Quotes on Liberty

Truth is mysterious, elusive, always to be conquered. Liberty is dangerous, as hard to live with as it is elating. We must march toward these two goals, painfully but resolutely, certain in advance of our failings on so long a road.

Much of the social history of the Western world, over the past three decades, has been a history of replacing what worked with what sounded good.

It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.

This freedom, this liberty, this beautiful and terrible thing, needful to man as air, usable as earth.

We must face the fact that the preservation of individual freedom is incompatible with a full satisfaction of our views of distributive justice.

No man who ever held the office of president would congratulate a friend on obtaining it.

The road to tyranny, we must never forget, begins with the destruction of the truth.

Collecting more taxes than is absolutely necessary is legalized robbery.

If we don't fight hard enough for the things we stand for, at some point we have to recognize that we don't really stand for them.

I cannot affirm God if I fail to affirm man. Therefore, I affirm both. Without a belief in human unity I am hungry and incomplete. Human unity is the fulfillment of diversity. It is the harmony of opposites. It is a many-stranded texture, with color and depth.

In order to get the power and retain it, it is necessary to love power; but love of power is not connected with goodness, but with qualities which are the opposite of goodness, such as pride, cunning, cruelty.

The human race in the course of time has taken the liberty of softening and softening Christianity until at last we have contrived to make it exactly the opposite of what it is in the New Testament.

..the establishment of Civil and Religious Liberty was the Motive that induced me to the field of battle.

Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty. Democracy is worth dying for, because it's the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man.Entrepreneurs and their small enterprises are responsible for almost all the economic growth in the United States.

Mr. President how long must women wait to get their liberty? Let us have the rights we deserve.

The Independence and Liberty you possess are the work of joint councils and joint efforts, of common dangers, sufferings and successes.

This is true liberty, when free-born men, having to advise the public, may speak free.

Government means always coercion and compulsion and is by necessity the opposite of liberty.

Character enough of an opposite description ... My opinion is ... that you could as soon scrub the blackamore white, as to change the principles of a profest Democrat; and that he will leave nothing unattempted to overturn the Government of this Country.

Men have been taught that it is a virtue to agree with others. But the creator is the man who disagrees. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to swim with the current. But the creator is the man who goes against the current. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to stand together. But the creator is the man who stands alone.

We do not move forward by curtailing people's liberty because we are afraid of what they may do or say.