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While we are contending for our own liberty, we should be very cautious not to violate the rights of conscience in others, ever considering that God alone is the judge of the hearts of men, and to him only in this case they are answerable.
GEORGE WASHINGTON, letter to Benedict Arnold, Sep. 14, 1775
Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!
A lion is at liberty who can follow the laws of his own nature, who can eat when his stomach tells him, who can sleep when his fierce eyes grow weary, who can scratch long furrows in a forest tree when his claws feel so disposed. He is not at liberty when he lives in a cage, is fed on horseflesh at 4 p.m., and is compelled at the point of a red-hot poker to spell P-I-G – PIG, in the presence of a diverted crowd.
ROBERT HUGH BENSON, Intellectual Slavery
Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.
Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness.
GEORGE WASHINGTON, Circular to the States, May 9, 1753
The love of liberty is a common blood that flows in our American veins.
JIMMY CARTER, Farewell Address, Jan. 14, 1981
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.
JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN, speech, July 10, 1790
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.
THOMAS JEFFERSON, letter to W.S. Smith, Nov. 13, 1787
Idleness, ennui, noise, mischief, riot, and a nameless train of mistaken notions of pleasure, are often classed, in a young man's mind, under the general head of liberty.
MARIA EDGEWORTH, The Good Aunt
A people contending for life and liberty are seldom disposed to look with a favorable eye upon either men or measures whose passions, interests or consequences will clash with those inestimable objects.
GEORGE WASHINGTON, letter to General Thomas, Jul. 23, 1775
If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
GEORGE ORWELL, preface to Animal Farm
Ignorance may be bliss, but it certainly is not freedom, except in the minds of those who prefer darkness to light and chains to liberty. The more true information we can acquire, the better for our enfranchisement.
ROBERT HUGH BENSON, Intellectual Slavery
Let us therefore animate and encourage each other, and show the whole world that a Freeman, contending for liberty on his own ground, is superior to any slavish mercenary on earth.
GEORGE WASHINGTON, general orders, Jul. 2, 1776
On the question of liberty, as a principle, we are not what we have been. When we were the political slaves of King George, and wanted to be free, we called the maxim that "all men are created equal" a self-evident truth, but now when we have grown fat, and have lost all dread of being slaves ourselves, we have become so greedy to be masters that we call the same maxim "a self-evident lie." The Fourth of July has not quite dwindled away; it is still a great day--for burning fire-crackers!
ABRAHAM LINCOLN, letter to George Robertson, Aug. 15, 1855
Liberty cannot be sacrificed for the sake of temperance, for the sake of morality, or for the sake of anything. It is of more value than everything. Yet some people would destroy the sun to prevent the growth of weeds. Liberty sustains the same relation to all the virtues that the sun does to life.
ROBERT G. INGERSOLL, "How to Reform Mankind," Works
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