Moment of Freedom Quotes

“I now see clearly what I had vaguely known before: that I have never lived my life. I've lived my spouse's life, my father's life, my siblings', my children's, my neighbors' lives, other people's lives. I have filled the role which others expected or demanded of me. This I lived up to, and I would rather have been the greatest criminal, but committed my crimes myself.”
― Jens Bjørneboe, Moment of Freedom: The Heiligenberg Manuscript

“Freedom is not having any standard outside one's own consciousness, but bearing all responsibility oneself. Freedom means that one can never again receive help. Joseph Conrad says this in Typhoon: The loneliness of command is that there is no help from anyone in heaven and earth. I've experienced that, in one single, decisive moment: no one could help me, I had to do everything myself, without aid or advice from anyone. It was an enormous loneliness, a moment of total loneliness between the stars and the earth.”
― Jens Bjørneboe, Moment of Freedom: The Heiligenberg Manuscript

“He [my father] always spoke excellent French, my father, and used to address me as “enfant gâté” which was per­ haps justified. When he died, he looked at me and said: “ You’re a nice boy, but what in the world will become of you?”
That was the last thing I heard from the consul.
But now that I’ve come to my childhood, it’s about time to begin at the beginning of my life among the lemurs.”
― Jens Bjørneboe, Moment of Freedom: The Heiligenberg Manuscript

“And while we are nevertheless talking about freedom, I must confess that I’ve brooded just as much over the expression Moment of Freedom as over the Moment of Truth. The rabbi Joshua ben Josef, who was crucified in the year 33, is quoted as saying that “the truth shall make you free,” thereby presenting freedom as a function of truth. This sounds as if it corresponds to my expe­ riences from the courtroom and the bar of injustice, where it is demonstrated that un-truth makes you un-free. After the moment of truth comes the moment of freedom.
In my position as Servant of Justice I’ve naturally had occasion to ascertain that freedom is the only thing in the world which is even more terrifying than truth. It can only be borne under Grace and the Holy Spirit. The term “Holy Spirit” may possibly include Prometheus or Lucifer, both of whom did in their time steal light and freedom from the gods and give them to mankind. It was a dubious gift, and among specialists there are those who think that freedom came too early, that is to say: before truth, so that the little bears found out that they could get away with doing whatever they wanted, but not that freedom can only be found in back of our illusions”
― Jens Bjørneboe, Moment of Freedom: The Heiligenberg Manuscript

“One needs a dialectical superstructure in order to speak truly, and he knew it. One needs it in order to die as well, because these two things hang together: there’s a smell of death associated with all truth, something of death’s shamelessness. Falsehood likewise has its relationship to death. No one knows that better than I myself, who have lied so much. But it’s a different relationship. It isn’t so inexorable, because a lie can be made right again, it can be corrected with a new lie, it isn’t final and absolute. But a truth— once it’s out, then it’s inexorable— a brother to death.”
― Jens Bjørneboe, Moment of Freedom: The Heiligenberg Manuscript

“It has often struck me as unbelievable how much a pair of human eyes can see, for I’ve long thought that as a young man I had already absorbed more impressions and seen far more than one man’s consciousness can ever manage to work through. Within me all was chaos and darkness, turbulent and wild, sense impres­sions all too strong, devoid of concepts. Without concepts, of course, our impressions remain in the form of “raw experience”, not sub­jected to the clarity, order and discipline of thought. My life was for many, many years a long journey in the land of Chaos.”
― Jens Bjørneboe, Moment of Freedom: The Heiligenberg Manuscript

“One day I'll begin to remember forward.”
― Jens Bjørneboe, Moment of Freedom: The Heiligenberg Manuscript

“Still there are people who grasp freedom at once, who don't doubt, don't hesitate—but accept themselves as the measure of themselves and of everything, and who don't seem to show any dread. In some cases there are people who have the strength to do it and the innate wisdom to understand what the price is. In other cases they are people who have no idea what they're doing, who choose freedom out of ignorance and lack of understanding—they know nothing about any price, and they go under when the price is demanded. It means ruin to choose to think for oneself if one can't think.”
― Jens Bjørneboe, Moment of Freedom: The Heiligenberg Manuscript

“But this laughter is the reason why the Tuscans invented science and the clear Tuscan drawing in their cool paintings; laughter means distance. Conversely: where laughter is absent, madness begins. Every time I've had a chance to observe an outbreak of psychosis or a first-rate clinical anxiety neurosis the signal has been given in the absence of humor—the moment one takes the world with complete seriousness one is potentially insane. The whole art of learning to live means holding fast to laughter; without laughter the world is a torture chamber, a dark place where dark things will happen to us, a horror show filled with bloody deeds of violence.”
― Jens Bjørneboe, Moment of Freedom: The Heiligenberg Manuscript