On Liberty Quotes

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

The civil jury is a valuable safeguard to liberty.

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

The man who produces while others dispose of his product is a slave.

Republicans don't want anyone having more fun than they do, and the Democrats don't want anyone making more money than they do. Libertarians want you to make money and have fun.

Virtue is the truest liberty.

When goods do not cross borders, soldiers will.

The ruling power is always faced with the question, ‘In such and such circumstances, what would you do?’, whereas the opposition is not obliged to take responsibility or make any real decisions.

As liberty and intelligence have increased the people have more and more revolted against the theological dogmas that contradict common sense and wound the tenderest sensibilities of the soul.

Give me liberty or give me death.

Equality of opportunity is an equal opportunity to prove unequal talents.

The cause of liberty becomes a mockery if the price to be paid is the wholesale destruction of those who are to enjoy liberty. Ghandi, quoted in Merton, p. 68

Statism ends with an eye roll.

Salvation lies not in the faithfulness to forms, but in the liberation from them.

Liberty, taking the word in its concrete sense, consists in the ability to choose.

If the Czar will not accord our people these desired liberties, then a revolution will bring about a republic which will assure us our rights.

Americans need to understand the significance of having their civil liberties dismantled. It doesn't just affect terrorists and foreigners, it affects us all.

The love of power and the love of liberty are in eternal antagonism.

Remember, to them it is us who are the enemy.

This is true liberty, when free-born men, having to advise the public, may speak free.

Although man is already ninety per cent water, the Prohibitionists are not yet satisfied.

Liberty, like health, appears most precious when lost.

Liberty is not just an idea, an abstract principle. It is power, effective power to do specific things. There is no such thing as liberty in general; liberty, so to speak, at large.

Liberty, next to religion has been the motive of good deeds and the common pretext of crime.

Since the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to allow them liberty, how comes it to pass that the tendencies of organizers are always good?

For the totalitarian mind, adherence to state propaganda does not suffice: one must display proper enthusiasm while marching in the parade.

The test of liberty is the position and security of minorities.

By virtue of exchange, one man's prosperity is beneficial to all others.

The bigger a state becomes the more liberty diminishes.

This, then, is freedom in the external life of man-that he is independent of the arbitrary power of his fellows.

Government does not grow by seizing our freedoms, but by assuming our responsibilities.

True liberty acknowledges and defends the equal rights of all men, and all nations.

Interior liberty is universal.

Can it be that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a nation with its virtue?

Alas, why will a man spend months trying to hand over his liberty to a woman--and the rest of his life trying to get it back again?

Liberty, when it degrades into licentiousness, begets confusion, and frequently ends in tyranny or some woeful confusion.

Let me ask you, sir, when is the time for brave men to exert themselves in the cause of liberty and their country, if this is not?

All who love Liberty are enemies of the state.

A free man is he who does not fear to go to the end of his thought.

Government is at best useless, and at worst counter-productive.

Life and liberty can be as much endangered from illegal methods used to convict those thought to be criminals as from the actual criminals themselves.

I believe in the transformational power of liberty. I believe that the free Iraq is in this nation's interests. I believe a free Afghanistan is in this nation's interest.

America was born of revolt, flourished in dissent, became great through experimentation.

When democratic governments create economic calamity, free markets get the blame.

Man's liberty ends, and it ought to end, when that liberty becomes the curse of its neighbors.

The crime problem in New York is getting really serious. The other day the Statue of Liberty had both hands up.

To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony.

To deprive a man of his natural liberty and to deny to him the ordinary amenities of life is worse then starving the body; it is starvation of the soul, the dweller in the body.

Liberty is no heirloom. It requires the daily bread of self-denial, the salt of law and, above all, the backbone of acknowledging responsibility for our deeds.

The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered as the palladium of the liberties of a republic.