Thomas Merton Quotes About Liberty

Quotes about: Liberty

• To some men peace merely means the liberty to exploit other people without fear of retaliation or interference. To others peace means the freedom to rob others without interruption. To still others it means the leisure to devour the goods of the earth without being compelled to interrupt their pleasures to feed those whom their greed is starving. And to practically everybody peace simply means the absence of any physical violence that might cast a shadow over lives devoted to the satisfaction of their animal appetites for comfort and pleasure.

  Thomas Merton

  Mean, Men, Animal

  Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.122, New Directions Publishing

• The only true liberty is in the service of that which is beyond all limits, beyond all definitions, beyond all human appreciation: that which is All, and which therefore is no limited or individual thing: The All is no-thing, for if it were to be a single thing separated from all other things, it would not be All.

  Thomas Merton

  Spiritual, Appreciation, Liberty

  Thomas Merton (2015). “Choosing to Love the World: On Contemplation”, p.58, Sounds True

• a man can radically change his life and attain to a deeper meaning, a more perfect integration, a more complete fulfillment, a more total liberty of spirit than are possible in the routines of a purely active existence centered on money-making.

  Thomas Merton

  Change, Money, Men

  Thomas Merton (1999). “Mystics and Zen Masters”, p.8, Macmillan

• The cause of liberty becomes a mockery if the price to be paid is the wholesale destruction of those who are to enjoy liberty. Ghandi, quoted in Merton, p. 68

  Thomas Merton

  Liberty, Causes, Destruction

• And it is in this darkness, when there is nothing left in us that can please or comfort our own minds, when we seem to be useless and worthy of all contempt, when we seem to have failed, when we seem to be destroyed and devoured, it is then that the deep and secret selfishness that is too close to us for us to identify is stripped away from our souls. It is in this darkness that we find liberty. It is in this abandonment that we are made strong. This is the night which empties us and makes us pure.

  Thomas Merton

  Strong, Night, Soul

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