Obviously, nothing new has happened in a manner of speaking. This morning, at a quarter past eight, as I was leaving the Hôtel Printania to go to the library, I tried to pick up a piece of paper lying on the ground and didn’t succeed. That’s all, and it isn’t even an event. Yes, but, to tell the whole truth, it made a profound impression on me: it occurred to me that I was no longer free.
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The essential consequence of our earlier remarks is that man being condemned to be free carries the weight of the whole world on his shoulders; he is responsible for the world and for himself as a way of being.
If you set yourself to it, you can live the same life, rich or poor, you can still keep on with your books and your ideas. You just got to say to yourself, “I’m a free man in here” — he tapped his forehead — and you’re all right.
To free a man from error is to give, not take away.
He might be ragged and cold, or even starving, but so long as he could read, think and watch for meteors, he was, as he said, free in his own mind.
Today as always, men fall into two groups: slaves and free men. Whoever does not have two-thirds of his day for himself, is a slave, whatever he may be: a statesman, a businessman, an official, or a scholar.
It is often safer to be in chains than to be free.
In the mountains our throats become free. It’s a wonder we don’t break into song.
He is a free and secure citizen of the world because he is on a chain that is long enough to allow him access to all parts of the earth, and yet not so long that he could be swept over the edge of it.
You can choose to be free, but it’s last decision you’ll ever make.