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"In my own case at least I feel my professional need for freedom of speech and expression prejudices me toward a government whose constitution guarantees it."
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"When you write by hand, you don't have the excessive freedom of a computer. When I write down something, I have to be serious about it. I have to ask myself, "Is this necessary at this point in the book?"

"The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good, in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it."

"When you are imprisoned by the rules of conformity, it tames your imaginative capacity and steals your free thinking abilities."

"Liberation begins with liberation of mind, soul and body."

"You are not, though, forgiving so as to let others off with things. You are forgiving so that you can empower yourself to get over it and become strong."
Explore more quotes by John Updike

"The essential support and encouragement comes from within, arising out of the mad notion that your society needs to know what only you can tell it."

"Most of American life consists of driving somewhere and then returning home, wondering why the hell you went."

"The Englishman is under no constitutional obligation to believe that all men are created equal. The American agony is therefore scarcely intelligible like a saint's self-flagellation viewed by an atheist."

"An affair wants to spill, to share its glory with the world. No act is so private it does not seek applause."

"A leader is one who, out of madness or goodness, volunteers to take upon himself the woe of the people. There are few men so foolish, hence the erratic quality of leadership in the world."

"Being able to write becomes a kind of shield, a way of hiding, a way of too instantly transforming pain into honey."

"Truth should not be forced; it should simply manifest itself, like a woman who has in her privacy reflected and coolly decided to bestow herself upon a certain man."

"A healthy male adult bore consumes each year one and a half times his own weight in other people's patience."

"The faith in an afterlife, however much our reason ridicules it, very modestly extends our faith that each moment of our consciousness will be followed by another - that a coherent matrix has been prepared for this precious self of ours. The guarantee that our self enjoys an intended relation to the outer world is most, if not all, of what we ask from religion. God is the self projected onto reality by our natural and necessary optimism. He is the not-me personified."
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