Quotes on American Freedom

Let me be a free man, free to travel, free to stop, free to work, free to trade where I choose, free to choose my own teachers, free to follow the religion of my fathers, free to talk, think and act for myself — and I will obey every law or submit to the penalty.

For the average American, freedom of speech is simply the freedom to repeat what everyone else is saying and no more.

The most serious dangers for American freedom and the American way of life do not come from without.

Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.

What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value.

If we ever forget that we are One Nation Under God, then we will be a nation gone under.

We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Our constitution was made for a moral and religious people... it is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom.

The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave.

And they can appreciate, through personal experience, that the really decisive battleground of American freedom is in the hearts and minds of our own people... Each day we must ask that Almighty God will set and keep His protecting hand over us so that we may pass on to those who come after us the heritage of a free people, secure in their God-given rights and in full control of a Government dedicated to the preservation of those rights.

There is no more fundamental axiom of American freedom than the familiar statement: In a free country we punish men for the crimes they commit but never for the opinions they have.

Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal.

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.

For what avail the plough or sail, or land or life, if freedom fail?

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.

Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America. These acts shatter steel, but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve.