Liberty Quotes

If we really want liberty - if we really want liberty - then we need to go out and get it, we need to take it, because nobody is going to give it to us. And we need to do it now.

He who desires to worship God must harbor no childish illusions about the matter but bravely renounce his liberty and humanity.

Where the state begins, individual liberty ceases, and vice versa.

Therefore, if God existed, only in one way could he serve human liberty - by ceasing to exist.

The desire for liberty has also made itself felt as struggle against domestic tyranny or arbitrary rule.

Law represents the effort of man to organize society; governments, the efforts of selfishness to overthrow liberty.

Liberty: One of Imagination's most precious possessions.

You cannot have Liberty in this world without what you call Moral Virtue, and you cannot have Moral Virtue without the slavery of that half of the human race who hate what you call Moral Virtue.

The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts.

Liberty must be limited in order to be possessed.

The effect of liberty to individuals is that they may do what they please: we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations.

But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.

Among a people generally corrupt liberty cannot long exist.

Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.

It is harder to preserve than to obtain liberty.

There has to be so many other ways of approaching airline security than demeaning ourselves by giving up a lot of our dignities and our liberty to do this.

I say, traitors; as some men live upon the reward of treachery, for their quiet and liberty; if it may be called a liberty, as it is redeemed with the betraying of the interest of Christ, and the blood of His people.

Liberty consists in the power of doing that which is permitted by the law.

Peace is liberty in tranquillity.

Empire and liberty.

The ancients understood the regulation of power better than the regulation of liberty.

A University should be a place of light, of liberty, and of learning.

True liberty consists only in the power of doing what we ought to will, and in not being constrained to do what we ought not to will.

Man's liberty ends, and it ought to end, when that liberty becomes the curse of its neighbors.

We don't really like rules. We think, in some way, they are an infringement of liberty.

The growing tide of anti-Semitism shocks the conscious of everyone who values freedom, and the ugly, hateful acts particularly stain the character of democracies where liberty and religious freedom are supposed to be respected.

I recommend that the Statue of Liberty be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the west coast.

Where liberty is, there is my country.

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

The liberty of the individual is no gift of civilization. It was greatest before there was any civilization.

Every friend of freedom must be as revolted as I am by the prospect of turning the United States into an armed camp, by the vision of jails filled with casual drug users and of an army of enforcers empowered to invade the liberty of citizens on slight evidence.

I therefore beg that you would indulge me with the liberty of declining the arduous trust.

My sentiments for the American cause, from the Stamp Act downward, have never changed... I am still of opinion that it is the cause of liberty and of human nature.

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?

To deprive a man of his natural liberty and to deny to him the ordinary amenities of life is worse then starving the body; it is starvation of the soul, the dweller in the body.

Enslave the liberty of but one human being and the liberties of the world are put in peril.

There shall be no solution to this race problem until you, yourselves, strike the blow for liberty.

When people contend for their liberty they seldom get anything for their victory, but new masters.

What fools are we, to be besotted with the love of our own trouble, and to hate our liberty and rest!

There is a certain enthusiasm in liberty, that makes human nature rise above itself, in acts of bravery and heroism.

The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right.

The soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to think, feel, do just as one pleases.

The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves.

When the American spirit was in its youth, the language of America was different: Liberty, sir, was the primary object.

Give me liberty or give me death.

When liberty returns, I will return.

There have been in this century only one great man and one great thing: Napoleon and liberty. For want of the great man, let us have the great thing.

Your true traveller finds boredom rather agreeable than painful. It is the symbol of his liberty - his excessive freedom. He accepts his boredom, when it comes, not merely philosophically, but almost with pleasure.

There can be but little liberty on earth while men worship a tyrant in heaven.

The more liberty you give away the more you will have.

How I longed to see these things; how I longed to see the Liberty Bell and walk on the streets where Thomas Jefferson, Tom Paine and Benjamin Franklin had walked.

There is nothing that I shudder at more than the idea of a separation of the Union. Should such an event ever happen, which I fervently pray God to avert, from that date I view our liberty gone.

As long as our government is administered for the good of the people, and is regulated by their will; as long as it secures to us the rights of persons and of property, liberty of conscience and of the press, it will be worth defending.

We can afford no liberties with liberty itself.

Whether we are New Dealer, Old Dealer, Liberty Leaguer or Red, whether we agree or not, we still have the right to think and speak how we feel.

Atlas was permitted the opinion that he was at liberty, if he wished, to drop the Earth and creep away; but this opinion was all that he was permitted.

The deadliest foe of democracy is not autocracy but liberty frenzied.

As so often before, liberty has been wounded in the house of its friends.

Do not be misled by the fact that you are at liberty and relatively free; that for the moment you are not under lock and key: you have simply been granted a reprieve.

Life without Liberty is far worse than death.

Where liberty dies, evil grows.

Our moneyed men have ruled us for the past thirty years. Under the flag of the slaveholder they hoped to destroy our liberty.

The proper balance between individual liberty and central authority is a very ancient problem.

In every man there is an instinctive and passionate reaction if his person or liberty is attacked.

Our nation stands at the crossroads of liberty. Crushing national debt, rampant illegal immigration, insane business regulations and staggering national unemployment are pushing our nation into unchartered territory.

Claiming for ourselves liberty of conscience, liberty to worship, we shall see to it that every other individual enjoys the same right.

It is true that liberty is precious; so precious that it must be carefully rationed.

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

We are as great as our belief in human liberty - no greater. And our belief in human liberty is only ours when it is larger than ourselves.

The happy Union of these States is a wonder; their Constitution a miracle; their example the hope of Liberty throughout the world.

Of all the enemies of public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.

To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea.

As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed.

The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty.

The internal effects of a mutable policy poisons the blessings of liberty itself.