Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
Those who think they are free while actually being enslaved are the most hopelessly bound.
In plain terms
False belief in freedom is deep bondage.
What can you take from it?
Question perceived freedoms to avoid hidden constraints.

Where it applies

  • media consumption
  • political discourse

Putting it to work

  • critically evaluate narratives
  • seek independent thought

Questions to consider

  • When might you be mistaking comfort for freedom?

Another view

Some freedoms are genuine and not merely illusion.

More from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  1. Men show their characters in nothing more clearly than in what they think laughable.

    Permalink to quote #126
  2. One has only to grow older to become more tolerant. I see no fault that I might not have committed myself.

    Permalink to quote #128
  3. Mathematicians are [like] a sort of Frenchmen; if you talk to them, they translate it into their own language, and then it is immediately something quite diffe…

    Permalink to quote #125

Related quotes

  1. How false is the conception, how frantic the pursuit, of that treacherous phantom which men call Liberty.

    John RuskinJohn Ruskin quote #23
  2. Freedom is a myth.

    Patrick McGoohanPatrick McGoohan quote #1
  3. If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnom…

    Ronald ReaganRonald Reagan quote #6