Quotes on Liberty
The truth is, all might be free if they valued freedom and defended it as they ought.
Samuel Adams
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The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
Thomas Jefferson
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Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy
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The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil, in case he do otherwise.
John Stuart Mill
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God grants liberty only to those who love it and are always ready to guard and defend it.
Daniel Webster
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I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.
Thomas Jefferson
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Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
George Bernard Shaw
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What Americans need to realize is that it is impossible to increase government power without decreasing individual liberty. Government power, after all, means coercing people into doing some things and into refraining from doing other things. Every law says to the citizen, "You must" or "You shall not." Thus, liberty is lost incrementally, law by law by law.
Charley Reese
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The problem with freedom is that it is a two-sided coin. On one side is the liberty to make decisions; on the other is responsibility.
Charley Reese
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Government is necessary, but the only rights we can delegate to government are the ones we possess. For example, we all have a natural right to defend ourselves against predators. Since we possess that right, we can delegate authority to government to defend us. By contrast, we don't have a natural right to take the property of one person to give to another; therefore, we cannot legitimately delegate such authority to government.
Walter E. Williams
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A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular.
Adlai Stevenson
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Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.
Benjamin Franklin
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Few men desire liberty; most men wish only for a just master.
Gaius Crispus
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God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?
Thomas Jefferson
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Good intentions will always be pleaded for any assumption of power. The Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.
Daniel Webster
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If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, it expects something it cannot be.
Thomas Jefferson
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Liberty is the prevention of control by others. This requires self-control and, therefore, religious and spiritual influences; education, knowledge, well-being.
Lord Acton
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Liberty not only means that the individual has both the opportunity and the burden of choice; it also means that he must bear the consequences of his actions and will receive praise or blame for them.
F. A. Hayek
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Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
William Pitt
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The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.
Louis Brandeis
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The meaning of economic freedom is this: that the individual is in a position to choose the way in which he wants to integrate himself into the totality of society.
Ludwig von Mises
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Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.
George Washington
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The true test of one's commitment to liberty and private property rights doesn't come when we permit people to be free to do those voluntary things with which we agree. The true test comes when we permit people to be free to do those voluntary things with which we disagree.
Walter E. Williams
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Statist society promises you happiness in exchange for the better part of your freedom. Civil society merely guarantees your freedom. Happiness is up to you.
Theodore Forstmann
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The truth is that no nation can be constantly prepared to undertake a full-scale war at any moment and still hope to maintain any of the other purposes in which people are interested and for which nations are founded.
Robert Taft
In the first place, it requires a complete surrender of liberty and the turning over to the central government of power to control in detail the lives of the people and all of their activities.
While in time of war people are willing to surrender those liberties in order to protect the ultimate liberty of the entire country, they do so on the theory that it is a limited surrender and one which they hope will soon be over, perhaps within a few months, certainly within a few years. But an indefinite surrender of liberty such as would be required by an all-out war program in time of peace might mean the final and complete destruction of those liberties which it is the very purpose of the preparation to protect.
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He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.
Thomas Paine
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The most important element of a free society, where individual rights are held in the highest esteem, is the rejection of the initiation of violence.
Ron Paul
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The day that this country [America] ceases to be free for irreligion, it will cease to be free for religion.
Justice Robert Jackson
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No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffused and virtue is preserved. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauched in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders.
Samuel Adams
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If I should be attacked for neglecting my constituents' 'interests,' I shall reply that I was informed that their main interest is liberty, and in that cause I am doing the very best I can.
Barry Goldwater
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God has implanted in mankind also all that is necessary to enable it to accomplish its destinies. There is a providential social physiology, as well as a providential human physiology. The social organs are constituted so as to enable them to develop harmoniously in the grand air of liberty. Away, then, with quacks and organizers! Away with their rings, and their chains, and their hooks, and their pincers! Away with their artificial methods! Away with their social laboratories, their governmental whims, their centralization, their tariffs, their universities, their State religions, their inflationary or monopolizing banks, their limitations, their restrictions, their moralizations, and their equalization by taxation! And now, after having vainly inflicted upon the social body so many systems, let them end where they ought to have begun - reject all systems, and try liberty - liberty, which is an act of faith in God and His work.
Frederic Bastiat
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I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.
Barry Goldwater
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Shame on the men who can court exemption from present trouble and expense at the price of their own posterity's liberty!
Samuel Adams
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Liberty will not descend to a people, a people must raise themselves to liberty; it is a blessing that must be earned before it can be enjoyed.
Charles Colton
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Whether in chains or in laurels, Liberty knows nothing but victories.
Wendell Phillips
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Liberty is not merely a privilege to be conferred; it is a habit to be acquired.
David Lloyd George
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The natural progress of things is for government to gain ground and for liberty to yield.
Thomas Jefferson
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The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
H. L. Mencken
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In a sense there have always been but two political philosophies: liberty and power. Either people should be free to live their lives as they see fit, as long as they respect the equal rights of others, or some people should be able to use force to make other people act in ways they wouldn't choose.
David Boaz
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If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.
Samuel Adams
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Liberty is not a thing for the great masses of men. It is the exclusive possession of a small and disreputable minority, like knowledge, courage and honor. It takes a special sort of man to understand and enjoy liberty - and he is usually an outlaw in democratic societies.
H. L. Mencken
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The true civilization is where every man gives to every other every right that he claims for himself.
Robert Ingersoll
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Authority that does not exist for Liberty is not authority but force.
Lord Acton
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However widespread the desire to be free, that is wholly different from a desire to live in a society where others are free.
Thomas Sowell
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