Quotes on Freedom And Liberty

I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.

Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.

Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.

The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders...tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.

It is dangerous to be right in matters where established men are wrong.

Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.

Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.

I own that I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive.

Democracies have been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their death.

The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor liberty to purchase power.

The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.

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.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense? Where is the difference between having our arms in possession and under our direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?

A constitution, as important as it is, will mean nothing unless the people are yearning for liberty and freedom.

the average man does not want to be free. he simply wants to be safe.

These are the times that try men's souls.

We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.

After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it.