Freedom Free?

It is then possible to say that rebellion, when it develops into destruction, is illogical. Claiming the unity of the human condition, it is a force of life, not death. Its most profound logic is not the logic of destruction; it is the logic of creation. Its movement, in order to remain authentic, must never abandon any of the terms of the contradiction that sustains it. It must be faithful to the yes that it contains as well as to the no that nihilistic interpretations isolate in rebellion. The logic of the rebel is to want to serve justice so as not to add to the injustice of the human condition, to insist on plain language so as not to increase the universal falsehood, and to wager, in spite of human misery, for happiness. Nihilistic passion, adding to falsehood and injustice, destroys in its fury its original demands and thus deprives rebellion of its most cogent reasons. It kills in the fond conviction that this world is dedicated to death. The consequence of rebellion, on the contrary, is to refuse to legitimize murder because rebellion, in principle, is a protest against death.
— Albert Camus, The Rebel, p. 285.

June sat filled with champagne. I have no need of it. She talked about the effects of hashish. I said, "I have known such states without hashish. I do not need drugs. I carry all that in myself." At this she was irritated. She does not realize that, being an artist, I want to be in those states of ecstasy or vision while keeping my awareness intact. I am the poet and I must feel and see. I do not want to be anaesthesized. I am drunk on June's beauty, but I am also aware of it.
— Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. I, "Life in Paris: 1931-1934," p. 37.

Of Marcel Duchamp:
About his painting he is detached. He showed me a portfolio, a box, really, which he said should now take the place of completed books. "This is not a time in which to finish anything, he said. It is a time for fragments." This box contained an unfinished book. Scraps of drawings on any old paper, notes torn from a notebook, odds and ends, half-finished comments, a word all by itself, in large handwriting, the elements with which to compose a book which he would never write. A symbol of the times.
— Anaïs Nin, Ibid., p. 357.

We live on top of a crumbling world. The more it crumbles the more I feel like asserting the possibility of an individually perfect world, personal loves, personal relationships, creation. I may be trying to place an opium mat on top of a volcano. The world is chaos. Panic. Hysteria.
— Anaïs Nin, Ibid., Vol. II, "Paris Pre-World War II: 1934-1939," p. 94.

But, soon after my "Goetz" and "Werther," that saying of a sage was verified for me — "If you do anything for the sake of the world, it will take good care that you shall not do it a second time."
— Wolfgang Göethe, in Conversations with Eckermann

When you ask what people here are like, I must reply, like verywhere else. The human race does not vary much. Most people pass the greater part of their lives in work, in order to live, and the modicum of free time they have to themselves makes them so uneasy that they seek every means they can to kill it. Alas, the destiny of man!
— Wolfgang Göethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther, William Rose (tr.), in The Permanent Göethe, edited and selected by Thomas Mann (1948), p. 365.

I remember the fable of the horse that was tired of its freedom, allowed itself to be saddled and bridled, and was ridden to death.
Wolfgang Göethe, Ibid., p. 399.

....a system of slavery so well designed that it does not breed revolt is the real threat. The literature of freedom has been designed to make men "conscious" of aversive control, but in its choice of methods it has failed to rescue the happy slave.
— B. F. Skinner, Beyond Freedom and Dignity, p. 40.

.... The disciple bows his head, and now the teacher elucidates further for him, "If you want to see, look straight into the thing; but if you seek to ponder over it, then you have already missed the goal!"
     Thus truth in the world of man is not to be found as the content of knowledge, but only as human experience. One does not reflect upon it, one does not express it, one does not perceive it, but one lives it and receives it as life. That is expressed in Zen and in Hasidism in almost the same language.
— Martin Buber, The Origin and Meaning of Hasidism, p. 229.