Liberty Quotes

A nation which does not remember what it was yesterday does not know where it is today.

History fails to record a single precedent in which nations subject to moral decay have not passed into political and economic decline. There has been either a spiritual awakening to overcome the moral lapse or a progressive deterioration leading to ultimate national disaster.

When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty; because apprehensions may arise, lest the same monarch or senate should enact tyrannical laws, to execute them in a tyrannical manner.

If you can cut the people off from their history, then they can be easily persuaded.

They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

There is only one way to kill capitalism - by taxes, taxes, and more taxes.

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

A Bill of Rights that means what the majority wants it to mean is worthless.

We must complain. Yes, plain, blunt complaint, ceaseless agitation, unfailing exposure of dishonesty and wrong - this is the ancient, unerring way to liberty and we must follow it.

Those Who Sacrifice Liberty For Security Deserve Neither.

Democracy is necessarily despotism, as it establishes an executive power contrary to the general will; all being able to decide against one whose opinion may differ, the will of all is therefore not that of all: which is contradictory and opposite to liberty.

Security without liberty is called prison.

I prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery.

Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.

The United States appear to be destined by Providence to plague America with misery in the name of liberty.

It is easy to cut down the tree of liberty, but not so easy to restore it to life.

Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: First a right to life, secondly to liberty, and thirdly to property; together with the right to defend them in the best manner they can.

Patterning your life around other's opinions is nothing more than slavery.

Tyranny is defined as that which is legal for the government but illegal for the citizenry.

True liberty is not the power to live as we please, but to live as we ought.

Excessive liberty and excessive servitude are equally dangerous, and produce nearly the same effect.

The best way to make every one poor is to insist on equality of wealth.

When a man spends his own money to buy something for himself, he is very careful about how much he spends and how he spends it. When a man spends his own money to buy something for someone else, he is still very careful about how much he spends, but somewhat less what he spends it on. When a man spends someone else's money to buy something for himself, he is very careful about what he buys, but doesn't care at all how much he spends. And when a man spends someone else's money on someone else, he does't care how much he spends or what he spends it on. And that's government for you.

The Constitution is the guide which I never will abandon.

Being tolerant does not mean that I share another one's belief. But it does mean that I acknowledge another one's right to believe, and obey, his own conscience.

We, today, stand on the shoulders of our predecessors who have gone before us. We, as their successors, must catch the torch of freedom and liberty passed on to us by our ancestors. We cannot lose in this battle.

There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to make them equal.

Let no man think we can deny civil liberty to others and retain it for ourselves.

Life in the state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

Though I bequeath you no estate, I leave you in the enjoyment of liberty.

Anytime anyone is enslaved or in any way deprived of his liberty, that person, as a human being, as far as I'm concerned he is justified to resort to whatever methods necessary to bring about his liberty again.

It is seldom, that liberty of any kind is lost all at once. Slavery has so frightful an aspect to men accustomed to freedom, that it must steal upon them by degrees, and must disguise itself in a thousand shapes, in order to be received.

I would die to preserve the law upon a solid foundation; but take away liberty, and the foundation is destroyed.

'Emergencies' have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded.

A nation may lose its liberties in a day and not miss them in a century.

The work of the Spirit is to impart life, to implant hope, to give liberty, to testify of Christ, to guide us into all truth, to teach us all things, to comfort the believer, and to convict the world of sin.

Now that I look back, I realize that a life predicated on being obedient is a very comfortable life indeed. Living in such a way reduces to a minimum one's own need to think.

Democracy is the road to socialism.

The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.

Remember civil and religious liberty always go together: if the foundation of the one be sapped, the other will fall of course.

Our union is now complete; our constitution composed, established, and approved. You are now the guardians of your own liberties.

I started with this idea in my head, "There's two things I've got a right to, death or liberty."

I like the religion that teaches liberty, equality and fraternity.

Mankind are governed more by their feelings than by reason.

We prefer poverty in liberty than riches in slavery.

Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.

There can be no such thing as 'fairness in taxation.' Taxation is nothing but organized theft, and the concept of a 'fair tax' is therefore every bit as absurd as that of 'fair theft.'

Our country may be likened to a new house. We lack many things, but we possess the most precious of all - liberty!

Federalism isn’t about states’ rights. It’s about dividing power to better protect individual liberty.

At times some people use force or fraud to take from others without willful, voluntary consent. Normally, the initiation of force to take life is murder, to take liberty is slavery, and to take property is theft. It is the same whether these actions are done by one person acting alone, by the many acting against a few, or even by officials with fine hats and titles.