Creating Freedom Quotes

“the innate need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world’.62 Numerous experiments have shown that not only do rewards reduce motivation, they actually hamper our performance. In”
― Raoul Martinez, Creating Freedom: Power, Control and the Fight for Our Future

“If society was serious about reducing crime it would hold accountable, and attempt to deter, those whose actions and ideologies perpetuate the conditions that breed it: those who fight to preserve and extend enormous inequalities of wealth, power and opportunity. A politician in a suit can do far more harm than any street gang, drug dealer or petty thief.”
― Raoul Martinez, Creating Freedom: The Lottery of Birth, the Illusion of Consent, and the Fight for Our Future

“Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.”
― Raoul Martinez, Creating Freedom: The Lottery of Birth, the Illusion of Consent, and the Fight for Our Future

“Focusing on rehabilitation and root causes makes sense once we stop thinking of crime as a product of an individual’s free agency and view it, instead, as a doctor might view the symptoms of a disease.”
― Raoul Martinez, Creating Freedom: The Lottery of Birth, the Illusion of Consent, and the Fight for Our Future

“What right do we have to condemn crime if we do not also condemn the conditions that breed it?”
― Raoul Martinez, Creating Freedom: The Lottery of Birth, the Illusion of Consent, and the Fight for Our Future

“The most established environmental determinant of violence in a society is income inequality.48 Less equal societies are more violent.”
― Raoul Martinez, Creating Freedom: The Lottery of Birth, the Illusion of Consent, and the Fight for Our Future

“One of the most effective strategies to stop criminals reoffending has been to provide inmates with the opportunity to study and earn formal qualifications. Where punishment has failed, education is succeeding.”
― Raoul Martinez, Creating Freedom: The Lottery of Birth, the Illusion of Consent, and the Fight for Our Future

“Instead of submitting to misleading intuitions, our justice system could yield to the findings of science and the demands of reason. This would involve acknowledging that no one is truly blameworthy, rejecting retribution as a legitimate justification for punishment and focusing on improving the future rather than exacting revenge for the past.”
― Raoul Martinez, Creating Freedom: The Lottery of Birth, the Illusion of Consent, and the Fight for Our Future

“The roots of behaviour go far beyond the will of the individual to encompass the economic, political, familial and cultural conditions from which it emerges.”
― Raoul Martinez, Creating Freedom: The Lottery of Birth, the Illusion of Consent, and the Fight for Our Future

“We should never forget that the world marks us before we have a chance to mark it.”
― Raoul Martinez, Creating Freedom: The Lottery of Birth, the Illusion of Consent, and the Fight for Our Future

“The more responsibility that is laid at the feet of individuals, the easier it is to justify the many inequalities in our world. If addicts, sinners, refugees, prisoners, the homeless, the obese, the unemployed and the poor can be blamed for their condition, there is little obligation to help them.”
― Raoul Martinez, Creating Freedom: The Lottery of Birth, the Illusion of Consent, and the Fight for Our Future

“Intentions reveal character; accidents reveal incompetence.”
― Raoul Martinez, Creating Freedom: The Lottery of Birth, the Illusion of Consent, and the Fight for Our Future

“if there is a measurable brain problem, that buys leniency for the defendant…But we do blame someone if we lack the technology to detect a biological problem.”
― Raoul Martinez, Creating Freedom: The Lottery of Birth, the Illusion of Consent, and the Fight for Our Future

“the more we understand the limits on our freedom, the better placed we are to transcend them.”
― Raoul Martinez, Creating Freedom: The Lottery of Birth, the Illusion of Consent, and the Fight for Our Future

“We are notes in life's melody, not its composer.”
― Raoul Martinez, Creating Freedom: Power, Control and the Fight for Our Future

“That, in itself, is a beautiful victory, a wonderful manifestation of the impulse to be free. It’s a valuable victory too, sending ripples far and wide, revealing rich and beautiful dimensions of life that we so often forget. Music, paintings and stories can do this, but so can acts of courage, generosity and compassion. Such behaviour uplifts and inspires, interrupting and subverting our routines and expectations, challenging us to imagine something better and reminding us of the extraordinary potential within us all.”
― Raoul Martinez, Creating Freedom: The Lottery of Birth, the Illusion of Consent, and the Fight for Our Future