Liberty famous quotes
Last updated: Sep 5, 2024
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Nations grow corrupt, love bondage more than liberty; bondage with ease than strenuous liberty.
-- John Milton -
Behold now this vast city [London]; a city of refuge, the mansion-house of liberty, encompassed and surrounded with His protection.
-- John Milton -
Like Liberty, gold never stays where it is undervalued.
-- John Morrill -
American liberty is premised on the accountability of free men and women for what they have done, not for what they may do.
-- John Newman -
We are in this business, whether it be intelligence or the government, to protect freedom, democracy and liberty, not to violate that.
-- John O. Brennan -
Freedom of thought and freedom of speech in our great institutions are absolutely necessary for the preservation of our country. The moment either is restricted, liberty begins to wither and die...
-- John Peter Altgeld -
The loss of liberty in general would soon follow the suppression of the liberty of the press; for it is an essential branch of liberty, so perhaps it is the best preservative of the whole.
-- John Peter Zenger -
No nation ancient or modern ever lost the liberty of freely speaking, writing, or publishing their sentiments, but forthwith lost their liberty in general and became slaves.
-- John Peter Zenger -
To brand man with infamy, and let him free, is an absurdity that peoples our forests with assassins.
-- John Philpot Curran -
I am unable to accept the idea that I should be an obedient subject of a gang of corrupt, unprincipled thugs who pontificate about freedom while enslaving the population.
-- John Pugsley -
How to obtain freedom has been, and is, mankind's most important quest.
-- John Pugsley -
America is a friend of freedom everywhere, but a custodian only of our own.
-- John Quincy Adams -
The conflict between the principle of liberty and the fact of slavery is coming gradually to an issue. Slavery has now the power, and falls into convulsions at the approach of freedom.
-- John Quincy Adams -
I love liberty, I hate equality.
-- John Randolph of Roanoke -
An intolerant sect has no right to complain when it is denied an equal liberty. ... A person's right to complain is limited to principles he acknowledges himself.
-- John Rawls -
Clearly when the liberties are left unrestricted they collide with one another.
-- John Rawls -
Properly understood, then, the desire to act justly derives in part from the desire to express most fully what we are or can be, namely free and equal rational beings with the liberty to choose.
-- John Rawls -
[E]ach person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others.
-- John Rawls -
How false is the conception, how frantic the pursuit, of that treacherous phantom which men call Liberty.
-- John Ruskin -
Wise laws and just restraints are to a noble nation not chains, but chains of mail, -- strength and defense, though something of an incumbrance.
-- John Ruskin -
If there be any one principle more widely than another confessed by every utterance, or more sternly than another imprinted on every atom of the visible creation, that principle is not liberty, but law.
-- John Ruskin -
To tax the larger incomes at a higher percentage than the smaller, is to lay a tax on industry and economy; to impose a penalty on people for having worked harder and saved more than their neighbors.
-- John Stuart Mill -
The liberty of the individual must be thus far limited; he must not make himself a nuisance to other people.
-- John Stuart Mill -
The spirit of improvement is not always a spirit of liberty, for it may aim at forcing improvements on an unwilling people.
-- John Stuart Mill -
Whatever crushes individuality is despotism.
-- John Stuart Mill -
Liberty consists in doing what one desires.
-- John Stuart Mill -
We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.
-- John Stuart Mill -
I believe our flag is more than just cloth and ink. It is a universally recognized symbol that stands for liberty, and freedom. It is the history of our nation, and it's marked by the blood of those who died defending it.
-- John Thune -
They who are in the highest places, and have the most power, have the least liberty, because they are the most observed.
-- John Tillotson -
Liberty is the proper end and object of authority, and cannot subsist without it; and it is liberty to that which is good, just, and honest.
-- John Winthrop -
True liberty is not liberty to do evil as well as good.
-- John Winthrop -
The liberty that remains to us is essentially the freedom to choose among brands A, B, and C.
-- John Zerzan -
Liberty, freedom and democracy are very fuzzy words, but human rights is very specific.
-- Joichi Ito -
The ultimate success of this government and the stability of its institutions, its progress in all that can make a nation honored, depend upon its adherence to the principles of truth and righteousness.
-- Jon Lord -
We are exceptional not because of who we are but because of what we do and how we put the ideals of human dignity, individual freedom, and liberty under law into action.
-- Jon Meacham -
An unexamined faith is not worth having, for fundamentalism and uncritical certitude entail the rejection of one of the great human gifts: that of free will, of the liberty to make up our own minds based on evidence and tradition and reason.
-- Jon Meacham -
Champions of Liberty get called Fascists by Champions of Statism
-- Jonah Goldberg -
When life has gone into overtime it's easy to take liberties,
-- Jonas Jonasson -
How can we hope to retain our freedom through the generations if we fail to teach our young that our liberty springs from an abiding faith in our Creator?
-- Jonathan Falwell -
There are men who strike at liberty under the term licentiousness
-- Jonathan Mayhew -
It is our happiness to live under the government of a PRINCE who is satisfied with ruling according to law; as every other good prince will - We enjoy under his administration all the liberty that is proper and expedient for us
-- Jonathan Mayhew -
Let us prize our freedom; but not use our liberty for a cloak of maliciousness
-- Jonathan Mayhew -
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.
-- Jonathan Mayhew -
Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.
-- Jonathan Swift -
In my opinion, patriotism is liberty.
-- Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero -
Man loves liberty, even if he does not know that he loves it. He is driven by it and flees from where it does not exist.
-- Jose Marti -
The dagger plunged in the name of freedom is plunged into the breast of freedom.
-- Jose Marti -
It is terrible to speak of you, Liberty, for one who lives without you.
-- Jose Marti -
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.
-- Jose Marti -
While a people preserves its language; it preserves the marks of liberty.
-- Jose Rizal -
I have observed that the prosperity or misery of each people is in direct proportion to its liberties or its prejudices and, accordingly, to the sacrifices or the selfishness of its forefathers. -Juan Crisostomo Ibarra
-- Jose Rizal -
A day, an hour, of virtuous liberty Is worth a whole eternity in bondage.
-- Joseph Addison -
T is liberty crowns Britannia's Isle, And makes her barren rocks and her bleak mountains smile.
-- Joseph Addison -
Oh, Liberty! thou goddess heavenly bright! Profuse of bliss, and pregnant with delight! Eternal pleasures in thy presence reign, And smiling plenty leads thy wanton train.
-- Joseph Addison -
The love of liberty that is not a real principle of dutiful behavior to authority is as hypocritical as the religion that is not productive of a good life.
-- Joseph Butler -
Safe popular freedom consists of four things, the diffusion of liberty, of intelligence, of property, and of conscientiousness, and cannot be compounded of any three out of the four.
-- Joseph Cook -
Let's never forget what made us great as a nation. It's not diversity, it's liberty.
-- Joseph Farah -
The blood of criminals fertilises the soil of liberty.
-- Joseph Fouche -
What fools are we, to be besotted with the love of our own trouble, and to hate our liberty and rest!
-- Joseph Hall -
Let us have justice, and then we shall have enough liberty!
-- Joseph Joubert -
War is just one more big government program.
-- Joseph Sobran -
If you want government to intervene domestically, you’re a liberal. If you want government to intervene overseas, you’re a conservative. If you want government to intervene everywhere, you’re a moderate. If you don’t want government to intervene anywhere, you’re an extremist.
-- Joseph Sobran -
Politicians never accuse you of 'greed' for wanting other people's money - only for wanting to keep your own money.
-- Joseph Sobran -
The prospect of a government that treats all its citizens as criminal suspects is more terrifying than any terrorist. And even more frightening is a citizenry that can accept the surrender of its freedoms as the price of "freedom".
-- Joseph Sobran -
The chances of your being harmed by terrorists are mathematically minute. The chance of your being robbed by your own government? That's easy: 100 per cent.
-- Joseph Sobran -
Since outright slavery has been discredited, "democracy" is the only remaining rationale for state compulsion that most people will accept.
-- Joseph Sobran -
The most fundamental purpose of government is defense, not empire.
-- Joseph Sobran -
Democracy has proved only that the best way to gain power over people is to assure the people that they are ruling themselves. Once they believe that, they make wonderfully submissive slaves.
-- Joseph Sobran -
Tyranny may creep in under the outward forms of traditional law.
-- Joseph Sobran -
We have been living amidst one of the great revolutions of human history, and we hardly know it: the penetration of the State into every aspect of human life and society. Some people regard this as good and "progressive," others regard it as tyrannical; but either way, it's a fact, a transformation as great as, say, the Industrial Revolution. Absolutely nothing is now beyond the scope of State power.
-- Joseph Sobran -
Anything called a "program" is unconstitutional.
-- Joseph Sobran -
Voters who live off taxpayers are the Democrats' ace in the hole. The Democrats created big programs and never let the recipients forget it. This gives them an initial advantage of tens of millions of votes in any presidential election.
-- Joseph Sobran -
The Constitution poses no threat to our current form of government.
-- Joseph Sobran -
Power tempts even the best of men to take liberties with the truth.
-- Joseph Sobran -
The United States should get rid of its militias.
-- Joseph Stalin -
Here shall the Press the People's right maintain, Unaw'd by influence and unbrib'd by gain; Here patriot Truth her glorious precepts draw, Pledg'd to Religion, Liberty, and Law.
-- Joseph Story -
Let us prefer the lonely cottage, while blest with liberty, to gilded palaces, surrounded with the ensigns of slavery.
-- Joseph Warren -
May our land be a land of liberty, the seat of virtue, the asylum of the oppressed, a name and a praise in the whole Earth, until the last shock of time shall bury the empires of the whole world in one common undistinguished ruin!
-- Joseph Warren -
...It looked very different from the Statue of Liberty, but what did that matter? What was the good of having the statue without the liberty, the freedom to go where one chose if one was held back by one's color? No, I preferred the Eiffel Tower, which made no promises." ~ Josephine Baker, once she had seen the Eiffel Tower
-- Josephine Baker -
The siren song of redistribution of wealth by centralized government never ceases for those who seek irreversible and unusurpable control over the lives and liberties of private citizens.
-- Josh Jones -
Banking was conceived in iniquity and born in sin... Bankers own the Earth. Take it away from them but leave them the power to create money, and, with the flick of a pen, they will create enough money to buy it back again... Take this great power away from them and all the great fortunes like mine will disappear and they ought to disappear, for then this would be a better and happier world to live in... But, if you want to continue to be a slave of the bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let the bankers continue to create money and control credit.
-- Josiah Stamp -
Liberty, then, is the sovereignty of the individual, and never shall man know liberty until each and every individual is acknowledged to be the only legitimate sovereign of his or her person, time, and property, each living and acting at his own cost; and not until we live in a society where each can exercise his right of sovereignty at all times without clashing with or violating that of others.
-- Josiah Warren -
Liberty is the sovereignty of the individual.
-- Josiah Warren -
Liberty is the right to choose. Freedom is the result of the right choice.
-- Jules Renard -
Whoever attempts to suppress liberty of conscience finishes some day by wishing for the Inquisition.
-- Jules Simon -
It is no response to assert that the Patriot Act has been useful; what you need to explain is how any particular safeguard would have so diluted investigative powers that it would have frustrated an investigation and created a security harm outweighing the benefit to civil liberties. If you'd rather trade scary stories, that's fine too - just let me know so I can buy a bag of marshmallows before our next round.
-- Julian Sanchez -
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.
-- June Carter Cash -
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.
-- Justin Amash -
Fear is a dangerous thing. Once it is sanctioned by the state there is no telling where it might lead. It is always a short path to walk from being suspicious of our fellow citizens to taking actions to restrict their liberty.
-- Justin Trudeau -
Government is at best useless, and at worst counter-productive.
-- Kakha Bendukidze -
Liberty, finally, is not a box into which people are to be forced. Liberty is a space in which people may live. It does not tell you how they will live. It says, eternally, only that we can.
-- Karl Hess -
If you can cut the people off from their history, then they can be easily persuaded.
-- Karl Marx -
There is only one way to kill capitalism - by taxes, taxes, and more taxes.
-- Karl Marx -
I keep telling myself to calm down, to take less of an interest in things and not to get so excited, but I still care a lot about liberty, freedom of speech and expression, and fairness in journalism.
-- Kate Adie -
Freedom, remember, is not the same as liberty.
-- Katherine Anne Porter
