Best 3053 quotes in «liberty quotes» category

The rights to life, liberty and property were not meant to be subject to the vagaries of majority rule.

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.

The right of conscience and private judgment is unalienable, and it is truly the interest of all mankind to unite themselves into one body for the liberty, free exercise, and unmolested enjoyment of this right.

The rights of Englishmen are derived from God, not from king or Parliament, and would be secured by the study of history, law, and tradition.

The right and the physical power of the people to resist injustice, are really the only securities that any people ever can have for their liberties. Practically no government knows any limit to its power but the endurance of the people.

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.

The right to discuss freely and openly, by speech, by the pen, by the press, all political questions, and to examine the animadvert upon all political institutions is a right so clear and certain, so interwoven with our other liberties, so necessary, in fact, to their existence, that without it we must fall into despotism and anarchy.

The right to the city is far more than the individual liberty to access urban resources: it is a right to change ourselves by changing the city.

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

The rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted.

The right to defy an unconstitutional statute is basic in our scheme. Even when an ordinance requires a permit to make a speech, to deliver a sermon, to picket, to parade, or to assemble, it need not be honored when it's invalid on its face.

The right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness means that each of us is free to go our own way, even if the ways some of us may choose to go seem sinful or shocking to our fellow citizens.

The road to tyranny, we must never forget, begins with the destruction of the truth.

The Root of All Rebellion: It is because we are not near enough to Thee to partake of thy liberty that we want a liberty of our own different from thine.

The rub is that the pursuit of happiness, as an end in itself, tends automatically, and widely, to be replaced by the pursuit of pleasure with a consequent general softening of the fibers of will, intelligence, spirit.

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

The same liberty that protects me also protects members of the Mafia.

The Scalia seat is defense. We're not going to get any better than Justice Scalia. The best we can do is preserve constitutional victories like upholding the Second Amendment, like protecting religious liberty. But we're not going to get any better.

These are no ordinary claims; and it seems hardly possible for a rational being to regard them with even a subdued interest; much less to treat them with mere indifference and contempt. If not true they are little else than the pretensions of a bold imposture, which not satisfied with having already enslaved millions of the human race, seeks to continue its encroachments upon human liberty, until all nations be subjected under its iron rule.

The security intended to the general liberty consists in the frequent election and in the rotation of the members of Congress.

The seeker is at liberty to extract from this treasure any meaning he likes, so as to enable him to enforce in his life the central teaching.

The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty. Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of liberty.

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.

The solution to our problems is not more paternalism, laws, decrees, and controls, but the restoration of liberty and free enterprise, the restoration of incentives, to let loose the tremendous constructive energies of 300 million Americans.

The sooner we put Egypt on the right track, the sooner we would be able to have an Egypt that is modern, that is moderate, and that is acting as a beacon for freedom and liberty across the Arab world.

The sole purpose and effect of it is to exclude persecution and to secure the important right of religious liberty.

The sovereignty of one's self over one's self is called Liberty.

The spirit of liberty is not merely, as multitudes imagine, a jealousy of our own particular rights, but a respect for the rights of others, and an unwillingness that any man, whether high or low, should be wronged and trampled under foot.

The spirit of liberty is the spirit of him who, near two thousand years ago, taught mankind that lesson it has never learned ... .

The spirit of improvement is not always a spirit of liberty, for it may aim at forcing improvements on an unwilling people.

The spirit of revolution, the spirit of insurrection, is a spirit radically opposed to liberty

The spirit of truth and the spirit of freedom-they are the pillars of society.

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the LORD hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.

... the State Legislatures will jealously and closely watch the operations of this Government, and be able to resist with more effect every assumption of power, than any other power on earth can do; and the greatest opponents to a Federal Government admit the State Legislatures to be sure guardians of the people's liberty.

The state is a force incarnate. Worse, it is the silly parading of force. It never seeks to prevail by persuasion. Whenever it thrusts its finger into anything it does so in the most unfriendly way. Its essence is command and compulsion.

The State is, and always has been, the great single enemy of the human race, its liberty, happiness, and progress.

The splendid empire of Charles the Fifth was erected upon the grave of liberty.

The state can be and has often been in the course of history the main source of mischief and disaster.

The State may justify a limitation on religious liberty by showing it is essential to accomplish an overriding governmental interest.

The Statue of Liberty was never meant to be a symbol of immigration. It was meant to be a symbol of liberty and freedom. Lady Liberty is stepping forward. She is meant to be carrying the torch of liberty from the United States to the rest of the world. The torch is not to light the way to the United States. It is to light the way to liberty to the rest of the world. Lady Liberty is carrying the light of liberty to the rest of the world. It is not a beacon for immigrants to get to this country because they're tired, they're poor, they're huddled, hungry, or thirsty.

The State is the curse of the individual... The State must go! That will be a revolution which will find me on its side. Undermine the idea of the State, set up in its place spontaneous action, and the idea that spiritual relationship is the only thing that makes for unity, and you will start the elements of a liberty which will be something worth possessing.

The Statist veils his pursuits in moral indignation, intoning in high dudgeon the injustices and inequities of liberty and life itself, for which only he can provide justice and bring a righteous resolution.

The strongest argument against totalitarianism may be a recognition of a universal human nature; that all humans have innate desires for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The doctrine of the blank slate... is a totalitarian's dream.

The struggle between Liberty and Authority is the most conspicuous feature in the portions of history with which we are earliest familiar; particularly in that of Greece, Rome, and England

The Statue of Liberty really is profound, I just wish she'd lighten up a bit.

...the Statue of Liberty's got this invitation: 'Give me your tired, your poor, your reeking homeless--' 'Huddled masses,' said Ira. 'Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.' ... Okay, fine. So like everybody in the old countries says, 'Hey, I'm a huddled mass,' and they all wanna come over.

The struggle of today, is not altogether for today - it is for a vast future also. With a reliance on Providence, all the more firm and earnest, let us proceed in the great task which events have devolved upon us.

The student of Liberty must constantly endeavor to disassociate his imagination from sanguinary dramas of assassination and revolt.

The sun of liberty is set; you must light up the candle of industry and economy.

The suppression of civil liberties is too many less a matter for horror than the curtailment of the freedom to profit.