"People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use."
— Søren Kierkegaard

"There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, in the end, "Thy will be done." All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. Those who knock it is opened. "
— C.S. Lewis (The Great Divorce)

"Human beings do not like being pushed about by gods. They may seem to, on the surface, but somewhere on the inside, underneath it all, they sense it, and they resent it."
— Neil Gaiman (Anansi Boys)

"You say: I am not free. But I have raised and lowered my arm. Everyone understands that this illogical answer is an irrefutable proof of freedom."
— Leo Tolstoy (War and Peace)

"Each man lives for himself, uses his freedom to achieve his personal goals, and feels with his whole being that right now he can or cannot do such-and-such an action; but as soon as he does it, this action, committed at a certain moment in time, becomes irreversible, and makes itself the property of history, in which is has not a free but a predestined significance. "
— Leo Tolstoy (War and Peace)

"What people have the capacity to choose, they have the ability to change."
— Madeleine Albright

"[Gonturan] is a true friend, but a friend with thoughts of her own, and the thoughts of others are dangerous."
— Robin McKinley (The Blue Sword)

"The death of Thomas had shown that, in a conflict between the Church and the Crown, the monarch could always prevail by the use of brute force. But the cult of Saint Thomas proved that such a victory would always be a hollow one. The power of a king was not absolute, after all: it could be restrained by the will of the people (972)."
— Ken Follett