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Freedom without security portends chaos, perpetual anxiety and fear. Security without freedom means slavery. So, each on its own is awful only together they make for a good life. But, a big but: being both necessary, complementing each other, they are nevertheless virtually incompatible.

Zygmunt Bauman

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Zygmunt Bauman
Age: 91 †
Born: 1925
Born: November 19
Died: 2017
Died: January 9
Opinion Journalist
Philosopher
Sociologist
University Teacher
Writer
Poznan
Means
Chaos
Together
Slavery
Without
Anxiety
Mean
Necessary
Incompatible
Make
Security
Virtually
Good
Freedom
Nevertheless
Life
Bigs
Perpetual
Fear
Awful

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The carrying power of a bridge is not the average strength of the pillars, but the strength of the weakest pillar. I have always believed that you do not measure the health of a society by GNP but by the condition of its worst off.
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The proof of my Jewishness is that iniquities done by Israel pain me much more than iniquities perpetrated by any other country.
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After many years of thinking, reading and writing and looking, I came to believe that there are two basic, essential values which are indispensable for humane, decent, dignified life: one is freedom, and the other is security.
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Today's youth have been cast in a condition of liminal drift, with no way of knowing whether it is transitory or permanent.
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Cornelius Castoriadis, the great French social philosopher of Greek origin, was asked once by an exasperated interviewer: What do you want, Mr. Castoriadis - to change humanity? He answered: No, God forbid, I only want humanity to change itself, as it has done so many times in the past. I would be inclined to answer the same way.
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As long as we say: Alright, it is truth for me, and I believe in it and I am ready to fight for it, but I accept that others have different beliefs - and so let me have a closer look at what they believe - we can gain from our intercourse thanks to our difference, not despite our difference.
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If there is something to permit the distinction between solid and liquid phases of modernity (that is, arranging them in an order of succession), it is the change in both the manifest and latent purpose behind the effort.
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Everybody is in trouble, including the up-and-coming economic miracles of China, Brazil or India.
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Freedom without security portends chaos, perpetual anxiety and fear.
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Most young people today prefer just to move in together and stay together as long, but no longer, as satisfaction lasts.
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Happiness needs one-upmanship.
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The art of walking on quicksand is still beyond me. What I learned is only how difficult this art is to master and how hard people need to struggle to learn it.
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The Bible provides unity without imposing uniformity, without prohibiting change it is a standing invitation to thinking and to take responsibilities.
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Jews and Gypsies were well-nigh the only Diasporas in 19th century Europe. Now go to London, it is a collection of Diasporas.
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For intellectual authority, the appropriate version of Descartes 's cogito would be today: I am talked about, therefore I am.
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In a liquid modern life there are no permanent bonds, and any that we take up for a time must be tied loosely so that they can be untied again, as quickly and as effortlessly as possible, when circumstances change - as they surely will in our liquid modern society, over and over again.
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Being condemned by fate to perpetual togetherness, we better make that shared fate into our shared, consciously and gladly embraced, destiny.
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The value of other people is that they have something unique to offer.
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