What light is to the eyes, what air is to the lungs, what love is to the heart, liberty is to the soul of man.

Freedom belongs with the necessities of a life rather than its luxuries. Just as eyes are useless without light, a person without liberty keeps all their capacities and cannot fully use them: the choices, speech and movement that make up an inner life have nowhere to go. Anyone who has lived under real restriction knows it is felt as something close to suffocation, not an inconvenience. The need reaches the deepest part of a person, however you name that part.

Freedoms are easy to overlook until one is threatened. Notice one liberty you used today without thinking, and consider what losing it would mean, or what you might do for someone who already has.