It is now better and better understood that the social improvements which we all so passionately desire can be achieved through normal evolutionary development — with immeasurably fewer losses and without all-encompassing decay. We must be able to improve, patiently, that which we have in any given “today.”
—Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
LIB’ERTY, noun [Latin libertas, from liber, free.]
1. Freedom from restraint, in a general sense, and applicable to the body, or to the will or mind. The body is at liberty when not confined; the will or mind is at liberty when not checked or controlled.
2. Natural liberty consists in the power of acting as one thinks fit, without any restraint or control, except from the laws of nature. It is a state of exemption from the control of others.
3. Liberty in metaphysics, as opposed to necessity, is the power of an agent to do or forbear any particular action, according to the determination or thought of the mind, by which either is preferred to the other. Freedom of the will; exemption from compulsion.
4. Religious liberty is the free right of adopting and enjoying opinions on religious subjects, and of worshiping the Supreme Being according to the dictates of conscience, without external control.
I must die. I must be imprisoned. I must suffer exile.
But must I die groaning? Must I whine as well?
Can anyone hinder me from going into exile with a smile?
The master threatens to chain me: what say you? Chain me?
My leg you will chain—yes, but not my will—no,
not even Zeus can conquer that.
―Epictetus
—Julian of Norwich
