very difficult and warped the conversation about freedom. The more concentrated the wealth became, the more constrained was the discussion—until, in effect, the word freedom in American English came to mean little more than the privilege of a few wealthy Americans not to pay taxes, the power of a few oligarchs to shape the discourse, and the unequal application of criminal law.”
― On Freedom
― On Freedom
“In dehumanizing others, we make ourselves unfree.”
― On Freedom
― On Freedom
“When we are very young, we all need someone else's goodwill if we are to learn to stand at all. Because we live in time in a certain direction, we cannot make up later for what we were not given earlier.”
― On Freedom
― On Freedom
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