LIBERTY QUOTES II

quotations about liberty

The premise of laissez-faire is the premise of individual rights. It is the premise that your life and your property belong to you, not to the collective. To those of us who hold this view, a proper foreign policy achieves the same fundamental purpose as a proper economic-social policy: the safeguarding of our liberty. When individuals engage in voluntary, peaceful action, the government acknowledges their right to do so and refrains from forcibly intervening. But when a foreign entity subjects us to non-voluntary, non-peaceful action, the government forcibly intervenes, in self-defense, to repel that threat to our rights. That is, the state refuses to initiate force against the innocent, but willingly uses force in retaliation against those who initiate it (or threaten to). This is how our freedom is sustained.

PETER SCHWARTZ

"Libertarianism vs. Liberty", Huffington Post, June 27, 2015


There are multitudes of persons whose idea of liberty is the right to do what they please, instead of the right of doing that which is lawful and best.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit

Tags: Henry Ward Beecher


Liberty is a bitch who must be bedded on a mattress of corpses.

NEIL GAIMAN

American Gods

Tags: Neil Gaiman


The liberty of the individual is no gift of civilization. It was greatest before there was any civilization, though then, it is true, it had for the most part no value, since the individual was scarcely in a position to defend it.

SIGMUND FREUD

Civilization and Its Discontents

Tags: Sigmund Freud


The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern. The law of liberty tends to abolish the reign of race over race, of faith over faith, of class over class.

LORD ACTON

letter to Mary Gladstone, Apr. 24, 1881


Oh! if there be, on this earthly sphere,
A boon, an offering Heaven holds dear,
'Tis the last libation Liberty draws
From the heart that bleeds and breaks in her cause!

THOMAS MOORE

"Lalla Rookh", The Poetical Works of Thomas Moore

Tags: Thomas Moore


He that has his chains knocked off, and the prison doors set open to him, is perfectly at liberty, because he may either go or stay, as he best likes; though his preference be determined to stay, by the darkness of the night, or illness of the weather, or want of other lodging.

JOHN LOCKE

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

Tags: John Locke


This liberty will look easy by and by when nobody dies to get it.

MAXWELL ANDERSON

Valley Forge

Tags: Maxwell Anderson


O Liberty, white Goddess! is it well to leave the gates unguarded? On thy breast fold Sorrow's children, soothe the hurts of Fate, lift the down-trodden, but with hand of steel stay those who to thy sacred portals come to waste the gifts of Freedom.

THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH

"Unguarded Gates"

Tags: Thomas Bailey Aldrich


The cause of liberty is one and the same all over the world.

GEORGE THOMPSON

attributed, Day's Collacon


Liberty has as many chains as an iron-monger's shop, and as rusty.

AUSTIN O'MALLEY

Keystones of Thought

Tags: Austin O'Malley


It is for man to establish the reign of liberty in the midst of the world of the given. To gain the supreme victory, it is necessary, for one thing, that by and through their natural differentiation men and women unequivocally affirm their brotherhood.

SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR

Le Deuxieme Sexe


Establish liberty on a rock of brass.

MAXIMILIEN DE ROBESPIERRE

report of the 18 Pluvoise, Year II


The most exquisite dynamic is achieved when the common good is served while individual liberty is protected. No kings, no dictators. Us, in charge of ourselves, leveraging our resources behind our highest hopes, while protecting each other's freedoms, shaping our country, forever working to form "a more perfect union".

WENDELL POTTER & NICK PENNIMAN

Nation on the Take


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


Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.

JOHN ADAMS

letter to Abigail Adams, Jul. 17, 1775


The basis of a democratic state is liberty.

ARISTOTLE

Politics

Tags: Aristotle


The cause of liberty becomes a mockery if the price to be paid is the wholesale destruction of those who are to enjoy liberty.

MAHATMA GANDHI

The Wit and Wisdom of Gandhi

Tags: Mahatma Gandhi


It would scarcely be an exaggeration to say that the greatest danger to liberty today comes from the men who are most needed and most powerful in modern government, namely, the efficient expert administrators exclusively concerned with what they regards as the public good.

FRIEDRICH HAYEK

The Constitution of Liberty

Tags: Friedrich Hayek


Liberty is equally desirable to the good and to the bad, to the brave and to the dastardly.

JOHN MAIR

An Introduction to Latin Syntax