Quotes on Liberty

Never fear the want of business. A man who qualifies himself well for his calling, never fails of employment.

Admiration is the daughter of ignorance.

Those who would trade in their freedom for their protection deserve neither.

Those who give up their liberty for more security neither deserve liberty nor security.

He who would trade liberty for some temporary security, deserves neither liberty nor security.

Energy in the executive is a leading character in the definition of good government. It is essential to the protection of the community against foreign attacks; it is not less essential to the steady administration of the laws; to the protection of property against those irregular and high-handed combinations which sometimes interrupt the ordinary course of justice; to the security of liberty against the enterprises and assaults of ambition, of faction, and of anarchy.

Hence, in a state of nature, no man had any moral power to deprive another of his life, limbs, property, or liberty; nor the least authority to command or exact obedience from him, except that which arose from the ties of consanguinity.

No man in his senses can hesitate in choosing to be free, rather than a slave.

[V]igor of government is essential to the security of liberty.

Government is frequently and aptly classed under two descriptions-a government of force, and a government of laws; the first is the definition of despotism-the last, of liberty.

We are now forming a republican government. Real liberty is never found in despotism or the extremes of democracy, but in moderate governments.

A true libertarian supports free enterprise, opposes big business; supports local self-government, opposes the nation-state; supports the National Rifle Association, opposes the Pentagon.

Government: If you refuse to pay unjust taxes, your property will be confiscated. If you attempt to defend your property, you will be arrested. If you resist arrest, you will be clubbed. If you defend yourself against clubbing, you will be shot dead. These procedures are known as the Rule of Law.

Morality is always the product of terror; its chains and strait-waistcoats are fashioned by those who dare not trust others, because they dare not trust themselves, to walk in liberty.

The power to tax involves the power to destroy;...the power to destroy may defeat and render useless the power to create.

All authority belongs to the people... In questions of power let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief with chains of the Constitution.

If there be a principle that ought not to be questioned within the United States, it is that every man has a right to abolish an old government and establish a new one. This principle is not only recorded in every public archive, written in every American heart, and sealed with the blood of American martyrs, but is the only lawful tenure by which the United States hold their existence as a nation.

It is always to be taken for granted, that those who oppose an equality of rights never mean the exclusion should take place on themselves.

Liberty consists in doing what one desires.

Do what's right for you, so long as it don't hurt no one.

The liberal party is a party which believes that, as new conditions an problems arise beyond the power of men and women to meet as individuals, it becomes the duty of the government itself to find new remedies with which to meet them.