"California is a bellwether state. California was the first state in the United States to overturn the laws against interracial marriage. It took 19 years for the rest of the country to come around to that point of view."

"We believe that government in Britain is there to protect people from terrorism and from the worst criminality, but never at the expense of our civil liberties and the basic tenets of our legal system."

"I keep hearing about a spiritual awakening, but I feel what we need instead, is a human one. It would be wonderful and empowering to become free from the disillusionment and nonsense being sold to us from gurus for centuries."

"When you deprive people of their right to live in dignity, to hope for a better future, to have control over their lives, when you deprive them of that choice, then you expect them to fight for these rights."

"You are letting this feeling get cold, I cant blame you, you must know you are free to go... Don't you ever look back... If you wonder why it is because I wont be there."

"To me, it was shocking that a government of men could look with such extreme contempt on a movement that was asking nothing except such a simple little thing as the right to vote."

"The nineteenth century, especially the second half of it, was a time of restatement in Ireland. After the famine, after the failed rebellions of the Forties and Sixties, the cultural and political desires for self-determination began to shape each other in a series of riffs on independence and identity."

"We all want to break our orbits, float like a satellite gone wild in space, run the risk of disintegration. We all want to take our lives in our own hands and hurl them out among the stars."

"Fear robs you of your freedom to make the right choice in life that can bridge the gap between where you are and where you want to be. On the other side of fear, lies freedom. If you want to grow, you need to be brave and take risks. If you're not uncomfortable, you're not growing."

"What do you want to be, free or happy? How about if they really are mutually exclusive options? What is freedom anyway? How does humanity govern itself when each person can have anything they want? How does humanity govern itself when nothing is natural?"