Quotes on Liberty

Although we give lip service to the notion of freedom, we know the government is no longer the servant of the people but, at last has become the people's master. We have stood by like timid sheep while the wolf killed - first the weak, then the strays, then those on the outer edges of the flock, until at last the entire flock belonged to the wolf.

When will the world learn that a million men are of no importance compared with one man?

A population weakened and exhausted by battling against so many obstacles - whose needs are never satisfied and desires never fulfilled - is vulnerable to manipulation and regimentation. The struggle for survival is, above all, an exercise that is hugely time-consuming, absorbing and debilitating. If you create these ''anti-conditions,'' your rule is guaranteed for a hundred years.

It is not the function of government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error.

[Emigrants] will bring with them the principles of the governments they leave, imbibed in their early youth; or, if able to throw off, it will be in exchange for an unbounded licentiousness, passing, as is usual, from one extreme to another. It would be a miracle were they to stop precisely at the point of temperate liberty.

Liberty has produced scepticism, and scepticism has destroyed liberty. The lovers of liberty thought they were leaving it unlimited, when they were only leaving it undefined. They thought they were only leaving it undefined, when they were really leaving it undefended.

Without authority there is no liberty. Freedom is doomed to destruction at every turn, unless there is a recognized right to freedom. And if there are rights, there is an authority to which we appeal for them.

The man of the true religious tradition understands two things: liberty and obedience. The first means knowing what you really want. The second means knowing what you really trust.

Liberty is the very last idea that seems to occur to anybody, in considering any political or social proposal. It is only necessary for anybody for any reason to allege any evidence of any evil in any human practice, for people instantly to suggest that the practice should be suppressed by the police.

He is only a very shallow critic who cannot see an eternal rebel in the heart of the Conservative.

For it is an essential difference between capitalist and socialist production that under capitalism men provide for themselves, while under Socialism they are provided for.

The issue is always the same: the government or the market. There is no third solution.

We stand for freedom. That is our conviction for ourselves; that is our only commitment to others.

The Cause of civil liberty must not be surrendered at the end of one, or even one hundred defeats.

Civil liberties victories never stay won, but must be fought for over and over again.

We shall never achieve harmony with land, any more than we shall achieve absolute justice or liberty for people. In these higher aspirations, the important thing is not to achieve but to strive.

This liberty is all that I request.

Chase after the truth like all hell and you'll free yourself, even though you never touch its coat tails.

In the final analysis, true justice is not a matter of courts and law books, but of a commitment in each of us to liberty and mutual respect.

I am interested in politics so that one day I will not have to be interested in politics.

Liberty is the breath of progress.