Liberty famous quotes
Last updated: Sep 5, 2024
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The personal right to acquire property, which is a natural right, gives to property, when acquired, a right to protection, as a social right.
-- James Madison -
A well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people.
-- James Madison -
The happy Union of these States is a wonder; their Constitution a miracle; their example the hope of Liberty throughout the world.
-- James Madison -
Whenever a youth is ascertained to possess talents meriting an education which his parents cannot afford, he should be carried forward at the public expense.
-- James Madison -
The rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted.
-- James Madison -
A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty.
-- James Madison -
Conscience is the most sacred of all property.
-- James Madison -
Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit.
-- James Madison -
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?
-- James Madison -
The civil rights of none, shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, or on any pretext infringed.
-- James Madison -
There is no maxim, in my opinion, which is more liable to be misapplied, and which, therefore, more needs elucidation, than the current one, that the interest of the majority is the political standard of right and wrong.
-- James Madison -
With respect to the words "general welfare," I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.
-- James Madison -
Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions.
-- James Madison -
Liberty is to faction what air is to fire...
-- James Madison -
[Restraints on the press] in all ages, have debauched morals, depressed liberty, shackled religion, supported despotism, and deluged the scaffold with blood.
-- James Madison -
Our country may be likened to a new house. We lack many things, but we possess the most precious of all - liberty!
-- James Monroe -
Can there be any liberty where property is taken away without consent?
-- James Otis -
One of the most essential branches of English liberty is the freedom of one's house. A man's house is his castle.
-- James Otis -
I have accordingly considered it, and now appear not only in obedience to your order, but likewise in behalf of the inhabitants of this town, who have presented another petition, and out of regard to the liberties of the subject.
-- James Otis -
Blind belief can be comforting, but it can easily cripple reason and productivity, and stop intellectual progress.
-- James Randi -
They have rights who dare maintain them.
-- James Russell Lowell -
Senate Bill 1062 does not address a specific and present concern related to religious liberty in Arizona. I have not heard of one example in Arizona where a business owner's religious liberty has been violated. The bill is broadly worded and could result in unintended and negative consequences. After weighing all of the arguments, I vetoed Senate Bill 1062 moments ago.
-- Jan Brewer -
I come here with no expectations, only to profess, now that I am at liberty to do so, that my heart is and always will be yours.
-- Jane Austen -
The crime problem in New York is getting really serious. The other day the Statue of Liberty had both hands up.
-- Jay Leno -
Form 1040 was chosen by the IRS because for every $50 you earn, you get 10 and they get 40.
-- Jay Leno -
The Senate voted 97-0 for an anti-spam bill to stop those annoying things you get on your computer. The senators made it very clear that when you start misleading the American people and start taking their money over false promises, that's our turf, buddy!
-- Jay Leno -
In relations between the rich and the strong, between the rich and the poor, between the master and the servant, it's liberty that grinds down, and the law which liberates.
-- Jean-Baptiste Henri Lacordaire -
Free people, remember this maxim: we may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is once lost.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau -
I prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau -
Liberty may be gained, but can never be recovered.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau -
In Genoa, the word, libertas can be read on the front of prisons and on the fetters of galley-slaves. The application of this motto is fine and just.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau -
Liberty is not to be found in any form of government; she is in the heart of the free man; he bears her with him everywhere.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau -
Liberty is obedience to the law which one has laid down for oneself
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau -
The money that we possess is the instrument of liberty, that which we lack and strive to obtain is the instrument of slavery.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau -
Government originated in the attempt to find a form of association that defends and protects the person and property of each with the common force of all.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau -
How could liberty ever establish itself amongst us? Apart from a few tragic scenes, the revolution has been nothing but a web of farcical scenes.
-- Jean-Paul Marat -
No, liberty is not made for us: we are too ignorant, too vain, too presumptious, too cowardly, too vile, too corrupt too attached to rest and to pleasure, too much slaves to fortune to ever know the true price of liberty. We boast of being free! To show how much we have become slaves, it is enough just to cast a glance on the capital and examine the morals of its inhabitants.
-- Jean-Paul Marat -
A government is not legitimate merely because it exists.
-- Jeane Kirkpatrick -
Travel the world, learn other languages, demand liberty, despise violence, read books, and keep a dictionary nearby.
-- Jeff B. Davis -
The American experiment has come and gone. Whatever freedoms the people still might have as their own, are monitored and registered and taxed at virtually every turn.
-- Jeff Baxter -
The Statue of Liberty's gender changed nothing. It was the same here as anywhere: men and their wars.
-- Jeffrey Eugenides -
How is property given? By restraining liberty; that is, by taking it away so far as necessary for the purpose. How is your house made yours? By debarring every one else from the liberty of entering it without your leave.
-- Jeremy Bentham -
I do not deny the allegation, I deny the allegator.
-- Jesse Jackson -
A vote is "wasted" when someone fails to vote their conscience.
-- Jesse Ventura -
I believe in liberty and freedom for all. I believe in gay marriage.
-- Jewel -
Government failure is always used as an excuse for government expansion. Government thrives on crisis and incompetence.
-- Jim Babka -
If we hold true to our ideals and our commitment to freedom, this generation of servicemen and women will have extended liberty to the Iraqi people, just as previous generations of Americans have all across the globe.
-- Jim Talent -
I can tell you this on a stack of Bibles: prisons are archaic, brutal, unregenerative, overcrowded hell holes where the inmates are treated like animals with absolutely not one humane thought given to what they are going to do once they are released. You're an animal in a cage and you're treated like one.
-- Jimmy Hoffa -
The terrorist attacks upon our country changed the way that we live forever and provided us with a cruel reminder that freedom and liberty have a price.
-- Jo Ann Davis -
Liberty is the solution of all social and economic questions.
-- Jo Labadie -
The more ignoble I find life, the more strongly I react by contradiction, in humour and in an outburst of liberty and expansion.
-- Joan Miro -
I am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women, and heterosexual men and women marrying another are entitled to the same exact rights, all the civil rights, all the civil liberties. And quite frankly, I don't see much of a distinction - beyond that.
-- Joe Biden -
Most liberals think of civil liberties as their Achilles heel. It isn't.
-- Joe Biden -
Far from a simple attempt to rid the nation of crime and drugs, our policy against narcotics -- like any public policy -- comes with strings attached. And increasingly these strings are constricting around the necks of Americans' lives and liberties.
-- Joel Miller -
Capitalism has given people both the liberty and the incentive to create, produce, and trade, thereby generating prosperity.
-- Johan Norberg -
He alone deserves liberty and life who daily must win them anew.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe -
You will never be alone with a poet in your pocket.
-- John Adams -
Property is surely a right of mankind as real as liberty.
-- John Adams -
This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it.
-- John Adams -
The liberties and freedoms which we hold dear and we recognize and cherish and respect guide the way we gather information in the United States
-- John Ashcroft -
Irresponsible power is inconsistent with liberty, and must corrupt those who exercise it.
-- John C. Calhoun -
It is harder to preserve than to obtain liberty.
-- John C. Calhoun -
The will of a majority is the will of a rabble. Progressive democracy is incompatable with liberty.
-- John C. Calhoun -
The defence of human liberty against the aggressions of despotic power have been always the most efficient in States where domestic slavery was to prevail.
-- John C. Calhoun -
The Union next to our liberties the most dear. May we all remember that it can only be preserved by respecting the rights of the States, and distributing equally the benefits and burdens of the Union.
-- John C. Calhoun -
Now the 21st century approaches and with it the inevitability of change. We must wonder if the American people will find renewal and rejuvenation within themselves, will discover again their capacity for innovation and adaptation. If not, alas, the nation's future will be shaped by sightless forces of history over which Americans will have no control.
-- John Chancellor -
If you pinch the sea of its liberty, though it be walls of stone or brass, it will beat them down.
-- John Cotton -
Liberty of conscience is for those who truly fear the Lord. A fundamental task of the state is the establishment of pure religion.
-- John Cotton -
We cannot be happy without being free; we cannot be free without being secure in our property; we cannot be secure in our property if, without our consent, others may, as by right, take it away; taxes imposed on us by Parliament do thus take it away.
-- John Dickinson -
Government has hardened into a tyrannical monopoly, and the human race in general becomes as absolutely property as beasts in the plow.
-- John Dickinson -
Of all the tyrannies on human kind the worst is that which persecutes the mind.
-- John Dryden -
Today, we need a nation of Minutemen, citizens who are not only prepared to take arms, but citizens who regard the preservation of freedom as the basic purpose of their daily life and who are willing to consciously work and sacrifice for that freedom.
-- John F. Kennedy -
The right to a trial is a core principle of the American legal system. Depriving Americans of these essential liberties undermines the Constitution while doing nothing to strengthen our national security.
-- John Garamendi -
May the Lord level in the dust those who would deprive the people of their liberty.
-- John Hampden -
There! His Majesty can now read my name without glasses. And he can double the reward on my head!
-- John Hancock -
A chip on the shoulder is too heavy a piece of baggage to carry through life.
-- John Hancock -
The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it.
-- John Hay -
I am an anarchist! Wherefore I will not rule and also ruled I will not be.
-- John Henry Mackay -
By far the most numerous and most flagrant violations of personal liberty and individual rights are performed by governments... The major crimes throughout history, the ones executed on the largest scale, have been committed not by individuals or bands of individuals but by governments, as a deliberate policy of those governments-that is, by the official representatives of governments, acting in their official capacity.
-- John Hospers -
If each human being is to have liberty, he cannot also have the liberty to deprive others of their liberty.
-- John Hospers -
Attack another's rights and you destroy your own.
-- John Jay Chapman -
We simply do not catch a high enough percentage of users to make the law a real threat, although we do catch enough to seriously overburden our legal system.
-- John Kaplan -
Touch has a memory. O say, love say, What can I do to kill it and be free In my old liberty?
-- John Keats -
Slavery in the modern world implies the absolute deprivation of the individual's liberty, while possession of weapons and mastery of their use are means to the individual's liberation. We do not perceive how a man may be armed and at the same time bereft of his freedom.
-- John Keegan -
Although man is already ninety per cent water, the Prohibitionists are not yet satisfied.
-- John Kendrick Bangs -
Nothing puts peace in its proper perspective better than the loss of personal liberty first.
-- John Longenecker -
There is no problem anywhere on the earth which cannot be solved better under Liberty than under any other system.
-- John Longenecker -
Liberty and personal independence in America are still a concept some here have never known.
-- John Longenecker -
The splendid empire of Charles the Fifth was erected upon the grave of liberty.
-- John Lothrop Motley -
Liberty is equally desirable to the good and to the bad, to the brave and to the dastardly.
-- John Major -
The power to tax involves the power to destroy;...the power to destroy may defeat and render useless the power to create....
-- John Marshall -
The political problem of mankind is to combine three things: economic efficiency, social justice and individual liberty.
-- John Maynard Keynes -
Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.
-- John Milton -
The liberty of conscience, which above all other things ought to be to all men dearest and most precious.
-- John Milton
