What does it mean to be free?

If you want lunch, you better come in between twelve and one or you don't get lunch. Period. That's the way things are run here. You don't come on time you don't get lunch. You're free, that's true, but you must take the consequences.

--Anthony de Mello

What does it mean to be free?

One cannot make a slave of a free person, for a free person is free even in prison.

--Plato