Believe me, the drug of freedom is universally potent.
Interpretation
Freedom is a powerful motivator and essential for human fulfillment.
Natan Sharansky's quote underscores the idea that the desire for freedom is a fundamental human longing that transcends cultures and societies. It suggests that the pursuit of freedom is invigorating and has the overwhelming ability to inspire change, empower individuals, and unite people in their quest for autonomy and self-determination.
In practice
In a speech about civil rights, one might quote this to inspire the audience.
By helping readers understand these mechanics, I hope they will appreciate why freedom is for everyone, why it is essential for our security and why the free world plays a critically important role in advancing democracy around the globe.
They tried their best to find a place where I was isolated. But all the resources of a superpower cannot isolate the man who hears a voice of freedom, a voice I heard from the very chamber of my soul.
Just as the 99% of Soviet citizens who supported the Soviet regime in 1985 was no indication of what the people inside the USSR really thought, the army of true believers that we think we see in the Arab world is an illusion.
In contrast, fear societies are societies in which dissent is banned.
My optimism is not based primarily on the successful march of democracy in recent times but rather is based on the experience of having lived in a fear society and studied the mechanics of tyranny that sustain such a society.
The two most important things that can be done to promote democracy in the world is first, to bring moral clarity back to world affairs and second, to link international policies to the advance of democracy around the globe.
Ask any athlete: We all hurt at times. I'm asking my body to go through seven different tasks. To ask it not to ache would be too much.
The hardest thing you will ever do is trust yourself.
If it is nothingness that awaits us, let us make an injustice of it, let us fight against destiny, even without hope of victory.
Fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself.
Fear is not the opposite of courage. Fear is the catalyst of courage.
As a career Army bomb technician, I have seen real heroism in the Ranger warfighters I stalked Afghanistan with each night and in the injured combatants whom I healed alongside in Walter Reed Army Medical Center after losing the two legs God gave me.
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