"The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day. That is real freedom."

From David Foster Wallace's commencement speech at Kenyon College in 2005. It's been published in book form now, (the title is This is Water), in which the speech is spread out over about 100 pages, with one or two sentences on each page. It makes for a nice reading pace but I didn't want to spend $14 on it at Barnes and Noble so I'm glad the text is still available on the internet here.