Best 3053 quotes in «liberty quotes» category

Love is a light of liberty.

Love of liberty, the refusal to accept your soul's enslavement, not even in exchange for paradise; stalwart games over and above love and pain, over and above death; smashing even the most sacrosant of the molds when they are unable to contain you any longer - these are the great cries of Crete. (Report to Greco)

Machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines, you are not cattle, you are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don’t hate: only the unloved hate, the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers, don’t fight for slavery, fight for liberty! You the people have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness! You the people have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure! Then, in the name of democracy, let us use that power. Let us all unite! Let us fight for a new world, a decent world . . .

Mai whispers, “Why did she have to leave? When she was there, I knew where I had her; she was safe.” When she was there? I winder. Who is ‘she’ and where is ‘where?’ I knew where I had her? Who are they talking about? Me? “You of all people,” Nicholas says, “should know that freedom is more important than being safe.

Mai whispers, “Why did she have to leave? When she was there, I knew where I had her; she was safe.” “You of all people,” Nicholas says, “should know that freedom is more important than being safe.

Make a liberty without the instinctive duress.

Malcolm X and Edmund Burke shared an appreciation of this important insight, this painful truth--that the state wants men to be weak and timid, not strong and proud.

[M]an has as much liberty as he is willing to take.

Man has rights because they are natural rights. They are grounded in the nature of man: the individual's capacity for conscious choice, the necessity for him to use his mind and energy to adopt goals and values, to find out about the world, to pursue his ends in order to survive and prosper, his capacity and need to communicate and interact with other human beings and to participate in the division of labor.

Man is the highest essence of man, hence with the categorical imperative to overthrow all relations in which man is a debased, enslaved, abandoned, despicable essence.

Many of the innovations in science and philosophy have come from unbelievers, some of whom died for their 'unbeliefs.' Without unbelief, we might well be living in the Dark Ages or at least in the intellectual equivalent of that time. In past centuries many theists savagely attacked atheists on the ground that someone without a belief in God must be a moral 'monster,' who would permit any action. This argument is rarely heard today, as the number of people who are openly atheists has become so large that its falsity is self-evident. Atheists do have a moral code to guide them. It is usually based upon the Golden Rule, plus a variety of utilitarian reasons, although there are a number of other possible systems. Rather than being immoral, most atheists are extremely moral. There are a large number of people who can and do manage to lead decent upright lives with no use for a belief in God as a guide. Atheists do not care whether others believe as they do. They do ask, however, for the right to believe as they wish ....

Many ideologies that promise liberty are only involved in advanced forms of captivity.

Martin took the same course, thinking as he went, that perhaps the free and independent citizens, who in their moral elevation, owned the colonel for their master, might render better homage to the goddess, Liberty, in nightly dreams upon the oven of a Russian Serf.

Many rabble-rousers for libertarianism, liberty and freedom are unwitting pawns of controllers they have never even considered.

Men love liberty because it protects them from control and humiliation from others, and thus affords them the possibility of dignity. They loathe liberty because it throws them back on their own abilities and resources, and thus confronts them with the possibility of insignificance.

May the new era be an era of liberty and respect for everyone--including writers! Only through liberty and respect for culture can Europe be saved from the cruel days of which Montesquieu spoke in the Esprit des lois: "Thus, in the days of fables, after the floods and deluges, there came forth from the soil armed men who exterminated each other." Boook XXXII, Chapter XXIII.

Meanwhile, allow me to be me ….in all forms.

Men will not accept truth at the hands of their enemies, and truth is seldom offered to them by their friends

Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please.

Modern civilisation has based its specific foundation on the principle of liberty which states that man is not a mere instrument to be used by others but rather a main autonomous living being.

Modem Socialism developed when profound observers of social life came to see more and more clearly that political constitutions and changes in the form of government could never get to the bottom of that great problem that we call "the social question." Its supporters recognized that a social equalizing of human beings, despite the loveliest of theoretical assumptions, is not possible so long as people are separated into classes on the basis of their owning or not owning property, classes whose mere existence excludes in advance any thought of a genuine community. And so there developed the recognition that only by elimination of economic monopolies and common ownership of the means of production, in a word, by a complete transformation of all economic conditions and social institutions associated with them, does a condition of social justice become thinkable, a status in which society shall become a genuine community, and human labour shall no longer serve the ends of exploitation, but shall serve to assure abundance to everyone.

Modern Western democracies no longer engage in such despotic assaults on freedom, Instead, they deprive people of liberty indirectly, by relieving them of responsibility for their own (allegedly self-injurious) actions and calling the intervention "treatment.

Money is a kind of freedom that can be felt and heard; it is an inestimable treasure for a man entirely deprived of true liberty.

Monopoly is a market, or part of a market, reserved to the exclusive possession of one or more sellers by means of the initiation of physical force by the government, or with the sanction of the government. Monopoly exists insofar as the freedom of competition is violated, with the freedom of competition being understood as the absence of the initiation of physical force as the preventive of competition. Where there is no initiation of physical force to violate the freedom of competition, there is no monopoly. The freedom of competition is violated only insofar as individuals are excluded from markets or parts of markets by means of the initiation of physical force. Monopoly is thus a market or part of a market reserved to the exclusive possession of one or more sellers by means of the initiation of physical force. It is thus something imposed upon the market from without—by the government. (Private individuals—gangsters—can initiate force to reserve markets only if the government allows it and thereby sanctions it.) Thus, monopoly is not something which emerges from the normal operation of the economic system, and which the government must control.

More often than not, a statist's argument against Anarchism boils down to an unwillingness to take control and responsibility for their own lives, actions, and communities. The sad truth is that the human animal has been domesticated to the point where it actually fears Liberty.

Moreover, in the system of criminal punishment in the libertarian world, the emphasis would never be, as it is now, on "society's" jailing the criminal; the emphasis would necessarily be on compelling the criminal to make restitution to the victim of his crime. The present system, in which the victim is not recompensed but instead has to pay taxes to support the incarceration of his own attacker — would be evident nonsense in a world that focuses on the defense of property rights and therefore on the victim of crime.

Mr. President, not only are you disastrous for the land, you are the man who must be held responsible for all the sins of the cowards, the cowards who were fooled into electing you as president.

Mr. President, it is time for you to give me back my country. You can either continue to make fools of the people who elected a tyrant like you or let the country rise phoenix-like from the ashes.

Most of the major ills of the world have been caused by well-meaning people who ignored the principle of individual freedom, except as applied to themselves, and who were obsessed with fanatical zeal to improve the lot of mankind-in-the-mass through some pet formula of their own. The harm done by ordinary criminals, murderers, gangsters, and thieves is negligible in comparison with the agony inflicted upon human beings by the professional do-gooders who attempt to set themselves up as gods on earth and who would ruthlessly force their views on all others with the abiding assurance that the end justifies the means.

Mr. President; give me back my country. Allow people to have their humanity. If you do not do this, history will never absolve you!

My life had lost its relish when liberty was gone.

My evanescent anarchistic tendencies are purely classical. I use the word anarchist in the sense in which it was understood by the ancient Greeks. They, of course, accepted the anarchist as a fairly respectable--if somewhat vehement--opponent of government encroachment on the individual's rights to think and act freely. It is in this sense that I glimpse myself as an anarchist--regretting the growth of government and the ever-increasing trend toward regulation and, worst of all, standardization of human activity.

My freedom to say 'No' directly underscores your freedom to say 'Yes'. RESPECT my freedom to PROTECT your freedom.

My ideas would burn barbarian stars, raise up empires of liberty and truth, and topple sectarian gods.

My ideas would burn barbarian stars, topple sectarian gods and raise up empires of liberty and truth.

Namque pauci libertatem, pars magna iustos dominos volunt. (Few men desire freedom, the greater part desire just masters.)

My take on socialism is this: Socialism only seems to work when you don't fully implement it, when you keep enough capitalism around to pay socialism's bills, at least for a time. It's the difference between milking the cow and killing it. Socialism has no theory of wealth creation; it's just a destructive, envy-driven fantasy about redistributing it after something else (and somebody else) creates it first.

Naturalists tell of a noble race of horses that instinctively open a vein with their teeth, when heated and exhausted by a long course, in order to breathe more freely. I am often tempted to open a vein, to procure for myself everlasting liberty. Cento volte ho impugnato una lama per conficcarmela nel cuore. Si dice di una nobile razza i cavalli,che quando si sentono accaldati e affaticati, si aprono istintivamente una vena, per respirare più liberamente. Spesso anche io vorrei aprirmi una vena che mi desse libertà eterna.

Nearly all libertarians were once conservatives or progressives or independent statists of some stripe. But scarcely any conservatives, progressives, or independent statists were once libertarians. This asymmetry in the direction of ideological migration is interesting and perhaps informative.

N'importe quel groupe de scélérats, pourvu qu’ils aient assez d'argent pour l'entreprendre, peuvent décider qu'ils sont un gouvernement; car, pourvu qu'ils aient de l'argent, ils peuvent engager des soldats, et utiliser ces soldats pour extorquer davantage d'argent, et ainsi contraindre tout le monde à obéir à leurs volontés.

Ne pas s'enfuir était une douleur dans tout son corps. Partir était une douleur pire encore. Et elle était piégée, tiraillée entre les deux.

No man can rightfully be required to join, or support, an association whose protection he does not desire.

Nói đúng ra thì phần lớn thế giới đã không còn có lịch sử, bởi vì nền chuyên chế của Tập quán đã hoàn tất triệt để. Đó là trường hợp của toàn thể phương Đông. Ở đó Tập quán là tiếng nói quyết định cuối cùng. Công lý và quyền năng có nghĩa là sự uốn theo tập quán; không ai dám có ý nghĩ chống lại lý lẽ của tập quán, ngoại trừ bạo chúa nào đó quá bốc đồng với quyền lực. Và chúng ta nhìn thấy kết quả. Các dân tộc ấy hẳn là đã từng có tính độc đáo; không phải ngay xuất phát từ đầu họ đã có được dân cư đông đúc, có chữ viết, tinh thông nhiều môn nghệ thuật; họ đã tạo nên tất cả những thứ đó và vào thời đó họ đã là những dân tộc vĩ đại nhất, hùng mạnh nhất của thế giới. Còn bây giờ thì họ là gì?[...] Có vẻ như là một dân chúng có thể tiến bộ trong một khoảng thời gian rồi ngừng lại. Khi nào thì nó ngừng lại? Khi nó thôi không còn có được cá tính.

No man owns me. All man can do is practice the timeless, criminal art of threatening to separate my soul from her physical host.

No man [...] can be so stupid to deny that all men naturally were born free, being the image and resemblance of God himself.

No one wants their stuff stolen. No one wants their physical person harmed. If you understand the implications of those two truths, you can come to see the egregious moral and practical problems of a state-managed society.

No more lies and speeches of delusions out of the reality of our existence

No teacher has the right to cure a child of making noises on a drum. The only curing that should be practiced is the curing of unhappiness.

No nation has ever been able to transform by chance. Its always a deliberate and conscious process

No one has the right to place one human being in a position of political power over another.