83 quotes about Liberty
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Absolute liberty is absence of restraint; responsibility is restraint; therefore, the ideally free individual is responsible to himself.
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Liberty can not be preserved without a general knowledge among the people.
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The ingrained idea that, because there is no king and they despise titles, the Americans are a free people is pathetically untrue. There is a perpetual interference with personal liberty over there that would not be tolerated in England for a week.
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I am truly free only when all human beings, men and women, are equally free. The freedom of other men, far from negating or limiting my freedom, is, on the contrary, its necessary premise and confirmation.
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You cannot have Liberty in this world without what you call Moral Virtue, and you cannot have Moral Virtue without the slavery of that half of the human race who hate what you call Moral Virtue.
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The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal -- well-meaning but without understanding.
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There is nothing with which it is so dangerous to take liberties as liberty itself.
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The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts.
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Liberty must be limited in order to be possessed.
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The people never give up their liberties, but under some delusion.
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The effect of liberty to individuals is that they may do what they please: we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations.
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It is not one man nor a million, but the spirit of liberty that must be preserved. The waves which dash upon the shore are, one by one, broken, but the ocean conquers nevertheless. It overwhelms the Armada, it wears out the rock. In like manner, whatever the struggle of individuals, the great cause will gather strength.
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Peace is liberty in tranquillity.
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The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime, and the punishment of his guilt.
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We have to talk about liberating minds as well as liberating society.
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One's liberty should end when it becomes the curse of his neighbor.
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Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have.
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Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
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They who give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
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Where liberty is, there is my country.
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The liberty of the individual is no gift of civilization. It was greatest before there was any civilization.
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Corruption, the most infallible symptom of constitutional liberty.
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I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue.
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Show me the country that has no strikes and I'll show you the country in which there is no liberty.
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It is easy to take liberty for granted when you have never had it taken from you.
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Abuse is the very hallmark of liberty.
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The slaves of power mind the cause they have to serve, because their own interest is concerned; but the friends of liberty always sacrifice their cause, which is only the cause of humanity, to their own spleen, vanity, and self-opinion.
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When liberty is mentioned, we must always be careful to observe whether it is not really the assertion of private interests which is thereby designated.
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I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death.
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It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once.
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What light is to the eyes -- what air is to the lungs -- what love is to the heart, liberty is to the soul of man.
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The more liberty you give away the more you will have.
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The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.
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Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.
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The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time.
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The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave.
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It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.
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I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.
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The deadliest foe of democracy is not autocracy but liberty frenzied.
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Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
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Then we are assured by Sartre that owing to the final disappearance of God our liberty is absolute! At this the entire audience waves its hat or claps its hands. But this natural enthusiasm is turned abruptly into something much less buoyant when it is learnt that this liberty weighs us down immediately with tremendous responsibilities. We now have to take all God's worries on our shoulders --now that we are become men like gods. It is at this point that the Anxiety and Despondency begin, ending in utter despair.
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Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. We here highly resolve that the dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
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We are as great as our belief in human liberty -- no greater. And our belief in human liberty is only ours when it is larger than ourselves.
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We are right to take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties.
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Liberty may be endangered by the abuse of liberty, but also by the abuse of power.
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Liberty, as it is conceived by current opinion, has nothing inherent about it; it is a sort of gift or trust bestowed on the individual by the state pending good behavior.
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I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.
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License they mean when they cry liberty.
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Political liberty is to be found only in moderate governments.
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Liberty is the right to do what the law permits.
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An educational method that shall have liberty as its basis must intervene to help the child to a conquest of liberty. That is to say, his training must be such as shall help him to diminish as much as possible the social bonds which limit his activity.
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He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.
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Once we roared like lions for liberty; now we bleat like sheep for security! The solution for America's problem is not in terms of big government, but it is in big men over whom nobody stands in control but God.
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I would rather not be a king than to forfeit my liberty.
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A free spirit takes liberties even with liberty itself.
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Liberty has no crueler enemy than license.
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Liberty is God's gift, liberties the devil s.
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Liberty doesn't work as well in practice as it does in speeches.
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How false is the conception, how frantic the pursuit, of that treacherous phantom which men call Liberty: most treacherous, indeed, of all phantoms; for the feeblest ray of reason might surely show us, that not only its attainment, but its being, was impossible. There is no such thing in the universe. There can never be. The stars have it not; the earth has it not; the sea has it not; and we men have the mockery and semblance of it only for our heaviest punishment.
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What do we mean by setting a man free? You cannot free a man who dwells in a desert and is an unfeeling brute. There is no liberty except the liberty of some one making his way towards something. Such a man can be set free if you will teach him the meaning of thirst, and how to trace a path to a well. Only then will he embark upon a course of action that will not be without significance. You could not liberate a stone if there were no law of gravity -- for where will the stone go, once it is quarried?
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I like to walk about among the beautiful things that adorn the world; but private wealth I should decline, or any sort of personal possessions, because they would take away my liberty.
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It is not true that democracy will always safeguard freedom of conscience better than autocracy. Witness the most famous of all trials. Pilate was, from the standpoint of the Jews, certainly the representative of autocracy. Yet he tried to protect freedom. And he yielded to a democracy.
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A well governed appetite is the greater part of liberty.
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The approach of liberty makes even an old man brave.
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Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
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Old England liberty -- to be robbed by the Ministry, and insulted by the populace without redress.
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Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.
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They who are in the highest places, and have the most power, have the least liberty, because they are the most observed.
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What a pity we don't pursue the salvation of humans with the same verve we pursue the salvation of animals
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Liberty, not communism, is the most contagious force in the world.
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Over grown military establishments are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty.
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Liberty exists in proportion to wholesome restraint.
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Liberty consists in wholesome restraint.
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It would seem that man was born a slave, and that slavery is his natural condition. At the same time nothing on earth can stop man from feeling himself born for liberty. Never, whatever may happen, can he accept servitude; for he is a thinking creature.
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Liberty is the only thing you cannot have unless you are willing to give it to others.
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The shallow consider liberty a release from all law, from every constraint. The wise man sees in it, on the contrary, the potent Law of Laws.
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When liberty comes with hands dabbled in blood it is hard to shake hands with her.
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I would rather belong to a poor nation that was free than to a rich nation that had ceased to be in love with liberty.
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The history of liberty is the history of the limitations of governmental power, not the increase of it. When we resist the concentration of power we are resisting the powers of death. Concentration of power precedes the destruction of human liberties.
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Liberty has never come from government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it. The history of liberty is a history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of limitations of governmental power, not the increase of it.
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If liberty has any meaning it means freedom to improve.
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