Quotes on Liberty

The Argument from Intimidation is a confession of intellectual impotence.

People don't seem to understand that the separation of powers is not about the power of these branches; it's there to protect individual liberty - it's there to protect us from the concentration of power.

If the Tenth Amendment were still taken seriously, most of the federal government's present activities would not exist. That's why no one in Washington ever mentions it.

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.

I was a wife and mother, blameless in moral life, with a deep sense of duty and a proud self-respect; it was while I was this that doubt struck me, and while I was in the guarded circle of the home, with no dream of outside work or outside liberty, that I lost all faith in Christianity.

The cry has been that when war is declared, all opposition should be hushed. A sentiment more unworthy of a free country could hardly be propagated.

Perhaps the enemies of liberty are such only because they judge it by its loud voice.

As a boy, the very words 'Liberty Bell' and 'Independence Hall' fired my imagination and made a profound and lasting impression on my mind. Throughout my struggle to secure national freedom for China, I have continuously dreamed of the day when she would assume the full stature of an independent, democratic nation.

Let me remind you that you have a two-fold task to perform. With the force of arms and at the cost of your blood you will have to win liberty. Then, when India is free, you will have to organize the permanent army of Free India, whose task it will be to preserve our liberty for all time. We must build up our national defense on such an unshakable foundation that never again in our history shall we lose our freedom.

Humanity has won its battle. Liberty now has a country.

There are incalculable resources in the human spirit, once it has been set free.

The power to arrest - to deprive a citizen of liberty - must be used fairly, responsibly, and without bias.

If the liberties of the American people are ever destroyed, they will fall by the hands of the clergy.

Revolution is not something fixed in ideology, nor is it something fashioned to a particular decade. It is a perpetual process embedded in the human spirit.

Outside of that single fatality of death, everything, joy or happiness, is liberty.

When more of the people's sustenance is exacted through the form of taxation than is necessary to meet the just obligations of government and expenses of its economical administration, such exaction becomes ruthless extortion and a violation of the fundamental principles of free government.

An irresistible passion that would induce me to believe in innate ideas and the truth of prophecy has decided my career. I have always loved liberty with the enthusiasm which actuates the religious man with the passion of a lover and with the conviction of a geometrician.

Beware of those who would use violence, too often it is violence they want and neither truth nor freedom.

We anticipate a time when the love of truth shall have come up to our love of liberty, and men shall be cordially tolerant and earnest believers both at once.

They do not want to know that centralization is not only the death-knell of liberty, but also of health and beauty, of art and science, all these being impossible in a clock-like, mechanical atmosphere.

The human race is in the best condition when it has the greatest degree of liberty.