There is more than one kind of freedom," said Aunt Lydia. "Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from. Don't underrate it.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the distinction between two types of freedom: freedom to act and freedom from oppression.
Margaret Atwood's quote emphasizes the nuanced understanding of freedom, distinguishing between the freedom to pursue one's desires and the freedom from constraints and oppression. While one may yearn for the ability to act freely, the quote suggests that freedom from societal or personal constraints should not be underestimated, as it can also lead to a different form of liberation and security.
In practice
In a discussion about civil rights, this quote illustrates the complexities of freedom.
If I am good enough and quiet enough, perhaps after all they will let me go; but it’s not easy being quiet and good, it’s like hanging on to the edge of a bridge when you’ve already fallen over; you don’t seem to be moving, just dangling there, and yet it is taking all your strength.
I would like to believe this is a story I’m telling. I need to believe it. I must believe it. Those who can believe that such stories are only stories have a better chance. If it’s a story I’m telling, then I have control over the ending. Then there will be an ending, to the story, and real life will come after it. I can pick up where I left off.
What else can I do? Once you've gone this far you aren't fit for anything else. Something happens to your mind. You're overqualified, overspecialized, and everybody knows it. Nobody in any other game would be crazy enough to hire me. I wouldn't even make a good ditch-digger, I'd start tearing apart the sewer-system, trying to pick-axe and unearth all those chthonic symbols - pipes, valves, cloacal conduits... No, no. I'll have to be a slave in the paper-mines for all time.
We love each other, that’s true whatever it means, but we aren’t good at it; for some it’s a talent, for others only an addiction.
I've learned quite a lot, over the years, by avoiding what I was supposed to be learning.
Knowing too much about other people puts you in their power, they have a claim on you, you are forced to understand their reasons for doing things and then you are weakened.
On ne sait jamais! One never knows!
Patience and boredom are closely related. Boredom, a certain kind of boredom, is really impatience. You don't like the way things are, they aren't interesting enough for you, so you deccide- and boredom is a decision-that you are bored.
All animals communicate. What's special about gossip is that it's not about the here and now. You don't gossip about lions. You don't gossip about clouds. You only gossip about other people. And once you do, you can keep track of many more people - this is the basis for forming larger communities.
Appearances are a glimpse of the unseen.
There is an hour of the afternoon when the plain is on the verge of saying something. It never says, or perhaps it says it infinitely, or perhaps we do not understand it, or we understand it and it is untranslatable as music.
We should like to have some towering geniuses, to reveal us to ourselves in colour and fire, but of course they would have to fit into the pattern of our society and be able to take orders from sound administrative types.
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