On Liberty Quotes

A citizen of the Roman Empire, for example, would have placed less value on individual liberty in the modern Western sense than on collective responsibility.

The same government that brought you urban renewal is likely to make an even worse mess of suburban renewal.

[That form of] eloquence, the foster-child of licence, which fools call liberty. [Lat., Eloquentia, alumna licentiae, quam stulti libertatem vocabant.]

I will fight to defend liberty.

I have long been convinced that institutions purely democratic must, sooner or later, destroy liberty or civilization, or both.

And to say that society ought to be governed by the opinion of the wisest and best, though true, is useless. Whose opinion is to decide who are the wisest and best?

O Liberty...! is it well To leave the gates unguarded?

Our land, the first garden of liberty's tree-- It has been, and shall be, the land of the free.

In a republican nation whose citizens are to be led by reason and persuasion and not by force, the art of reasoning becomes of first importance.

Our attachment to no nation on earth should supplant our attachment to liberty.

I think all the world would gain by setting commerce at perfect liberty.

The moral sense is as much a part of our constitution as that of feeling, seeing, or hearing.

Educate and inform the whole mass of the people.

The institution of taxation is not a civilized but a barbaric method to fund anything, because it amounts to nothing less than outright extortion, a gross violation of human liberty.

We have a long heritage of freedom that defines America. We believe there is a Creator who blessed us with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Risk is the inevitable product of liberty - and it's responsible not only for great tragedy, but also great triumph.

When you're in this type of conflict, when you're at war, civil liberties are treated differently.

Liberty is not the unique right of Americans or even Westerners, but is mankind's right.

The shallow, as intimated, consider liberty a release from all law, from every constraint. The wise see in it, on the contrary, the potent Law of Laws.

Nothing in our Constitution suggests that government is a grantor of rights. Instead, government is a protector of rights.

If our country is to survive and prosper, we must summon the courage to condemn and reject the liberal agenda, and we had better do it soon.

Private property was the original source of freedom. It still is its main bulwark.

The whole earth is in jail and we're plotting this incredible jailbreak.

I think any man would be nervous if his liberty is at stake.

Philosophy is harmonized knowledge making a harmonious life; it is the self-discipline which lifts us to serenity and freedom. Knowledge is power, but only wisdom is liberty.

The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels and God, and at liberty when of Devils and Hell, is because he was a true poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it.

The tendency of taxation is, to create a class of persons, who do not labour: to take from those who do labour the produce of that labour, and to give it to those who do not labour.

'Tis liberty alone that gives the flower Of fleeting life its lustre and perfume; And we are weeds without it.

Then liberty, like day, Breaks on the soul, and by a flash from Heaven Fires all the faculties with glorious joy.

Where men cannot freely convey their thoughts to one another, no other liberty is secure.

Civil liberty is the status of the man who is guaranteed by law and civil institutions the exclusive employment of all his own powers for his own welfare.

The present struggle seems less about abolishing big government than about who gets to use it.

Next to the right of liberty, the right of property is the most important individual right guaranteed by the Constitution . .

I can spend your money better than you can.

You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.

The right to dissent is the only thing that makes life tolerable for a judge of an appellate court... the affairs of government could not be conducted by democratic standards without it.

[I]f we assume a liberty interest but nevertheless say that, even assuming a liberty interest, a state can prohibit it entirely, that would be rather a conundrum.

Though authority be a stubborn bear, yet he is oft let by the nose with gold.

... how terrible is the pain of the mind and heart when the freedom of mankind is suppressed!

The vast majority of people are unthinking prejudice machines.

We have won the time lottery of the last 4 billion years.

Not just charity, even corruption begins at home.

Under observation, we act less free, which means we effectively are less free.

The government is a giant logjam in the eternal river of human potential.

Liberty is the right to do what the law permits.

What spectacle can be more edifying or more seasonable, than that of Liberty and Learning, each leaning on the other for their mutual and surest support?

The liberty of the individual is a necessary postulate of human progress.

Liberty is worth paying for.

In Texas, we hold very dear to intrusions against our personal liberty. We fight very hard against that.

American liberty is premised on the accountability of free men and women for what they have done, not for what they may do.