Best 3053 quotes in «liberty quotes» category

Every central government worships uniformity: uniformity relieves it from inquiry into an infinity of details.

Every coercive monopoly was created by government intervention into the economy: by special privileges, such as franchises or subsidies, which closed the entry of competitors into a given field, by legislative action.

Every fanatic or enemy of virtue is not at liberty to misrepresent the greatest geniuses and most heroic defenders of all that is valuable in this mortal world.

Every friend to the liberty of his country is bound to reflect, and step forward to prevent the dreadful consequences which shall result from a government of events.

Every law is an infraction of liberty.

Every individual necessarily labors to render the annual revenue of society as great as he can. He generally neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. He intends only his own gain, and he is, in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was not part of his intention.

..every Man has a Property in his own Person. This no Body has any Right to but himself. The Labour of his Body, and the Work of his Hands, we may say, are properly his. .... The great and chief end therefore, of Mens uniting into Commonwealths, and putting themselves under Government, is the Preservation of their Property.

Every man may claim the fullest liberty to exercise his faculties compatible with the possession of like liberties by every other man.

Every nation whose affairs betray a want of wisdom and stability may calculate on every loss which can be sustained from the more systematic policy of its wiser neighbors.

Everyone has an equal and absolute right to sovereignty over his own body, his own property, and his own life, and to pursue his own happiness in any way that he chooses. No one has the authority to grant rights to anyone else, because human beings already possess all natural rights at birth. These rights include both personal and economic freedoms, and the only way they can be lost is if someone takes them away by force. The only right that an individual does not naturally possess is the right to violate someone else's liberty.

Everyone has the right to make his own decisions, but none has the right to force his decision on others.

Every one of our greatest national treasures, our liberty, enterprise, vitality, wealth, military power, global authority, flow from a surprising source: our ability to give thanks.

Everyone must act according to the dictates of his own reason.

Every person born in the USA is endowed with life, liberty, and a substantial share of the national debt.

Every single day was just a box on the calendar that I could put a red X through; each one brought me closer to Lucas and to liberty.

Every tax, however, is to the person who pays it a badge, not of slavery but of liberty. It denotes that he is a subject to government, indeed, but that, as he has some property, he cannot himself be the property of a master.

Everything government touches turns to crap.

Every time one of us starts talking about more effective immigration controls, somebody else throws up the Statue of Liberty, how we're a nation of immigrants and all of that. The debate takes on tinges of racism, emotion.

Evil is retributive: every trespass slips fetters on the will, holds the soul in durance till contrition and repentance restore it to liberty.

Excessive liberty leads both nations and individuals into excessive slavery. [Lat., Nimia libertas et populis et privatis in nimiam servitutem cadit.]

Evil comes in many forms and seems to reinvent itself time and again. But whatever it calls itself - Nazism, Marxist-Leninism, today, terrorism - they all have one thing in common: the destruction, the end of human liberty.

Excessive liberty and excessive servitude are equally dangerous, and produce nearly the same effect.

Facts, like people, want to be free - and when they're free, liberty is usually around the corner.

Extremism in defense of liberty is not a vice, but I denounce political extremism, of the left or the right, based on duplicity, falsehood, fear, violence and threats when they endanger liberty.

Extremism in defense of Liberty is no vice and moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.

Family - see Fascist State.

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.

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.

Fear & complacency allow power to accumulate & liberty & privacy to suffer

Fart for freedom, fart for liberty—and fart proudly.

Fatigue is the best pillow.

Federalism isn’t about states’ rights. It’s about dividing power to better protect individual liberty.

Fetters of gold are still fetters, and the softest lining can never make them so easy as liberty.

Few of us can easily surrender our belief that society must somehow make sense. The thought that the State has lost its mind and is punishing so many innocent people is intolerable. And so the evidence has to be internally denied.

Few persons enjoy real liberty; we are all slaves to ideas or habits.

For any man to match above his rank is but to sell his liberty.

First they came for the Jews, but I did nothing because I'm not a Jew. Then they came for the socialists, but I did nothing because I'm not a socialist. Then they came for the Catholics, but I did nothing because I'm not a Catholic. Finally, they came for me, but by then there was no one left to help me.

For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to every one that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still.

For an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.

[F]or as Socrates says that a wise man is a citizen of the world, so I thought that a wise woman was equally at liberty to range through every station or degree of men, to fix her choice wherever she pleased.

Forced to choose, the poor, like the rich, love money more than political liberty; and the only political freedom capable of enduring is one that is so pruned as to keep the rich from denuding the poor by ability or subtlety and the poor from robbing the rich by violence or votes.

For freemen like brothers agree; With one spirit endured, they one friendship pursued, And their temple was Liberty Tree

For far too long the American public and business sector have kept their silence as civil liberties have been whittled away by statutory and regulatory measures.

Foreign aid goes from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries.

For in the absence of debate unrestricted utterance leads to the degradation of opinion. By a kind of Greshams law the more rational is overcome by the less rational, and the opinions that will prevail will be those which are held most ardently by those with the most passionate will. For that reason the freedom to speak can never be maintained merely by objecting to interference with the liberty of the press, of printing, of broadcasting, of the screen. It can be maintained only by promoting debate.

For it is an essential difference between capitalist and socialist production that under capitalism men provide for themselves, while under Socialism they are provided for.

For liberty hath a sharp and double edge, fit only to be handled by just and virtuous men; to bad and dissolute, it becomes a mischief unwieldy in their own hands.

For liberty to expand, government must shrink. For the economy to grow, government must get out of the way.

For [Louis] Brandeis, it's not a technical question of channeling what would James Madison say. It's how do we take these inherent human natural rights of liberty and translate them into an age of new technolog

For most of our history, Americans enjoyed both liberty and security from foreign threats.