Freedom itself demands discomfort. It demands dissatisfaction. Because the freer a society becomes, the more each person will be forced to reckon and compromise with views and lifestyles and ideas that conflict with their own. The lower our tolerance for pain, the more we indulge in fake freedoms, the less we will be able to uphold the virtues necessary to allow a free, democratic society to function.

...for nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom.

Freedom aggravates at least as much as it alleviates frustration.

Freedom necessarily means that many things will be done which we do not like.

Most of us cherish freedom, but when we actually get the opportunity to make our own way it can be terrifying.

It is a simple truth that the human mind can face better the most oppressive government, the most rigid restrictions, than the awful prospect of a lawless, frontierless world. Freedom is a dangerous intoxicant and very few people can tolerate it in any quantity; it brings out the old raiding, oppressing, murderous instincts; the rage for revenge, for power, the lust for bloodshed. The longing for freedom takes the form of crushing the enemy- there is always the enemy!- into the earth; and where and who is the enemy if there is no visible establishment to attack, to destroy with blood and fire? Remember all that oratory when freedom is threatened again. Freedom, remember, is not the same as liberty.

Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry his own weight, this is a frightening prospect.

Unless a man has the talents to make something of himself, freedom is an irksome burden.

those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it

Not that freedom ensured happiness. Indeed, to be free was to live in absence. Of responsibilities, of loyalties, of the pressures that expectation imposed

Anxiety,” Kierkegaard said, “is the dizziness of freedom.” This freedom of which men speak, for which they fight, seems to some people a perilous thing. It has to be earned at a bitter cost and then — it has to be lived with. For freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry his own weight, this is a frightening prospect.

to recognize the freedom of another is to acknowledge his right to it, even at the cost of suffering

Freedom may be the most important thing in life, but there's such a thing as too much freedom.

[...] we need to cultivate the courage to be uncomfortable and to teach the people around us how to accept discomfort as a part of growth.