I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.
Interpretation
The quote expresses a state of inner freedom achieved by letting go of hopes and fears.
Nikos Kazantzakis conveys a profound philosophical sentiment about freedom from the burdens of expectation and fear. By stating 'I hope for nothing' and 'I fear nothing,' he suggests that true liberation comes from releasing attachment to outcomes and the anxieties that accompany them. This perspective allows one to experience life as it is, devoid of the constraints that often inhibit true happiness and peace.
In practice
In a motivational speech about overcoming anxiety and embracing the present.
A weak soul does not have the endurance to resist the flesh for very long. It grows heavy, becomes flesh itself, and the contest ends. But among responsible men, men who keep their eyes riveted day and night upon the Supreme Duty, the conflict between flesh and spirit breaks out mercilessly and may last until death.
This, I thought, is how great visionaries and poets see everything- as if for the first time. Each morning they see a new world before their eyes; they do not really see it, they create it.
What happiness this is: to fly, skimming over the earth just as we do in our dreams! Life has become a dream. Can this be the meaning of paradise?
I collect my tools: sight, smell, touch, taste, hearing, intellect. Night has fallen.
The dual substance of Christ - the yearning, so human, so superhuman, of man to attain God. [...] has always been a deep inscrutable mystery to me. [...] My principle anguish and source of all my joys and sorrows from my youth onward has been the incessant, merciless battle between the spirit and the flesh. [...] And my soul is the arena where these two armies have clashed and met.
I fight to embrace the entire circle of human activity to the full extent of my ability.
What is food to one man is bitter poison to others.
I have only one curiosity left: death.
Wherever the European has trod, death seems to pursue the aboriginal.
. . .only the victims and survivors can truly comprehend the awfulness of that time and place; the rest of us live on the other side of the fence, staring through from our own comfortable place, trying in our own clumsy ways to make sense of it all.
Whoever now makes himself bigger, freer and more human in his own existence, is doing his part toward peace, β as yet it must be worked at in an inward direction, not until a few have it all big and ready within them can it let itself be brought into the world.
There are two great gifts which God, in his love for man, has granted from on high: the priesthood and the imperial dignity.
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