Quotes on Liberty

When liberty exceeds intelligence, it begets chaos, which begets dictatorship.

Only an armed people can be the real bulwark of popular liberty.

False notions of liberty are strangely common. People talk of it as if it meant the liberty of doing whatever one likes - whereas the only liberty that a man, worthy of the name of man, ought to ask for, is, to have all restrictions, inward and outward, removed that prevent his doing what he ought.

While democracy must have its organizations and controls, its vital breath is individual liberty.

...the case for individual freedom rests largely on the recognition of the inevitable and universal ignorance of all of us concerning a great many of the factors on which the achievements of our ends and welfare depend.

We have abundant reason to rejoice that in this Land the light of truth and reason has triumphed over the power of bigotry and superstition, and that every person may here worship God according to the dictates of his own heart. In this enlightened Age and in this Land of equal liberty it is our boast, that a man's religious tenets will not forfeit the protection of the Laws, nor deprive him of the right of attaining and holding the highest Offices that are known in the United States.

Whether in chains or in laurels, liberty knows nothing but _x000D_ victories.

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.

Of the liberty of conscience in matters of religious faith, of speech and of the press; of the trial by jury of the vicinage in civil and criminal cases; of the benefit of the writ of habeas corpus; of the right to keep and bear arms.... If these rights are well defined, and secured against encroachment, it is impossible that government should ever degenerate into tyranny.

Our liberties do not come from charters; for these are only the declaration of pre-existing rights. They do not depend on parchments or seals; but come from the King of Kings and the Lord of all the earth.

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.

It will be forgotten, on the one hand, that jealousy is the usual concomitant of violent love, and that the noble enthusiasm of liberty is too apt to be infected with a spirit of narrow and illiberal distrust. On the other hand, it will be equally forgotten, that the vigour of government is essential to the security of liberty.

Not far from here where we gather today is a symbol of freedom familiar to all Americans -- the Liberty Bell. When the Declaration of Independence was first read in public, the Liberty Bell was sounded in celebration, and a witness said: "It rang as if it meant something."

The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.

What, then is law [government]? It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense.

From the earliest ages of history to the present day there never have been thirteen millions of people associated in one political body who enjoyed so much freedom and happiness as the people of these United States. You have no longer any cause to fear danger from abroad... It is from within, among yourselves - from cupidity, from corruption, from disappointed ambition and inordinate thirst for power.

When liberty is taken away by force it can be restored by force. When it is relinquished voluntarily by default it can never be recovered.

No system of regulation can safely be substituted for the operation of individual liberty as expressed in competition.

As compacts, charters of government are superior in obligation to all others, because they give effect to all others. As truths, none can be more sacred, because they are bound, on the conscience by the religious sanctions of an oath. As metes and bounds of government, they transcend all other land-marks, because every public usurpation is an encroachment on the private right, not of one, but of all.

At this time is freedom anything but the right to live as we wish? Nothing else.

The deterioration of every government begins with the decay of the principles on which it was founded.