On Liberty Quotes

A right delayed is a right denied.

Our natural, inalienable rights are now considered to be a dispensation from government, and freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp as it is at this moment.

Sometimes life has a cruel sense of humor, giving you the thing you always wanted at the worst time possible.

Having proceeded to this length, for which they are now ripe, we shall have a formidable rebellion against reason, the principle of all government, and against the very name of liberty.

The struggle for freedom is ultimately not resistance to autocrats or oligarchs but resistance to the despotism of public opinion.

That liberty [is pure] which is to go to all, and not to the few or the rich alone.

Unity in things Necessary, Liberty in things Unnecessary, and Charity in all.

I was guilty of judging capitalism by its operations and socialism by its hopes and aspirations; capitalism by its works and socialism by its literature.

I own that I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive.

Taxation is not a method by which the community corporately provides itself with essential services, but a fund to be divided between different interests with political claims upon the state.

Privacy is a function of liberty.

A dissenting minority feels free only when it can impose its will on the majority: what it abominates most is the dissent of the majority.

The personal right to acquire property, which is a natural right, gives to property, when acquired, a right to protection, as a social right.

The two great movements of our century -- towards Liberty of the individual and social co-operation of the whole community -- are summed up in Anarchist-Communism.

If you sacrifice liberty for security, you will lose both.

[L]iberty cannot be preserved, if the manners of the people are corrupted . . .

The Bible is the cornerstone of liberty.

The peoples' revolution... will arrange its revolutionary organisation from the bottom up and from the periphery to the centre, in keeping with the principle of liberty.

Republicans campaign like Libertarians and govern like Democrats.

To a man the greatest blessing is individual liberty; to a dog it is the last word in despair.

A liberty to that only which is good, just, and honest.

The liberty of the press is not confined to newspapers and periodicals. It necessarily embraces pamphlets and leaflets.

The politician attempts to remedy the evil by increasing the very thing that caused the evil in the first place: legal plunder.

Having been poor is no shame, but being ashamed of it, is.

Liberty consists in doing what one desires.

The way to secure liberty is to place it in the people's hands, that is, to give them the power at all times to defend it in the legislature and in the courts of justice.

The generation which lived through the Second World War is disappearing. Post-war generations see Europe's great achievements - liberty, peace and prosperity - as a given.

I prefer the tumult of liberty to the quiet of servitude

Attack another's rights and you destroy your own.

When the people fear a government, they're a tyranny. When a government fears the people, there is liberty.

The liberty that remains to us is essentially the freedom to choose among brands A, B, and C.

My country is wherever liberty lives.

Dissent is the mark of freedom.

When we prohibit others from being different, we end up forfeiting our own right to Liberty.

I believe in civil liberties for homosexuals. I guess I'd have to say I'd draw the line at letting them teach in the schools.

The tyrant claims freedom to kill freedom, and yet keep it for himself.

It belongs to American liberty to separate entirely the institution which has for its object the support and diffusion of religion from the political government.

Throughout history, government has proved to be the chief instrument for thwarting man's liberty.

Liberty and equality--lovely and sacred words!

In ten phrases, the ten commandments express the essential of life. And these three words--liberty, equality, and fraternity--do just as much. Millions of people have died for those ideals.

To whom you betray your secret you sell your liberty.

An elective despotism was not the government we fought for.

The ultimate touchstone of constitutionality is the Constitution itself, and not what we have said about it.

Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch.

It's important to every American that the law protect his or her basic liberty

Labor in the white skin can never free itself as long as labor in the black skin is branded.

Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure.

There are a lot of things that fit on a bumper sticker in terms of either liberty or equality or progress that when made more concrete just don't pan out.

Dissents are appeals to the brooding spirit of the law, to the intelligence of another day.

I follow a set of principles; I follow the Constitution. And that's what I base my votes on. Limited government, economic freedom, and individual liberty.