Best 3053 quotes in «liberty quotes» category

The aspiration toward freedom is the most essentially human of all human manifestations.

The authority of government . . . can have no pure right over my person and property but what I concede to it.

The average American family head will be forced to do twenty years' labor to pay taxes in his or her lifetime.

The basis of a democratic state is liberty

The battle for freedom and liberty really never is over, and there are really low points in it, but I'm not giving up, and I'm not gonna engage in phony pep talks, either.

The beneficial effect of state intervention, especially in the form of legislation, is direct, immediate, and so to speak, visible, while its evil effects are gradual and indirect and lay out of sight ... Hence the majority of mankind must almost of necessity look with undue favor upon governmental intervention.

The Bible is the cornerstone of liberty.

The Bible is the cornerstone of liberty ... students perusal of the sacred volume will make us better citizens.

The bigger a state becomes the more liberty diminishes.

The Bill of Rights should contain the general principles of natural and civil liberty. It should be to a community what the eternal laws and obligations of morality are to the conscience. It should be unalterable by any human power.

The birthright of man ... is such a degree of liberty, civil and religious, as is compatible with the liberty of every other individual with whom he is united in a social compact.

The blood of criminals fertilises the soil of liberty.

The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave.

The bourgeois prefers comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty, and a pleasant temperature to the deathly inner consuming fire.

The British Museum was founded with a civic purpose, to allow the citizen, through reasoned inquiry and comparison, to resist the certainties that endanger free society and are still among the greatest threats to our liberty.

The British Empire was so vast and so powerful, the sun would never set on it. This is how big it was, yet these 13 little scrawny states, tired of taxation without representation, tired of being exploited and oppressed and degraded, told that big British Empire, liberty or death.

The businessmen have corrupted liberty by trying to propose it as a material quality.

...the case for individual freedom rests largely on the recognition of the inevitable and universal ignorance of all of us concerning a great many of the factors on which the achievements of our ends and welfare depend.

The candle of liberty has always been kept lit by a vigilant few.

The Cause of civil liberty must not be surrendered at the end of one, or even one hundred defeats.

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.

The Christian religion is a stranger to mere despotic power. The mildness so frequently recommended in the Gospel is incompatible with the despotic rage.

The civil jury is a valuable safeguard to liberty.

The citizens of the United States have peculiar motives to support the energy of their constitutional charters.

The circulation of confidence is better than the circulation of money.

The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for giving to Mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship.

The citizen who sees his society's democratic clothes being worn out and does not cry it out, is not a patriot, but a traitor.

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.

The class of citizens who provide at once their own food and their own raiment, may be viewed as the most truly independent and happy. They are more: they are the best basis of public liberty, and the strongest bulwark of public safety. It follows, that the greater the proportion of this class to the whole society, the more free, the more independent, and the more happy must be the society itself.

The combined wisdom and genius of all mankind cannot possibly conceive of an argument against liberty of thought.

The commitment to civil liberty is going to be reasserted strongly. But the concept of liberty is under attack, and our definition of insecurity, security and threats will change fundamentally. The depth of the attack on liberty will be felt painfully.

The common man is the sovereign consumer whose buying or abstention from buying ultimately determines what should be produced and in what quantity and quality.

The concept of military necessity is seductively broad, and has a dangerous plasticity. Because they invariably have the visage of overriding importance, there is always a temptation to invoke security "necessities" to justify an encroachment upon civil liberties. For that reason, the military-security argument must be approached with a healthy skepticism.

The community which does not protect its humblest and most hated member in the free utterance of his opinions, no matter how false or hateful, is only a gang of slaves. If there is anything in the universe that can't stand discussion, let it crack.

The Constitution is a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT. Read its preamble, consider it purposes. Is slavery among them? Is it at the gateway? or is it in the temple? it is neither.

The Constitution: it's not just a good idea, it's the law.

The Constitution promises liberty to all within its reach, a liberty that includes certain specific rights that allow persons, within a lawful realm, to define and express their identity.

The copyright industry has managed to kill civil liberties for their own children, ushering in a dystopian surveillance machine, merely to avoid taking responsibility for their own business failures. I lack words to quantify my contempt for these utter parasites.

The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance.

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.

The constitution regulates our stewardship; the constitution devotes the domain to union, to justice, to defense, to welfare, and to liberty. But there is a higher law than the constitution, which regulates our authority over the domain, and devotes it to the same noble purposes. The territory is a part, no inconsiderable part, of the common heritage of mankind, bestowed upon them by the Creator of the universe. We are his stewards, and must so discharge our trust as to secure in the highest attainable degree their happiness.

The cost in terms of liberties lost and the unnecessary exposure to terrorism are difficult to determine, but in time it will become apparent to all of us that foreign interventionism is of no benefit to American citizens, but is instead a threat to our liberties.

The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases.

The crying need today is not for more laws, but for fewer. The world must be saved from its saviors. If the friends of liberty and law could have only one slogan it should be: Stop the remedies!

The cry of the soul is for freedom. It longs for liberty, from the date of its first conscious moments.

The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.

The dagger plunged in the name of freedom is plunged into the breast of freedom.

The demand for liberty is a demand for power, either for possession of powers of action not already possessed or for retention and expansion of powers already possessed.

The dearest ambition of a slave is not liberty, but to have a slave of his own.

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.