Very few fathers and mothers -- whatever their calling -- have the slightest idea what the free society really is or how it works. Thus, the young folks grow to college age uninstructed. And their college teachers -- again with a few notable exceptions -- know no more of the ideal than do the parents.

Freedom has no needs. But anyone who can think long-range will likely conclude, sooner or later, that "the need is mine."

Most of those who live so affluently in these periods become in-sensitive to needs, particularly to a need for anymore freedom than exists in their experience. Freedom fails to prevail at the hands of these "successes."

Man needs freedom because it is the only state of affairs in which Creative Wisdom can flourish, without which man can not exist.

It is only when the individual responsibly chooses between alternatives -- becomes a decision-maker -- that there can be growth of the faculties essential for self-realization. It is only in the absence of coercive restraints -- freedom -- that man becomes his own man.

Man needs freedom in order to be self-responsible. No one can be self-reliant when the government coercively assumes responsibility for his welfare, security, prosperity.

Man requires, above all else, not to be smothered -- that is, he requires an absence of restraints against creative release. He needs "room to breathe," as we say.

Man, singular, is Creation's finest image. His destiny is the improvement, now and forever, oft his image in order that he may increasingly share in Creation. Man's purpose is a realization of his unique, creative potentialities.

When one is conscious of the what-ought-to-be -- the ideal -- the what-is automatically becomes apparent. The need for freedom then looms large. Sudden contrasts are no longer necessary for awareness. It is the recognition of the need that flags as freedom gradually dwindles.

To sense one's need for freedom is never easy, and the detection is made more difficult by the gradual erosion of freedom, that is, by the steady addition of restraints.

The question is: Does the individual need freedom?

And my answer is, "Yes, indeed!"

But freedom does not need these persons or groups -- or you or me. The concept stands, whether or not any one supports it, believes in it, acts in accord with it.

Freedom rather, it is an abstraction; indeed, it is not a thing in it self but, instead, an absence of some things: deadening restraints on creative actions.

Freedom is not a living, thinking being and not like a plant or domesticated animal to be watered and nurtured and protected and propagated. Freedom no more has needs than it has eyes to see.

The general principles of any study you may learn by books at home, but the detail, the color, the tone, the air, the life in it, you must catch all these from those in whom it already lives.

Regardless of how powerful a magnet may be, it can never attract straw or sawdust. This fact drastically limits the number of those who are educable in economic, moral, and political philosophy. It makes non sense of the notion that educating the masses is even a remote possibility.

A man only understands that of which he has already the beginnings in himself.

A man only understands that of which he has already the beginnings in himself.