Liberty Quotes
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The enjoyment of power inevitably corrupts the judgment of reason, and perverts its liberty.
Immanuel Kant
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Inequality is as dear to the American heart as liberty itself.
William Dean Howells
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Our country is the world, our countrymen are all mankind. We love the land of our nativity, only as we love all other lands. The interests, rights, and liberties of American citizens are no more dear to us than are those of the whole human race. Hence we can allow no appeal to patriotism, to revenge any national insult or injury.
William Lloyd Garrison
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We must complain. Yes, plain, blunt complaint, ceaseless agitation, unfailing exposure of dishonesty and wrong - this is the ancient, unerring way to liberty and we must follow it.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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The political problem of mankind is to combine three things: economic efficiency, social justice and individual liberty.
John Maynard Keynes
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Never is liberty more easily lost than when we think we are defending it.
Ben Chifley
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Our liberty depends on our education, our laws, and habits . . . it is founded on morals and religion, whose authority reigns in the heart, and on the influence all these produce on public opinion before that opinion governs rulers.
Fisher Ames
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But at power or wealth, for the sake of which wars, and all kinds of strife, arise among mankind, we do not aim; we desire only our liberty, which no honorable man relinquishes but with his life.
Sallust
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Government can have no more than two legitimate purposes - the suppression of injustice against individuals within the community, and the common defense against external invasion.
William Godwin
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For in this modern world, the instruments of warfare are not solely for waging war. Far more importantly, they are the means for controlling peace. Naval officers must therefore understand not only how to fight a war, but how to use the tremendous power which they operate to sustain a world of liberty and justice, without unleashing the powerful instruments of destruction and chaos that they have at their command.
Arleigh Burke
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Liberty lies in the rights of that person whose views you find most odious.
John Stuart Mill
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I come here with no expectations, only to profess, now that I am at liberty to do so, that my heart is and always will be yours.
Jane Austen
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I hold it to be a paramount duty of us in the free states, due to the Union of the states, and perhaps to liberty itself (paradox though it may seem) to let the slavery of the other states alone; while, on the other hand, I hold it to be equally clear, that we should never knowingly lend ourselves directly or indirectly, to prevent that slavery from dying a natural death--to find new places for it to live in, when it can no longer exist in the old.
Abraham Lincoln
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A population weakened and exhausted by battling against so many obstacles - whose needs are never satisfied and desires never fulfilled - is vulnerable to manipulation and regimentation. The struggle for survival is, above all, an exercise that is hugely time-consuming, absorbing and debilitating. If you create these ''anti-conditions,'' your rule is guaranteed for a hundred years.
Ryszard Kapuscinski
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The whites have resolved to destroy our liberty and have therefore brought a force commensurate to their intentions. The Cape, after a proper resistance, has fallen into their hands, but the enemy found only a town and plain in ashes; the forts were blown up, and all was burnt.
Toussaint Louverture
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If the minority, and a small one too, is suffered to dictate to the majority, after measures have undergone the most solemn discussions by the representatives of the people, and their will through this medium is enacted into a law, there can be no security for life, liberty, or property; nor, if the laws are not to govern, can any man know how to conduct himself in safety.
George Washington
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The sanctity of womanhood is incompatible with social liberty and social claims; and for a woman emancipation means corruption.
Honore de Balzac
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Human progress having reached a high level through respect for the liberty and dignity of men, it has become desirable to re-affirm these evident truths.
Will Durant
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[I]f we assume a liberty interest but nevertheless say that, even assuming a liberty interest, a state can prohibit it entirely, that would be rather a conundrum.
William Rehnquist
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If we do not die for liberty, we shall soon have nothing left to do but weep for her.
Madame Roland
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The Framers of the Bill of Rights did not purport to 'create' rights. Rather, they designed the Bill of Rights to prohibit our Government from infringing rights and liberties presumed to be preexisting.
William J. Brennan, Jr.
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Among the liberties of citizens that are guaranteed are ... the right to believe what one chooses, the right to differ from his neighbor, the right to pick and choose the political philosophy he likes best, the right to associate with whomever he chooses, the right to join groups he prefers.
William O. Douglas
