Quotes on Liberty

Union of religious sentiments begets a surprising confidence, and ecclesiastical establishments tend to great ignorance and corruption; all of which facilitate the execution of mischievous projects.

The reformation was preceded by the discovery of America, as if the Almighty graciously meant to open a sanctuary to the persecuted in future years, when home should afford neither friendship nor safety.

In our early struggles for liberty, religious freedom could not fail to become a primary object.

Artists have no less talents than ever, their taste, their vision, their sentiment are often interesting; they are mighty in their independence and feeble only in their works.

A right is worth fighting for only when it can be put into operation.

The dagger plunged in the name of freedom is plunged into the breast of freedom.

A part of fate is the freedom of man. Forever wells up the impulse of choosing and acting in his soul.

I want every American to be free to stand up for his rights, even if sometimes he has to sit down for them.

Freedom is the greatest fruit of self sufficiency.

Hold fast to the Bible as the sheet-anchor of your liberties; write its precepts in your hearts, and practice them in your lives.

Beware how you trifle with your marvelous inheritance, this great land of ordered liberty, for if we stumble and fall, freedom and civilization everywhere will go down in ruin.

All mankind... being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions.

Liberty has restraints but no frontiers.

Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous and they are tied to their country and wedded to its liberty and interests by the most lasting bands.

War is the Health of the State.

War is not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of politics by different means.

It is our duty to pay for our liberty with our own blood. The freedom that we shall win through our sacrifice and exertions, we shall be able to preserve with our own strength.

One set of messages of the society we live in is: Consume. Grow. Do what you want. Amuse yourselves. The very working of this economic system, which has bestowed these unprecedented liberties, most cherished in the form of physical mobility and material prosperity, depends on encouraging people to defy limits.

Let us remember that we can do these things not just because of wealth or power, but because of who we are: one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Only reason can convince us of those three fundamental truths without a recognition of which there can be no effective liberty: that what we believe is not necessarily true; that what we like is not necessarily good; and that all questions are open.

Liberty is not the power of doing what we like, but the right of being able to do what we ought.