To be is to be perceived (Esse est percipi)." Or, "If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?
George BerkeleyRead
Others indeed may talk, and write, and fight about liberty, and make an outward pretence to it but the free-thinker alone is truly free.
Interpretation
What this quote means
True freedom comes from independent thought rather than mere discussion or action about liberty.
George Berkeley's quote emphasizes that while many people may discuss and advocate for liberty, the essence of true freedom lies in the ability to think freely and independently. It suggests that external actions or discussions about freedom are meaningless if one is not genuinely free in their own thoughts and beliefs.
Themes
FreedomThinkingLibertyIndependencePhilosophy
In practice
Example use cases
In a debate about personal liberties, I quoted Berkeley to highlight the importance of independent thought.
More from George Berkeley
All quotes βTruth is the cry of all, but the game of few.
George BerkeleyRead
All the choir of heaven and furniture of earth - in a word, all those bodies which compose the frame of the world - have not any subsistence without a mind.
George BerkeleyRead
The same principles which at first view lead to skepticism, pursued to a certain point, bring men back to common sense.
George BerkeleyRead
Many things, for aught I know, may exist, whereof neither I nor any other man hath or can have any idea or notion whatsoever.
George BerkeleyRead
A ray of imagination or of wisdom may enlighten the universe, and glow into remotest centuries.
George BerkeleyRead
Similar quotes
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We are compelled by reflection to recognize that God is not to be placed against the material world [as in Christianity], but must be placed as a 'divine power' or 'moving spirit' within the cosmos itself ... All the wonderful phenomena of nature around us, organic as well as inorganic, are only various products of one and the same original force.
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There is no faculty of the human soul so persistent and universal as that of hatred.
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Time moves only forward, never back. We look forward to a moment and then it arrives and an instant later it is gone. Like something on the surface of a river that we reached for but did not touch in time and it carried on, away. You cannot be a prisoner of your past against your will. Because you can only live in the past inside your mind.
Augusten BurroughsRead
If it is not tempered by compassion, and empathy, reason can lead men and women into a moral void.
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I regard almost all quarrels of princes on the same footing, and I see nothing that marks man's unreason so positively as war. Indeed, what folly to kill one another for interests often imaginary, and always for the pleasure of persons who do not think themselves even obliged to those who sacrifice themselves for them!
Mary Wortley MontaguRead