Quotes on Liberty

The patriot's blood is the seed of Freedom's tree.

Indian religion has always felt that since the minds, the temperaments and the intellectual affinities of men are unlimited in their variety, a perfect liberty of thought and of worship must be allowed to the individual in his approach to the Infinite.

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

It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become prey to the active. The conditions upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime, and the punishment of his guilt.

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.

Creditors have better memories than debtors.

What do you know of my heart? What do you know of anything but your own suffering. For weeks, Marianne, I've had this pressing on me without being at liberty to speak of it to a single creature. It was forced on me by the very person whose prior claims ruined all my hope. I have endured her exultations again and again whilst knowing myself to be divided from Edward forever. Believe me, Marianne, had I not been bound to silence I could have provided proof enough of a broken heart, even for you.

That is our generation’s task - to make these words, these rights, these values of life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness real for every American.

The price of liberty is something more than eternal vigilance. There must also be eternal advance. We can save the rights we have inherited from our fathers only by winning new ones to bequeath our children.

The Bible is the cornerstone of liberty.

Were we directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we should soon want bread.

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.

It’ll be the ballot or it’ll be the bullet. It’ll be liberty or it’ll be death. And if you’re not ready to pay that price don’t use the word freedom in your vocabulary.

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

Liberty is lost through complacency and a subservient mindset. When we accept or even welcome automobile checkpoints, random searches, mandatory identification cards, and paramilitary police in our streets, we have lost a vital part of our American heritage. America was born of protest, revolution, and mistrust of government. Subservient societies neither maintain nor deserve freedom for long.

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

If I deny the authority of the State when it presents my tax bill, it will soon take and waste all my property, and so harass me and my children without end. This is hard, this makes it impossible for a man to live honestly, and at the same time comfortably, in outward respects.

The people have a right to the truth as they have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites.

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

One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.