Absence II

"Tolstoy, the Russian writer, said in War and Peace: 'I cannot conceive of a man not being free unless he is dead.'  While this statement sounds a bit exaggerated, it gets at a basic truth. What Tolstoy is saying in substance is that the absence of freedom is the presence of death. Any nation or government that deprives an individual of freedom is in that moment committing an act of moral and spiritual murder. Any individual who is not concerned about his freedom commits an act of moral and spiritual suicide.
--Martin Luther King, Jr.
Address at the Fiftieth Annual NAACP Convention, July 17, 1959, New York.