It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.
– François-Marie Arouet (Voltaire), 1694 – 1778
[paraphrases for today’s environment: Change is Hard.]

Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.
– Mark Twain, 1835 – 1910

Chains do not hold a marriage together. It is threads, hundreds of tiny threads, which sew people together through the years.
– Simone Signoret, 1921 – 1985

Sleep is that golden chain that ties health and our bodies together.
– Thomas Dekker, 1577 – 1632

If we are bold, love strikes away the chains of fear from our souls.
– Maya Angelou

Before man can be free, and equal, and truly wise, he must cast aside the chains of habit and superstition; he must strip sensuality of its pomp, and selfishness of its excuses, and contemplate actions and objects as they really are.
– Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792 – 1822