quotations about liberty
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
If liberty were to go on a pilgrimage all over the earth, she would find a home in every house, and a welcome in every heart.
WILLIAM ELDER
attributed, Day's Collacon
Show me that age and country where the rights and liberties of the people were placed on the sole chance of their rulers being good men, without a consequent loss of liberty? I say that the loss of that dearest privilege has ever followed with absolute certainty, every such mad attempt.
PATRICK HENRY
speech before the Virginia Ratifying Convention, Jun. 5, 1788
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
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
Man usually thinks liberty is the power of doing what he likes to do. That is license.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
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
Liberty is an old fact; it has had its heroes and its martyrs in almost every age. As I look back through the vista of centuries, I can see no end of the ranks of those who have toiled and suffered in its cause, and who wear upon their breasts its stars of the legion of honor.
EDWIN HUBBELL CHAPIN
Living Words
When liberty is at stake, we cannot be too scrupulous; we must burnish up every precedent; we must parley upon a hair, for that hair may be a fibre of the eternal right upon which cling the destiny of millions.
C. R. WELD
attributed, Day's Collacon
The idea of intellectual liberty is under attack from two directions. On the one side are its theoretical enemies, the apologists of totalitarianism, and on the other its immediate, practical enemies, monopoly and bureaucracy.
GEORGE ORWELL
"Notes on Nationalism"
The ideology of capitalism makes us all into connoisseurs of liberty--of the indefinite expansion of possibility.
SUSAN SONTAG
Aids and Its Metaphors
Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.
JOHN ADAMS
letter to Abigail Adams, Jul. 17, 1775
The word liberty has been falsely used by persons who, being degenerately profligate in private life, and mischievous in public, had no hope left but in fomenting discord.
TACITUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
What is so beneficial to the people as liberty, which we see not only to be greedily sought after by men, but also by beasts, and to be preferred to all things.
CICERO
attributed, Day's Collacon
Liberty is to the collective body, what health is to every individual body; without health no pleasure can be tasted by man; without liberty, no happiness can be enjoyed by society.
LORD BOLINGBROKE
The Works of the Late Right Honorable Henry St. John, Lord Viscount Bolingbroke
Liberty will not descend to a people, a people must raise themselves to liberty; it is a blessing that must be earned before it can be enjoyed.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
letter to Lafayette, The Thomas Jefferson Papers
Establish liberty on a rock of brass.
MAXIMILIEN DE ROBESPIERRE
report of the 18 Pluvoise, Year II
But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.
EDMUND BURKE
Reflections on the Revolution in France
The cause of liberty is one and the same all over the world.
GEORGE THOMPSON
attributed, Day's Collacon