On Liberty Quotes

True liberty consists only in the power of doing what we ought to will, and in not being constrained to do what we ought not to will

People are not usually deprived of their liberties all at once, but gradually, by one encroachment after another, as it is found they are disposed to bear them.

Let us prize our freedom; but not use our liberty for a cloak of maliciousness

We protest solemnly in the face of mankind, that we desire peace at any sacrifice, save that of honor.

The wretch who lives without freedom feels like dressing in the mud from the streets Those who have you, o Liberty, do not know. you. Those who do not have you should not speak of you, but win you.

A caged canary is safe but not free.

The money that we possess is the instrument of liberty, that which we lack and strive to obtain is the instrument of slavery.

Liberty is obedience to the law which one has laid down for oneself

Duty is the grandest of ideas, because it implies the idea of God, of the soul, of liberty, of responsibility, of immortality.

Liberty is a different kind of pain from prison.

To think I have had more than 60 years of hard struggle for a little liberty, and then to die without it seems so cruel.

The most esteemed journalists are precisely the most servile. For it is by making themselves useful to the powerful that they gain access to the "best" sources.

Society demands conformity at the expense of individual liberty. Let us be for once a non conformist to be fully alive.

Freedom can't be bought for nothing. If you hold her precious, you must hold all else of little worth.

There is no virtue in denying the law of gravity, and there should be no virtue in denying the limitations of government. ... The more we glorify government, the more liberties we will lose.

Liberty is a luxury of security; the free individual is a product and a mark of civilization.

The function of the true state is to impose the minimum restrictions and safeguard the maximum liberties of the people, and it never regards the person as a thing.

The enjoyment of power inevitably corrupts the judgment of reason, and perverts its liberty.

I've flown out of character so many times. In that sense I've been lucky, because I've been given the liberty to do just about anything I've wanted to do in my lifetime.

Freedom is the right to question and change the established way of doing things.

However insignificant the minority, and however trifling the proposed trespass against their rights, no such trespass is permissible.

In America, writers are afforded the freedom to express themselves in unlimited manners. Creative liberty is a privilege.

If our democracy is to flourish, it must have criticism; if our government is to function it must have dissent.

Let it not be said that no one cared, that no one objected once it’s realized that our liberties and wealth are in jeopardy.

Anyone in a free society where the laws are unjust has an obligation to break the law.

Goethe tells us in his greatest poem that Faust lost the liberty of his soul when he said to the passing moment, 'Stay, thou art so fair.

Absolute liberty is absence of restraint; responsibility is restraint; therefore, the ideally free individual is responsible to himself.

Liberty is always unfinished business

Lady Liberty and Sarah Palin are lit by the same torch.

The two main ideas that run through all of my writing, whether it be literary criticism or political polemic are these: I am strong in favor of liberty and I hate fraud.

[Government's] great contribution to human wisdom...is the discovery that the taxpayer has more than one pocket.

Liberty is a word which, according as it is used, comprehends the most good and the most evil of any in the world.

I have loved women even to madness, but I have always loved liberty better.

The Liberty of the press consists in the right to publish with impunity truth with good motives for justifiable ends, though reflecting on government, magistracy, or individuals.

Capitalism is our only moral system. All other systems take advantage of man's rights and liberties.

The civil jury is a valuable safeguard to liberty.

Wild liberty develops iron conscience. Want of liberty, by strengthening law and decorum, stupefies conscience.

For the majority of people liberty means only the system and the administrators they are used to.

[I]f vice and corruption prevail, liberty cannot subsist; but if virtue have the advantage, arbitrary power cannot be established.

I sometimes think that the price of liberty is not so much eternal vigilance as eternal dirt.

He who regulates everything by laws, is more likely to arouse vices than reform them.

The real disturbers of the peace are those who, in a free state, seek to curtail the liberty of judgment which they are unable to tyrannize over.

Freedom of the press is perhaps the freedom that has suffered the most from the gradual degradation of the idea of liberty.

I have the right to life, liberty and chicken wings.

Family - see Fascist State.

Beware of those who would use violence, too often it is violence they want and neither truth nor freedom.

... the American Colonists under King George III had it pretty good compared to us. They would wonder why we haven't taken up arms and seceded yet.

Interwoven as is the love of liberty with every ligament of your hearts, no recommendation of mine is necessary to fortify or confirm the attachment.

If you want a Big Brother, you get all that comes with it.

I march in the parade of liberty But as long as I love you I’m not free How long must I suffer such abuse Won’t you let me see you smile one time before I turn you loose?