Liberty

Liberty, in political philosophy refers to the freedoms guaranteed to all members of a society; in ontology it can denote concepts of free will as contrasted with determinism, and in theology it refers to freedom from the bondage of sin.

Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right [...] to knowledge, [...] an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean, of the characters and conduct of their rulers. ~ John Adams

Liberty, next to religion has been the motive of good deeds and the common pretext of crime, from the sowing of the seed at Athens, 2,460 years ago, until the ripened harvest was gathered by men of our race. It is the delicate fruit of a mature civilization; and scarcely a century has passed since nations, that knew the meaning of the term, resolved to be free. In every age its progress has been beset by its natural enemies, by ignorance and superstition, by lust of conquest and by love of ease, by the strong man’s craving for power, and the poor man’s craving for food.
- Lord Acton, The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877)

At all times sincere friends of freedom have been rare, and its triumphs have been due to minorities, that have prevailed by associating themselves with auxiliaries whose objects often differed from their own; and this association, which is always dangerous, has been sometimes disastrous, by giving to opponents just grounds of opposition, and by kindling dispute over the spoils in the hour of success. No obstacle has been so constant, or so difficult to overcome, as uncertainty and confusion touching the nature of true liberty. If hostile interests have wrought much injury, false ideas have wrought still more; and its advance is recorded in the increase of knowledge, as much as in the improvement of laws.
- John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton, The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877)

By liberty I mean the assurance that every man shall be protected in doing what he believes his duty against the influence of authority and majorities, custom and opinion.
- Lord Acton, The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877)

Liberty and good government do not exclude each other; and there are excellent reasons why they should go together. Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end. It is not for the sake of a good public administration that it is required, but for security in the pursuit of the highest objects of civil society, and of private life.
- Lord Acton, The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877)

There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.
- John Adams, in notes for an oration at Braintree (Spring 1772)

Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right, from the frame of their nature, to knowledge, as their great Creator, who does nothing in vain, has given them understandings, and a desire to know; but besides this, they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean, of the characters and conduct of their rulers. Rulers are no more than attorneys, agents, and trustees, of the people; and if the cause, the interest, and trust, is insidiously betrayed, or wantonly trifled away, the people have a right to revoke the authority that they themselves have deputed, and to constitute other and better agents, attorneys and trustees.
- John Adams, A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law (1765)

Liberty, according to my metaphysics, is an intellectual quality, an attribute that belongs not to fate nor chance. Neither possesses it, neither is capable of it. There is nothing moral or immoral in the idea of it. The definition of it is a self-determining power in an intellectual agent. It implies thought and choice and power; it can elect between objects, indifferent in point of morality, neither morally good nor morally evil.
- John Adams, in a letter to John Taylor (15 April 1814)

If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.
- Samuel Adams, in a speech at the Philadelphia State House (1 August 1776)

It is not unfrequent to hear men declaim loudly upon liberty, who, if we may judge by the whole tenor of their actions, mean nothing else by it but their own liberty, — to oppress without control or the restraint of laws all who are poorer or weaker than themselves.
- Samuel Adams, in Essay published in The Advertiser (1748) and later reprinted in The Life and Public Service of Samuel Adams (1865)

Liberty
A day, an hour, of virtuous liberty
Is worth a whole eternity in bondage.
- Joseph Addison, Cato, A Tragedy (1713), Act II, scene 1

Ever since I arrived to a state of manhood, I have felt a sincere passion for liberty.
- Ethan Allen, as quoted in "In the name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress!" - American Heritage magazine Vol. 14, Issue 6 (October 1963)

Liberty, equality — bad principles! The only true principle for humanity is justice; and justice to the feeble becomes necessarily protection or kindness.
- Henri-Frédéric Amiel, Journal Intime (1882), as translated by Humphry Ward (1893), p. 215

This liberty will look easy by and by when nobody dies to get it.
- Maxwell Anderson, Valley Forge (1934), act III, portrayal of George Washington, final sentence, p. 110

The basis of a democratic state is liberty.
- Aristotle, Politics, Book VI, 1317a40

He always pictured himself a libertarian, which to my way of thinking means "I want the liberty to grow rich and you can have the liberty to starve". It's easy to believe that no one should depend on society for help when you yourself happen not to need such help.
- Isaac Asimov, in I. Asimov : A Memoir (1994), p. 308

What seems to me to be driving our whole civilization toward the abyss at present is a one-sided conception of liberty, a conception that is purely centrifugal, that would get rid of all outer control and then evade or deny openly the need of achieving inner control.
- Irving Babbitt, "English and the Discipline of Ideas" (1920), Irving Babbitt: Representative Writings (1981), p. 66
- Liberty is a moral being which presides over order and social harmony. It is the principle of all virtues, of all talents, of all prosperity among men. Liberty alone upon thrones should govern, alone in temples should represent to men to wise and thinking men the Divinity (a) from which they draw ideas of justice, perfection, and beneficence.
- Jean-François Varlet, Declaration of the Rights of Man in the Social State

I am a fanatic lover of liberty, considering it as the unique condition under which intelligence, dignity and human happiness can develop and grow; not the purely formal liberty conceded, measured out and regulated by the State, an eternal lie which in reality represents nothing more than the privilege of some founded on the slavery of the rest; not the individualistic, egoistic, shabby, and fictitious liberty extolled by the School of J.-J. Rousseau and other schools of bourgeois liberalism, which considers the would-be rights of all men, represented by the State which limits the rights of each — an idea that leads inevitably to the reduction of the rights of each to zero. No, I mean the only kind of liberty that is worthy of the name, liberty that consists in the full development of all the material, intellectual and moral powers that are latent in each person; liberty that recognizes no restrictions other than those determined by the laws of our own individual nature, which cannot properly be regarded as restrictions since these laws are not imposed by any outside legislator beside or above us, but are immanent and inherent, forming the very basis of our material, intellectual and moral being — they do not limit us but are the real and immediate conditions of our freedom.
- Mikhail Bakunin, "La Commune de Paris et la notion de l'état" (The Commune of Paris and the notion of the state) as quoted in Noam Chomsky: Notes on Anarchism (1970)

It is for man to establish the reign of liberty in the midst of the world of the given. To gain the supreme victory, it is necessary, for one thing, that by and through their natural differentiation men and women unequivocally affirm their brotherhood.
- Simone de Beauvoir, in The Second Sex [Le Deuxième Sexe] (1949) as translated by H M Parshley (1972)

Liberty is an empty sound as long as you are kept in bondage economically. [...] Freedom means that you have the right to do a certain thing; but if you have no opportunity to do it, that right is sheer mockery. The opportunity lies in your economic condition, whatever the political situation may be. No political rights can be of the least use to the man who is compelled to slave all his life to keep himself and family from starvation.
- Alexander Berkman, in What Is Communist Anarchism? (1929), Chapter 14: "The February Revolution"

Liberty is a great celestial Goddess, strong, beneficent, and austere, and she can never descend upon a nation by the shouting of crowds, nor by arguments of unbridled passion, nor by the hatred of class against class.
- Annie Besant. In The Political Thought of Annie Besant, p. 104

LIBERTY, n. One of Imagination's most precious possessions.
- Ambrose Bierce, The Cynic's Dictionary (1906); republished as The Devil's Dictionary (1911).

The United States appear to be destined by Providence to plague America with misery in the name of liberty.
- Attributed to Simón Bolívar; reported as unverified in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1989)

The defendants' objections to the evidence obtained by wire-tapping must, in my opinion, be sustained. It is, of course, immaterial where the physical connection with the telephone wires leading into the defendants' premises was made. And it is also immaterial that the intrusion was in aid of law enforcement. Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.
- Louis D. Brandeis, dissenting, Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 479 (1928). The last sentence is one of many quotations inscribed on Cox Corridor II, a first floor House corridor, U.S. Capitol.

Those who won our independence believed that the final end of the state was to make men free to develop their faculties, and that in its government the deliberative forces should prevail over the arbitrary. They valued liberty both as an end and as a means. They believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty. They believed that freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth; that without free speech and assembly discussion would be futile; that with them, discussion affords ordinarily adequate protection against the dissemination of noxious doctrine; that the greatest menace to freedom is an inert people; that public discussion is a political duty; and that this should be a fundamental principle of the American government.
- Louis D. Brandeis, concurring, Whitney v. California, 274 U.S. 357, 375 (1927), at 375. In this case, in which the Court upheld a California anti-Communist statute, Brandeis, writing in a concurrence joined by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., concurred in the judgment but not in the reasoning. Whitney was later overruled (with the later Court adopting Brandeis's reasoning) in Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969)

Liberty is not an option. It is a human right. Giannina Braschi, El Nuevo Dia (2012)
What is dignity? The measure of Liberty. Giannina Braschi, Yo-Yo Boing! (1998)
That the greatest security of the people, against the encroachments and usurpations of their superiors, is to keep the Spirit of Liberty constantly awake, is an undeniable truth.
- Edmund Burke, "A Free Briton's Advice to the Free Citizens of Dublin," no. 2 (1748), The Early Life, Correspondence and Writings of the Rt. Hon. Edmund Burke (1923), p. 338

The distinguishing part of our Constitution is its liberty. To preserve that liberty inviolate seems the particular duty and proper trust of a member of the House of Commons. But the liberty, the only liberty, I mean is a liberty connected with order: that not only exists along with order and virtue, but which cannot exist at all without them. It inheres in good and steady government, as in its substance and vital principle.
- Edmund Burke, speech at his arrival at Bristol (13 October 1774) in The Works of the Right Honorable Edmund Burke (1899), Vol. 2, p. 87

When I know that the colonies in general owe little or nothing to any care of ours, and that they are not squeezed into this happy form by the constraints of watchful and suspicious government, but that, through a wise and salutary neglect, a generous nature has been suffered to take her own way to perfection — when I reflect upon these effects, when I see how profitable they have been to us, I feel all the pride of power sink, and all presumption in the wisdom of human contrivances melt and die away within me — my rigour relents — I pardon something to the spirit of liberty....
- Edmund Burke, Speech on the Conciliation of America (22 March 1775); since about 1860 this has often been misquoted as: "My vigour relents. I pardon something to the spirit of liberty."

All who have ever written on government are unanimous, that among a people generally corrupt, liberty cannot long exist.
- Edmund Burke, letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol (3 April 1777), in The Works of the Right Honorable Edmund Burke (1899), Vol. 2, p. 199

The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedients, and by parts.
- Edmund Burke, letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol (3 April 1777), in The Works of the Right Honorable Edmund Burke (1899), Vol. 2, p. 199

The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.
- Edmund Burke, Speech at a County Meeting at Bucks (1784)

Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites, — in proportion as their love to justice is above their rapacity, — in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption, — in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.
- Edmund Burke, "Letter to a Member of the National Assembly" (1791) The Works of the Right Honorable Edmund Burke (1899), Vol. 4, p. 51

Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.
- Edmund Burke, in a letter to M. de Menonville (October 1789)

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.
- Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

Lay the proud usurpers low!
Tyrants fall in every foe!
Liberty's in every blow!
Let us do or die.
- Robert Burns, Bruce to His Men at Bannockburn (September 1793)

The prosperity, and social vitality and technological progress of a people are directly determined by the extent of their liberty.
- George W. Bush, Address to the National Endowment for Democracy at the United States Chamber of Commerce, Washington, D.C. (6 November 2003).

When people live in freedom, they do not willingly choose leaders who pursue campaigns of terror. When people have hope in the future, they will not cede their lives to violence and extremism. So around the world, America is promoting human liberty, human rights, and human dignity. We are standing with dissidents and young democracies, providing AIDS medicine to bring dying patients back to life, and sparing mothers and babies from malaria. And this great republic born alone in liberty is leading the world toward a new age when freedom belongs to all nations.
- George W. Bush, farewell speech to the nation (20 January 2009).

The war we fight today is more than a military conflict; it is the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century. On one side are those who believe in the values of freedom and moderation; the right of all people to speak, and worship, and live in liberty. And on the other side are those driven by the values of tyranny and extremism; the right of a self-appointed few to impose their fanatical views on all the rest. As veterans, you have seen this kind of enemy before. They're successors to Fascists, to Nazis, to Communists, and other totalitarians of the 20th century. And history shows what the outcome will be. This war will be difficult; this war will be long; and this war will end in the defeat of the terrorists and totalitarians, and a victory for the cause of freedom and liberty.
- George W. Bush, American Legion National Convention speech (31 August 2006), Salt Lake City, Utah

Eternal Spirit of the chainless Mind!
Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art,
For there thy habitation is the heart—
The heart which love of thee alone can bind;
And when thy sons to fetters are consign'd—
To fetters and damp vault's dayless gloom,
Their country conquers with their martyrdom.
- Lord Byron, Sonnet, introductory to Prisoner of Chillon

When Liberty from Greece withdrew,
And o'er the Adriatic flew,
To where the Tiber pours his urn,
She struck the rude Tarpeian rock;
Sparks were kindled by the shock—
Again thy fires began to burn.
- Henry Francis Cary, The Power of Eloquence

To those who can hear me, I say — do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed — the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people and so long as men die, liberty will never perish.
- Charlie Chaplin, The Great Dictator (1940)

Yes, while I stood and gazed, my temples bare,
And shot my being through earth, sea, and air,
Possessing all things with intensest love,
O Liberty! my spirit felt thee there.
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge, France, An Ode, V

The finest achievement of the new woman has been personal liberty. This is the foundation of civilization.
- Winnifred Harper Cooley, The New Womanhood (New York, 1904) 31f.

Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is Liberty.
- II Corinthians, III. 17

'Tis liberty alone that gives the flower
Of fleeting life its lustre and perfume;
And we are weeds without it.
- William Cowper, The Task (1785), Book V, line 446

Then liberty, like day,
Breaks on the soul, and by a flash from Heaven
Fires all the faculties with glorious joy.
- William Cowper, The Task (1785), Book V, line 882

It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt.
- John Philpot Curran, "Speech On the Right of Election" (July 10, 1790) in Speeches of John Philpot Curran (1811) "Speech of Mr. Curran, On the Right of Election of Lord Mayor of the City of Dublin, Delivered Before the Lord Lieutenant and Privy Council of Ireland, 1790". Speeches of John Philpot Curran, Esq: With a Brief Sketch of the History of Ireland a Biographical Account of Mr. Curran. 2. New York: I. Riley. 1811. pp. 235–236.
- Curran's speech is the original source for the association between "eternal vigilance" and "liberty", but it's not clear where and when the quote evolved to the more familiar form we know today: "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." Already by 1817, a toast to "Republicans" is recorded at a Fourth of July celebration in Bennington, Vt.: "To preserve your government you must be active, preserve yourselves you must be incessant—let your motto be 'eternal vigilance is the price we pay for liberty.'" (Vermont Gazette, July 8, 1817, p. 2.) Eight years later, another toast is made at a commemoration of the Battle of Bennington, this time to "The Freemen of Vermont", which gives the quote: "Let them remember that the 'price of Liberty is eternal vigilance,' and when they are called upon to give their suffrages, may they have judgment to select such man as will not bend the knee to power, or sacrifice principle on the altar of ambition." (Vermont Gazette, August 30, 1825, p. 2.)
  By 1833, a magazine calls it a "truth so often repeated" (Atkinson's Casket, Sept. 1833, 8:403). While Thomas Jefferson has sometimes been credited with this saying, there's no evidence he ever said it. US President Andrew Jackson, however, did repeat it in his farewell address (4 March 1837):

But you must remember, my fellow-citizens, that eternal vigilance by the people is the price of liberty, and that you must pay the price if you wish to secure the blessing.

Indeed nations, in general, are not apt to think until they feel; and therefore nations in general have lost their liberty.
- John Dickinson, The Political Writings of John Dickinson, Esquire Vol. I (1801), Letter XI

Liberty I will have, or die in the attempt to gain it.
- Madison Washington in The Heroic Slave by Frederick Douglass, published in Autographs for Freedom, edited by Julia Griffiths, Cleveland: John P. Jewett & Company, 1853

The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.
- Frederick Douglass, in an address on West India Emancipation (4 August 1857)

The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.
- W. E. B. Du Bois, John Brown: A Biography (1909): "The Legacy of John Brown"

The love of liberty with life is given,
And life itself the inferior gift of Heaven.
- John Dryden, Palamon and Arcite, Book II, line 291

I am a lover of liberty. I will not and I cannot serve a party. ~ Erasmus of Rotterdam

Love of liberty means the guarding of every resource that makes freedom possible--from the sanctity of our families and the wealth of our soil to the genius of our scientists.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower, First Inaugural Address (20 January 1953)

Liberty is a word which, according as it is used, comprehends the most good and the most evil of any in the world.
- Oliver Ellsworth, in "A Landholder, III" in The Connecticut Courant No. 1191, (19 November 1787), also in Essays On The Constitution Of The United States, Published During Its Discussion By The People, 1787-1788 (1892) edited by Paul Leicester Ford, p. 146

I am a lover of liberty. I will not and I cannot serve a party.
- Erasmus of Rotterdam, Spongia adversus aspergines Hutteni (1523), § 176, As quoted in Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam (1900) by Ephraim Emerton, p. 377
- Variant: I am a lover of liberty. I cannot and will not serve parties.

The history of liberty has largely been the history of the observance of procedural safeguards. And the effective administration of criminal justice hardly requires disregard of fair procedures imposed by law.
- Felix Frankfurter, Writing for the court, McNabb v. United States, 318 U.S. 332 (1943).

Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor Liberty to purchase power.
- Benjamin Franklin, in the Poor Richard's Almanack (1738)

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
- Benjamin Franklin, Pennsylvania Assembly: Reply to the Governor, November 11, 1755. The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Leonard W. Labaree, vol. 6, p. 242 (1963). This quotation, slightly altered, is inscribed on a plaque in the stairwell of the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty: "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.". See Memoirs of the Life and writings of Benjamin Franklin (1818), edited by WIlliam Temple Franklin.

The sun of liberty is set; you must light up the candle of industry and economy.
- Benjamin Franklin, in a letter from England to Charles Thompson (1764), as quoted in The Wars of America: Or, A General History of All the Important Tragic Events that Have Occurred in the United States of North America, Since the Discovery of the Western Continent by Christopher Columbus (1839) by Benjamin Eggleston, p. 156

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.
- Attributed to Jonathan Edwards in The Great Quotations by George Seldes, p. 220 (1966). Reported as unverified in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1989). In the editor's introduction to Edwards's Freedom of the Will, ed. Paul Ramsey, p. 12 (1957), is a succinct summary of a portion of Edwards's definition of terms, part 1, section 5 (p. 164): "In other words, a man is free to do what he wills, but not to do what he does not will."

Where liberty is, there is my country.
- Attributed to Benjamin Franklin; A New Dictionary of Quotations (1942) by H. L. Mencken, p. 682 gives "Where liberty dwells, there is my country," with a note that this was in a Franklin letter to Benjamin Vaughan, March 14, 1783, but the on-going project, Papers of Benjamin Franklin, has been unable to identify this letter. Alfred Owen Aldridge, Man of Reason, p. 169 (1959) says, "According to a tradition repeated by many biographers of Paine, Franklin at one time remarked in his hearing: 'Where liberty is, there is my country….'" Aldridge adds, "the story must be written off as apocryphal." Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 15th ed., p. 367 (1982), attributes this to James Otis, as his motto (Ubi libertas, ibi patria), but this has not been verified in either his speeches or biographical sources. It has also been attributed to Algernon Sidney, but has not been verified in any source.

Let us not commit ourselves to the absurd and senseless dogma that the color of the skin shall be the basis of suffrage, the talisman of liberty.
- James A. Garfield, Oration delivered at Ravenna, Ohio (4 July 1865)

Not until right is founded upon reverence, will it be secure; not until duty is based upon love, will it be complete; not until liberty is based on eternal principles, will it be full, equal, lofty, and universal.
- Henry Giles, as quoted in Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895) edited by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 378

Liberty is the power that we have over ourselves.
- Hugo Grotius. As quoted in The Word Book Complete Word Power Library, Volume 1 (1981), p. 324

The argument for liberty is not an argument against organization, which is one of the most powerful tools human reason can employ, but an argument against all exclusive, privileged, monopolistic organization, against the use of coercion to prevent others from doing better. ~ Friedrich Hayek

The greatest danger to liberty today comes from the men who are most needed and most powerful in modern government, namely, the efficient expert administrators exclusively concerned with what they regards as the public good.~ Friedrich Hayek

What do we mean when we say that first of all we seek liberty? I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon laws and upon courts. These are false hopes; believe me, these are false hopes. Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it… What is this liberty that must lie in the hearts of men and women? It is not the ruthless, the unbridled will; it is not the freedom to do as one likes. That is the denial of liberty and leads straight to its overthrow. A society in which men recognize no check on their freedom soon becomes a society where freedom is the possession of only a savage few — as we have learned to our sorrow.
- Learned Hand, in "The Spirit of Liberty" - a speech at "I Am an American Day" ceremony, Central Park, New York City (21 May 1944)

Liberty is so much latitude as the powerful choose to accord to the weak.
- Learned Hand, Speech at the University of Pennsylvania Law School (21 May 1944)

If each human being is to have liberty, he cannot also have the liberty to deprive others of their liberty.
- John Hospers, Libertarianism: A Political Philosophy for Tomorrow, Los Angeles: CA, Nash Publishing (1971) p. 13

Liberty (or freedom) is the absence of coercion by other human beings.
- John Hospers, Libertarianism: A Political Philosophy for Tomorrow, Los Angeles: CA, Nash Publishing (1971) p. 10

The fundamental source of all your errors, sophisms, and false reasonings, is a total ignorance of the natural rights of mankind. Were you once to become acquainted with these, you could never entertain a thought, that all men are not, by nature, entitled to a parity of privileges. You would be convinced, that natural liberty is a gift of the beneficent Creator, to the whole human race; and that civil liberty is founded in that; and cannot be wrested from any people, without the most manifest violation of justice. Civil liberty is only natural liberty, modified and secured by the sanctions of civil society. It is not a thing, in its own nature, precarious and dependent on human will and caprice; but it is conformable to the constitution of man, as well as necessary to the well-being of society.
- Alexander Hamilton, "The Farmer Refuted," The Works of Alexander Hamilton, ed. John C. Hamilton, vol. 2, p. 61 (1850)

What do we mean when we say that first of all we seek liberty? I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon laws and upon courts. These are false hopes; believe me, these are false hopes. Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it… What is this liberty that must lie in the hearts of men and women? It is not the ruthless, the unbridled will; it is not the freedom to do as one likes. That is the denial of liberty and leads straight to its overthrow. A society in which men recognize no check on their freedom soon becomes a society where freedom is the possession of only a savage few — as we have learned to our sorrow.
What then is the spirit of liberty? I cannot define it; I can only tell you my own faith. The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the minds of other men and women; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which weighs their interests alongside its own without bias; the spirit of liberty remembers that not even a sparrow falls to earth unheeded; the spirit of liberty is the spirit of Him who, near two thousand years ago, taught mankind that lesson it has never learned, but has never quite forgotten; that there may be a kingdom where the least shall be heard and considered side by side with the greatest.
- Learned Hand, in "The Spirit of Liberty", a speech at an "I Am an American Day" ceremony, Central Park, New York City (21 May 1944), as published in The Spirit of Liberty, 3d edition (1960), edited by Irving Dilliard, p. 190

All political theories assume, of course, that most individuals are very ignorant. Those who plead for liberty differ from the rest in that they include among the ignorant themselves as well as the wisest.
- Friedrich Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty (1960), p. 30

The argument for liberty is not an argument against organization, which is one of the most powerful tools human reason can employ, but an argument against all exclusive, privileged, monopolistic organization, against the use of coercion to prevent others from doing better.
- Friedrich Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty (1960), p. 37

Justice, like liberty and coercion, is a concept which, for the sake of clarity, ought to be confined to the deliberate treatment of men by other men.
- Friedrich Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty (1960), p. 99

It would scarcely be an exaggeration to say that the greatest danger to liberty today comes from the men who are most needed and most powerful in modern government, namely, the efficient expert administrators exclusively concerned with what they regards as the public good.
- Friedrich Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty (1960), p. 262

The great aim of the struggle for liberty has been equality before the law.
- Friedrich Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty (1960)

Liberty not only means that the individual has both the opportunity and the burden of choice; it also means that he must bear the consequences of his actions … Liberty and responsibility are inseparable.
- Friedrich Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty (1960)

"Emergencies" have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded.
- Friedrich Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty, Vol. 2 : The Mirage of Social Justice (1976)

Liberty is the only true riches.
- William Hazlitt, From 'Common Places' (1823): vol. 20, p. 122, in The Complete Works of William Hazlitt, ed. P. P. Howe (London and Toronto, 1930-4)

There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations, and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave…. It is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren, till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst and provide for it.... It is vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, peace, peace—but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God!— I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!
- Patrick Henry, Speech on the Federal Constitution, Virginia Ratifying Convention (5 June 1788), 9th ed., p. 141–42 (1836, reprinted 1970). The Biblical allusion is from Jeremiah 6:14. "While there is no doubt as to the general effect of Henry's speech, questions as to its actual wording are not so easily disposed of. Not only is there no manuscript copy of the oration, there is no stenographic report…. It was not until some forty years later that William Wirt first reprinted a reconstruction of Henry's oration. In the absence of contemporary written information" there was much criticism of Wirt's text. Wirt collected much of the information for his biography of Patrick Henry "when many of Henry's auditors at St. John's [church] were still in their clear-minded fifties or sixties." Wirt collected information from "intelligent and reliable" auditors, including John Tyler, Judge St. George Tucker, and Edmund Randolph. "Wirt's text was based on a few very helpful sources plus many bits of information. He had ample proof for certain burning phrases … a remarkable resemblance to Henry's other speeches during that period," the fact that the speech conforms to others in "oratorical style and technique, even in the use of Biblical quotations or analogies. Of course, Wirt may have used fragments" from earlier speeches for the reconstruction. "Yet the information on the text as a whole is more precise than for many other great speeches in history." Robert Douthat Meade, Patrick Henry, Practical Revolutionary, vol. 2, p. 38–40 (1969). "I can find no evidence that Patrick Henry's 'Give me liberty, or give me death' went ringing round the country in 1775, when he thus burst forth to the Virginia delegates, or in fact that it was quoted at all until after William Wirt's official life in 1817." Carroll A. Wilson, "Familiar 'Small College' Quotations, II: Mark Hopkins and the Log," The Colophon, spring 1938, p. 204

Is the relinquishment of the trial by jury and the liberty of the press necessary for your liberty? Will the abandonment of your most sacred rights tend to the security of your liberty? Liberty, the greatest of all earthly blessings — give us that precious jewel, and you may take every thing else!… Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel.
- Patrick Henry, Speech on the Federal Constitution, Virginia Ratifying Convention, Richmond, Virginia (5 June 1788), as published in The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution (1836, reprinted 1937), edited by Jonathan Elliot, Vol. 3, p. 45
- Variant: Suspicion is a virtue as long as its object is the public good, and as long as it stays within proper bounds. … Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel.
- This has sometimes been paraphrased as: "Suspicion is a virtue if it is in the interests of the good of the people."

If there is one subject in this world worthy of being discussed, worthy of being understood, it is the question of intellectual liberty. Without that, we are simply painted clay; without that, we are poor, miserable serfs and slaves. ~ Robert G. Ingersoll

Take the word Liberty from human speech and all the other words become poor, withered, meaningless sounds — but with that word realized — with that word understood, the world becomes a paradise. ~ Robert G. Ingersoll

One of the qualities of liberty is that, as long as it is being striven after, it goes on expanding. Therefore, the man who stands still in the midst of the struggle and says, "I have it," merely shows by so doing that he has just lost it.
- Henrik Ibsen, Letter to Georg Brandes (17 February 1871), as translated in Henrik Ibsen : Björnstjerne Björnson. Critical Studies (1899) by Georg Morris Cohen Brandes

There is no slavery but ignorance. Liberty is the child of intelligence.
The history of man is simply the history of slavery, of injustice and brutality, together with the means by which he has, through the dead and desolate years, slowly and painfully advanced.
- Robert G. Ingersoll, The Liberty of Man, Woman and Child (1877)

There has never been upon the earth a generation of free men and women. It is not yet time to write a creed. Wait until the chains are broken — until dungeons are not regarded as temples. Wait until solemnity is not mistaken for wisdom — until mental cowardice ceases to be known as reverence. Wait until the living are considered the equals of the dead — until the cradle takes precedence of the coffin. Wait until what we know can be spoken without regard to what others may believe. Wait until teachers take the place of preachers — until followers become investigators. Wait until the world is free before you write a creed.
In this creed there will be but one word — Liberty.
- Robert G. Ingersoll, The Liberty of Man, Woman and Child (1877)

The most important thing in this world is liberty. More important than food or clothes — more important than gold or houses or lands — more important than art or science — more important than all religions, is the liberty of man.
- Robert G. Ingersoll, in an appeal to the jury in the trial of C.B. Reynolds for blasphemy (May 1887)

I am a believer in liberty. That is my religion — to give to every other human being every right that I claim for myself, and I grant to every other human being, not the right — because it is his right — but instead of granting I declare that it is his right, to attack every doctrine that I maintain, to answer every argument that I may urge — in other words, he must have absolute freedom of speech.
- Robert G. Ingersoll, at the trial of C.B. Reynolds for blasphemy (May 1887)

If there is one subject in this world worthy of being discussed, worthy of being understood, it is the question of intellectual liberty. Without that, we are simply painted clay; without that, we are poor, miserable serfs and slaves.
- Robert G. Ingersoll, at the trial of C.B. Reynolds for blasphemy (May 1887)

The liberty of man is of far more importance than any book; the rights of man, more sacred than any religion — than any Scriptures, whether inspired or not.
- Robert G. Ingersoll, at the trial of C.B. Reynolds for blasphemy (May 1887)

What light is to the eyes, what love is to the heart, Liberty is to the soul of man. Without it, there come suffocation, degradation and death.
- Robert G. Ingersoll, at the trial of C.B. Reynolds for blasphemy (May 1887)

Liberty is the condition of progress. Without Liberty, there remains only barbarism. Without Liberty, there can be no civilization.
If another man has not the right to think, you have not even the right to think that he thinks wrong. If every man has not the right to think, the people of New Jersey had no right to make a statute, or to adopt a constitution — no jury has the right to render a verdict, and no court to pass its sentence.
In other words, without liberty of thought, no human being has the right to form a judgment. It is impossible that there should be such a thing as real religion without liberty. Without liberty there can be no such thing as conscience, no such word as justice. All human actions — all good, all bad — have for a foundation the idea of human liberty, and without Liberty there can be no vice, and there can be no virtue.
Without Liberty there can be no worship, no blasphemy — no love, no hatred, no justice, no progress.
Take the word Liberty from human speech and all the other words become poor, withered, meaningless sounds — but with that word realized — with that word understood, the world becomes a paradise.
- Robert G. Ingersoll, at the trial of C.B. Reynolds for blasphemy (May 1887)

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is its natural manure. ~ Thomas Jefferson

The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time: the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them.
- Thomas Jefferson, Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774)

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
- Thomas Jefferson, in the US Declaration of Independence (4 July 1776)

Add to the Empire of liberty an extensive and fertile Country thereby converting dangerous Enemies into valuable friends.
- Thomas Jefferson, Letter to George Rogers Clark (25 December 1780).

The British ministry have so long hired their gazetteers to repeat and model into every form lies about our being in anarchy, that the world has at length believed them, the English nation has believed them, the ministers themselves have come to believe them, & what is more wonderful, we have believed them ourselves. Yet where does this anarchy exist? Where did it ever exist, except in the single instance of Massachusetts? And can history produce an instance of a rebellion so honourably conducted? I say nothing of its motives. They were founded in ignorance, not wickedness. God forbid we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, & always, well informed. The past which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive; if they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. We have had 13 states independent 11 years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century & a half for each state. What country before ever existed a century & half without a rebellion? & What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is its natural manure.
- Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to William S. Smith (13 November 1787), The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Julian P. Boyd, vol. 12, p. 356 (1955)
- Comparable to:
- "L'arbre de la liberté… croît lorsqu'il est arrosé du sang de toute espèce de tyrans or L'arbre de la liberté ne croit qu'arrosé par le sang des tyrans.
  - The tree of liberty grows only when watered by the blood of tyrants.
    - Bertrand Barère de Vieuzac, speech in the Convention Nationale (16 January 1793), Archives Parliamentaires de 1787 à 1860, vol. 57, p. 368 (1900)
- "Plures efficimur quotiens metimur a vobis; semen est sanguis Christianorum.
  - We multiply whenever we are mown down by you; the blood of Christians is seed.
    - Tertullian, in Apology, as translated by T. R. Glover (1931), p. 226–27

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground. As yet our spirits are free.
- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Colonel Carrington (27 May 1788)

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.
- Thomas Jefferson, to Archibald Stewart (23 December 1791), The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (1895), edited by Paul L. Ford, Vol. 5, p. 409

It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.
- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Benjamin Rush (21 April 1803) The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (1895), edited by Paul L. Ford, Vol. 8, p. 224, footnote 1 (1897)

Of liberty I would say that, in the whole plenitude of its extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will. But rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.
- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Isaac H. Tiffany (4 April 1819)

God who gave us life gave us liberty.¹ Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever.² Commerce between master and slave is despotism.³ Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free.⁴ Establish the law for educating the common people.⁵ This it is the business of the State to effect and on a general plan.⁶
- Thomas Jefferson, Inscription on the northeast quadrant of the Jefferson Memorial, Washington, D.C., selected by the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Commission, from several writings of Jefferson's. The inscription omits words without ellipses. Note 1. "Draft of Instructions to the Virginia Delegates in the Continental Congress," The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Julian P. Boyd, vol. 1, p. 135 (1950). Note 2. "Notes on the State of Virginia," query 18, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Paul L. Ford, vol. 3, p. 267 (1894). Note 3. Ibid., p. 266. Note 4. "Autobiography," in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Andrew A. Lipscomb, vol. 1, p. 72 (1903). Note 5. Letter to George Wythe, August 13, 1786. The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Julian P. Boyd, vol. 10, p. 245 (1954). Note 6. Letter to George Washington, January 4, 1785 (i.e., 1786). The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Julian P. Boyd, vol. 9, p. 151 (1954)

As so often before, liberty has been wounded in the house of its friends. Liberty in the wild and freakish hands of fanatics has once more, as frequently in the past, proved the effective helpmate of autocracy and the twin-brother of tyranny.
- Otto Hermann Kahn, speech at University of Wisconsin (14 January 1918)

The deadliest foe of democracy is not autocracy but liberty frenzied. Liberty is not foolproof. For its beneficent working it demands self-restraint, a sane and clear recognition of the practical and attainable, and of the fact that there are laws of nature which are beyond our power to change.
- Otto Hermann Kahn, speech at University of Wisconsin (14 January 1918)

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
- John F. Kennedy's in his Inaugural address, Washington D.C. (20 January 1961). This is one of seven quotes inscribed on the walls at the gravesite of John F. Kennedy at Arlington National Cemetery.

All students, members of the faculty, and public officials in both Mississippi and the Nation will be able, it is hoped, to return to their normal activities with full confidence in the integrity of American law. This is as it should be, for our Nation is founded on the principle that observance of the law is the eternal safeguard of liberty and defiance of the law is the surest road to tyranny.
- John F. Kennedy's Radio and Television Report to the Nation on the Situation at the University of Mississippi (30 September 1962)

The essence of Vanderbilt is still learning, the essence of its outlook is still liberty, and liberty and learning will be and must be the touchstones of Vanderbilt University and of any free university in this country or the world. I say two touchstones, yet they are almost inseparable, inseparable if not indistinguishable, for liberty without learning is always in peril, and learning without liberty is always in vain.
- John F. Kennedy's Remarks in Nashville at the 90th Anniversary Convocation of Vanderbilt University (18 May 1963)

But Goethe tells us in his greatest poem that Faust lost the liberty of his soul when he said to the passing moment: "Stay, thou art so fair." And our liberty, too, is endangered if we pause for the passing moment, if we rest on our achievements, if we resist the pace of progress. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past are certain to miss the future.
- John F. Kennedy, in a speech at Paulskirche in Frankfurt, West Germany (25 June 1963); as printed in John Fitzgerald Kennedy, The Burden and the Glory (1964), p. 115
- Variant: Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.
  - Documents on International Affairs, 1963, Royal Institute of International Affairs, ed. Sir John Wheeler Wheeler-Bennett, p. 36
- Variant: But Goethe tells us in his greatest poem that Faust lost the liberty of his soul when he said to the passing moment: "Stay, thou art so fair." And our liberty, too, is endangered if we pause for the passing moment, if we rest on our achievements, if we resist the pace of progress. For time and the world do not stand still. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.
  - John F. Kennedy: "Address in the Assembly Hall at the Paulskirche in Frankfurt," (25 June 1963)

It is a question not often considered, whether we are not just as independent when we choose an upright and godly course, even if our fathers did walk in it, as when we follow somebody's example in sin. Indeed the highest and truest independence is that which always elects to do right.
- Henry M. King, as quoted in Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895) edited by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 377

The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty. Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of liberty. ~ Abraham Lincoln

Liberty has restraints but no frontiers. ~ David Lloyd George

To one however who adores liberty, and the noble virtues of which it is the parent, there is some consolation in seeing, while we lament the fall of British liberty, the rise of that of America. Yes, my friend, like a young phoenix she will rise full plumed and glorious from her mother's ashes.
- Arthur Lee, letter to Samuel Adams, December 24, 1772. Richard Henry Lee, Life of Arthur Lee, vol. 1, p. 225 (1829, reprinted 1969). Adams repeated the striking phrase in a letter to Lee, April 9, 1773: "But America 'shall rise full plumed and glorious from her Mothers Ashes.'" The Writings of Samuel Adams, ed. Harry A. Cushing, vol. 3, p. 21 (1907, reprinted 1968)

Malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium.
- I prefer liberty with danger to slavery with security.
- Rafał Leszczyński in the Polish Senate, according to his son, Stanisław Leszczyński (King Stanislas of Poland) in La voix libre du citoyen, ou Observations sur le gouvernement de Pologne (1749), p. 135
- Variant translations:
- I prefer liberty with danger to peace with slavery.
- I prefer the tumult of liberty to the quiet of servitude.
- I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery.

And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof…
- Leviticus 25:10; famous statement of the Jubilee year, inscribed on the Liberty Bell. Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1989) notes: "In a letter written by a committee of the Pennsylvania Provincial Assembly, 1 Nov., 1751, ordering a bell for the tower of the new State House, it was directed that this quotation from the Bible should be inscribed around it 'well-shaped in large letters.'" The Home Book of Quotations, 10th ed., ed. Burton Stevenson, p. 1104–5 (1967). The bell was ordered to celebrate fifty years of William Penn's Charter of Privileges. Penn left England in 1699 to return to America, where he drew up a document known as the Charter of Privileges, which was confirmed by the Assembly on October 28, 1701, and "remained substantially the fundamental law of Pennsylvania until 1776." [Federal] Writer's Program, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania: A Guide to the Keystone State, p. 30 (1940). The verse above is more fitting for a fiftieth anniversary than it appears, for it begins: And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year …" This bell, known as the Liberty Bell since about 1839, was rung July 8, 1776, with other church bells, announcing the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. The bell may be seen in Liberty Bell Pavilion, just north of Independence Hall in Philadelphia. These words are also inscribed on a plaque in the stairwell of the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty.

The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty. Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of liberty.
- Abraham Lincoln, Speeches and Letters of Abraham Lincoln, 1832-1865, p. 138.

What constitutes the bulwark of our own liberty and independence? It is not our frowning battlements, our bristling sea coasts, the guns of our war steamers, or the strength our gallant and disciplined army? These are not our reliance against a resumption of tyranny in our fair land. All of those may be turned against our liberties, without making us weaker or stronger for the struggle. Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in our bosoms. Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere. Destroy this spirit, and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors. Familiarize yourselves with the chains of bondage and you are preparing your own limbs to wear them. Accustomed to trample on the rights of those around you, you have lost the genius of your own independence, and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises.
- Abraham Lincoln, speech at Edwardsville, Illinois (11 September 1858);The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (1953), edited by Roy P. Basler, Vol. 3, p. 95. The last two sentences appear in slightly varying form inscribed on a plaque in the stairwell of the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty: "Our defense is in the spirit which prized liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism at your own doors." -->
  - Variant of the above quote: What constitutes the bulwark of our own liberty and independence? It is not our frowning battlements, our bristling sea coasts, our army and our navy. These are not our reliance against tyranny All of those may be turned against us without making us weaker for the struggle. Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in us. Our defense is in the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism at your own doors. Familiarize yourselves with the chains of bondage and you prepare your own limbs to wear them. Accustomed to trample on the rights of others, you have lost the genius of your own independence and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises among you.
    - Fragment of Speech at Edwardsville, Illinois (13 September 1858); quoted in Lincoln, Abraham; The Writings of Abraham Lincoln V05) p. 6-7

The Democracy of to-day hold the liberty of one man to be absolutely nothing, when in conflict with another man's right of property. Republicans, on the contrary, are for both the man and the dollar; but in cases of conflict, the man before the dollar.
- Abraham Lincoln, letter to Henry L. Pierce and others (6 April 1859), The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (1953), edited by Roy P. Basler, vol. 3, p. 375

The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men's labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatable things, called by the same name — liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatable names — liberty and tyranny.
- President Abraham Lincoln, address at sanitary fair, Baltimore, Maryland (18 April 1864), as quoted in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler, vol. 7, p. 301–2 (1953)

Liberty is not merely a privilege to be conferred; it is a habit to be acquired.
- David Lloyd George, Speech in the House of Commons, (10 May 1928)

Liberty has restraints but no frontiers.
- David Lloyd George, Speech at Aberystwyth, (3 August 1928)

Libertas, inquit, populi quem regna coercent,
Libertate perit.
- The liberty of the people, he says, whom power restrains unduly, perishes through liberty.
- Lucanus, Pharsalia, Book III. 146

Libertas ultima mundi
Quo steterit ferienda loco.
- The remaining liberty of the world was to be destroyed in the place where it stood.
- Marcus Annaeus Lucanus, Pharsalia, VII. 580

Liberty divorced from intelligence, common sense, and a good heart is a terrible thing.
- Yevgeny Leonov, from his last interview (1992)

Liberty hath a sharp and double edge, fit only to be handled by just and virtuous men. ~ John Milton

When liberty is headlong girl
And runs her roads and wends her ways
Liberty will shriek and whirl
Her showery torch to see it blaze.
When liberty is wedded wife
And keeps the barn and counts the byre
Liberty amends her life.
She drowns her torch for fear of fire.
- Archibald Macleish, "Liberty", Collected Poems 1917–1952 (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1952)

Justice is the end of Government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been, and ever will be pursued, until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit.
- James Madison, Federalist No. 51 (6 June 1788) · Full text online

Humanity has gained its suit; Liberty will nevermore be without an asylum.
- Gilbert du Motier, marquis de Lafayette in a letter to friends, on the American Revolution (1780), published in Memoirs de La Fayette Vol. II, p. 50, quoted in Martin's History of France : The Decline of the French Monarchy (1866) by Henri Martin, Vol. II, p. 418

Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else; hence the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits except those which assure to the other members of the society the enjoyment of the same rights.
- Gilbert du Motier, marquis de Lafayette, Declaration of the Rights of Man (1789)

Liberty is the right of every man to be honest, to think and to speak without hypocrisy.
- José Martí, My Race (1893), "Mi Raza", first published in Patria (16 April 1893) Full translation online

Liberty the essence of life. Whatever is done without it is imperfect.
- José Martí, My Race (1893), "Mi Raza", first published in Patria (16 April 1893) Full translation online

Man loves liberty, even if he does not know that he loves it. He is driven by it and flees from where it does not exist.
- José Martí, My Race (1893), "Mi Raza", first published in Patria (16 April 1893) Full translation online

Perhaps the enemies of liberty are such only because they judge it by its loud voice. If they knew its charms, the dignity that accompanies it, how much a free man feels like a king, the perpetual inner light that is produced by decorous self-awareness and realization, perhaps there would be no greater friends of freedom than those who are its worst enemies.
- José Martí, My Race (1893), "Mi Raza", first published in Patria (16 April 1893) Full translation online

The degree of our worthiness to become a free people shall be determined by our ability to respect a lawful leader, to agree to the existence of an opposition, to listen to its arguments, and especially to put the nation's good above all party prejudices and private interest. Liberty is not one of man's inalienable rights' it is a desirable but difficult acquisition, and must be contended for constantly.
- André Maurois, The Art of Living (1939)

In necessariis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus caritas
- Unity in things Necessary, Liberty in things Unnecessary, and Charity in all.
- Rupertus Meldenius (Peter Meiderlin) in Paraenesis votiva pro Pace Ecclesiae ad Theologos Augustanae Confessionis, Auctore Ruperto Meldenio Theologo (c. 1627). Some forms of this statement have been attributed to Richard Baxter, but though he used the motto, he himself attributed it to Meldenius.

I believe in only one thing and that thing is human liberty. If ever a man is to achieve anything like dignity, it can happen only if superior men are given absolute freedom to think what they want to think and say what they want to say. I am against any man and any organization which seeks to limit or deny that freedom … the superior man can be sure of freedom only if it is given to all men.
- H. L. Mencken, as quoted in Letters of H. L. Mencken (1961) edited by Guy J. Forgue, p. xiii

The struggle between Liberty and Authority is the most conspicuous feature in the portions of history with which we are earliest familiar, particularly in that of Greece, Rome, and England.
- [[John Stuart Mill], On Liberty (1859) Ch. 1

That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant.
- John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859)

I did but prompt the age to quit their clogs
By the known rules of ancient liberty,
When straight a barbarous noise environs me
Of owls and cuckoos, asses, apes, and dogs;
As when those hinds that were transformed to frogs
Railed at Latona's twin-born progeny,
Which after held the sun and moon in fee.
But this is got by easting pearl to hogs.
That bawl for freedom in their senseless mood,
And still revolt when Truth would set them free.
License they mean when they cry, Liberty!
For who loves that, must first be wise and good.
- John Milton, Sonnet XII : On the same (1654), this follows Sonnet XI : "On the Detraction which followed upon my Writing Certain Treatises

Justly thou abhorr'st
That son, who on the quiet state of men
Such trouble brought, affecting to subdue
Rational liberty; yet know withal,
Since thy original lapse, true liberty
Is lost.
- John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book XII, line 79

For stories teach us, that liberty sought out of season, in a corrupt and degenerate age, brought Rome itself to a farther slavery: for liberty hath a sharp and double edge, fit only to be handled by just and virtuous men; to bad and dissolute, it becomes a mischief unwieldy in their own hands: neither is it completely given, but by them who have the happy skill to know what is grievance and unjust to a people, and how to remove it wisely; what good laws are wanting, and how to frame them substantially, that good men may enjoy the freedom which they merit, and the bad the curb which they need.
- John Milton, The Prose Works of John Milton, Volume II, Book III. (1847)

The gold standard was the world standard of the age of capitalism, increasing welfare, liberty, and democracy, both political and economic. In the eyes of the free traders its main eminence was precisely the fact that it was an international standard as required by international trade and the transactions of the international money and capital market. It was the medium of exchange by means of which Western industrialism and Western capital had borne Western civilization into the remotest parts of the earth's surface, everywhere destroying the fetters of age-old prejudices and superstitions, sowing the seeds of new life and new well-being, freeing minds and souls, and creating riches unheard of before.
- Ludwig von Mises, chapter 17 of Human Action: The Scholar's Edition, as quoted in The Gold Standard, Mises Institute

There is no word that has admitted of more various significations, and has made more different impressions on human minds, than that of Liberty. Some have taken it for a facility of deposing a person on whom they had conferred a tyrannical authority; others for the power of choosing a person whom they are obliged to obey; others for the right of bearing arms, and of being thereby enabled to use violence, others in fine for the privilege of being governed by a native of their own country or by their own laws.
Some have annexed this name to one form of government, in exclusion of others: Those who had a republican taste, applied it to this government; those who liked a monarchical state, gave it to monarchies. Thus they all have applied the name of liberty to the government most conformable to their own customs and inclinations: and as in a republic people have not so constant and so present a view of the instruments of the evils they complain of, and likewise as the laws seem there to speak more, and the executors of the laws less, it is generally attributed to republics, and denied to monarchies. In fine as in democracies the people seem to do very near whatever they please, liberty has been placed in this sort of government, and the power of the people has been confounded with their liberty.
- Charles de Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws (1748)

The Spirit of God first imparts love; He next inspires hope, and then gives liberty; and that is about the last thing we have in a good many of our churches at the present time.
- Dwight L. Moody, as quoted in Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895) edited by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 379

Oh! if there be, on this earthly sphere,
A boon, an offering Heaven holds dear,
'Tis the last libation Liberty draws
From the heart that bleeds and breaks in her cause!
- Thomas Moore, Lalla Rookh (1817), Paradise and the Peri, Stanza 11

Liberty is too priceless to be forfeited through the zeal of an administrative agent.
- Frank Murphy, Oklahoma Press Publishing Co. v. Walling, 327 U.S. 186, 219 (1946)

The last end that can happen to any man, never comes too soon, if he falls in support of the law and liberty of his country: for liberty is synonymous to law and government.
- Lord Mansfield, Rex v. Wilkes (1769), 4 Burr. Part IV., p. 2563

True liberty can exist only when justice is equally administered to all.
- Lord Mansfield, as quoted in Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895) edited by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 379

Sacrificing anonymity may be the next generation's price for keeping precious liberty, as prior generations paid in blood.
- Harl Noby, in The Transparent Society (1998), p. 3.

Jesus wanted to liberate everyone from the law — from all laws. But this could not be achieved by abolishing or changing the law. He had to dethrone the law. He had to ensure that the law be man’s servant and not his master (Mark 2:27-28). Man must therefore take responsibility for his servant, the law, and use it to serve the needs of mankind.
- Albert Nolan, Jesus Before Christianity: The Gospel of Liberation (1976), p. 72

If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. ~ George Orwell

There was a recognition by all who participated in these reviews that the challenges to our privacy do not come from government alone. Corporations of all shapes and sizes track what you buy, store and analyze our data, and use it for commercial purposes; that’s how those targeted ads pop up on your computer and your smartphone periodically. But all of us understand that the standards for government surveillance must be higher. Given the unique power of the state, it is not enough for leaders to say: Trust us, we won’t abuse the data we collect. For history has too many examples when that trust has been breached. Our system of government is built on the premise that our liberty cannot depend on the good intentions of those in power; it depends on the law to constrain those in power.
- Barack Obama, Remarks by the President on Review of Signals Intelligence (17 June 2014) at the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C.

If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
- George Orwell, Original preface to Animal Farm; as published in George Orwell : Some Materials for a Bibliography (1953) by Ian R. Willison

It is a clear truth that those who every day barter away other men's liberty will soon care little for their own.
- James Otis, The Rights of the British Colonies (1764).

[T]hough the flame of liberty may sometimes cease to shine, the coal can never expire...
- Thomas Paine, as quoted in The Crisis No. I (23 December 1776).

He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.
- Thomas Paine, "Dissertation on First Principles of Government" (1795), The Writings of Thomas Paine (1895), edited by Moncure D. Conway, Vol. 3, p. 277

Freedom had been hunted round the globe; reason was considered as rebellion; and the slavery of fear had made men afraid to think. But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, — and all it wants, — is the liberty of appearing. The sun needs no inscription to distinguish him from darkness; and no sooner did the American governments display themselves to the world, than despotism felt a shock and man began to contemplate redress.
- Thomas Paine, Part 2.2 Introduction, p. 155

The philosophy of anarchism is included in the word "Liberty"; yet it is comprehensive enough to include all things else that are conducive to progress. No barriers whatever to human progression, to thought, or investigation are placed by anarchism; nothing is considered so true or so certain, that future discoveries may not prove it false; therefore, it has but one infallible, unchangeable motto, "Freedom." Freedom to discover any truth, freedom to develop, to live naturally and fully.
- Lucy Parsons, The Principles of Anarchism, lecture printed without date of publication sometime in the 1890s

Most anarchists believe the coming change can only come through a revolution, because the possessing class will not allow a peaceful change to take place; still we are willing to work for peace at any price, except at the price of liberty.
- Lucy Parsons, The Principles of Anarchism, lecture printed without date of publication sometime in the 1890s

Order can only exist where liberty prevails.
- Lucy Parsons, The Principles of Anarchism, lecture printed without date of publication sometime in the 1890s

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty — power is ever stealing from the many to the few…. The hand entrusted with power becomes … the necessary enemy of the people. Only by continual oversight can the democrat in office be prevented from hardening into a despot: only by unintermitted Agitation can a people be kept sufficiently awake to principle not to let liberty be smothered in material prosperity.
- Wendell Phillips, speech in Boston, Massachusetts (28 January 1852), Speeches Before the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society (1853), p. 13. The memorable and oft-quoted phrase, "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty," was not in quotation marks in the printed edition of this speech. The Home Book of Quotations, ed. Burton Stevenson, 9th ed., p. 1106 (1964), notes that "It has been said that Mr. Phillips was quoting Thomas Jefferson, but in a letter dated 14 April, 1879, Mr. Phillips wrote: '"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty" has been attributed to Jefferson, but no one has yet found it in his works or elsewhere.' It has also been attributed to Patrick Henry."

Liberty knows nothing but victories.
- Wendell Phillips, lecture delivered at Brooklyn, New York, November 1, 1859, published in Speeches, Letters and Lectures by Wendell Phillips (1884), p. 274.

Less glory is more liberty. When the drum is silent, reason sometimes speaks.
- Albert Pike, Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (1871), Ch. I : Apprentice, The Twelve-Inch Rule and Common Gavel, p. 1

Give me again my hollow tree
A crust of bread, and liberty!
- Alexander Pope, Imitations of Horace, Book II, Satire VI, line 220

I say, then, that liberty, like intelligence, is naturally an undetermined, unformed faculty, which gets its value and character later from external impressions, — a faculty, therefore, which is negative at the beginning, but which gradually defines and outlines itself by exercise, — I mean, by education.
The etymology of the word liberty, at least as I understand it, will serve still better to explain my thought. The root is lib-et, he pleases (German, lieben, to love); whence have been constructed lib-eri, children, those dear to us, a name reserved for the children of the father of a family; lib-ertas, the condition, character, or inclination of children of a noble race; lib-ido, the passion of a slave, who knows neither God nor law nor country, synonymous with licentia, evil conduct. When spontaneity takes a useful, generous, or beneficent direction, it is called libertas; when, on the contrary, it takes a harmful, vicious, base, or evil direction, it is called libido.
- Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, The Philosophy of Poverty, Chapter IV

It is incorrect to think of liberty as synonymous with unrestrained action. Liberty does not and cannot include any action, regardless of sponsorship, which lessens the liberty of a single human being. To argue contrarily is to claim that liberty can be composed of liberty negations, patently absurd. Unrestraint carried to the point of impairing the liberty of others is the exercise of license, not liberty. To minimize the exercise of license is to maximize the area of liberty. Ideally, government would restrain license, not indulge in it; make it difficult, not easy; disgraceful, not popular. A government that does otherwise is licentious, not liberal.
- Leonard E. Read, The Freeman

Information is the oxygen of the modern age. It seeps through the walls topped by barbed wire, it wafts across the electrified borders.…The Goliath of totalitarianism will be brought down by the David of the microchip.
- Ronald Reagan, The Guardian [London] (14 June 1989)

This is the true liberty of Christ, when a free man binds himself in love to duty. Not in shrinking from our distasteful occupations, but in fulfilling them, do we realize our high origin.
- Frederick William Robertson, as quoted in Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895) edited by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 378

O Liberté, que de crimes on commet en ton nom!
- O Liberty, how many crimes are committed in thy name!
  - Madame Roland, on being led to her execution, sometimes stated to have been directed at a specific statue of Liberty, in Memoirs, Appendix; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), and in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922); used by Thomas Babington Macaulay, Essay on Mirabeau.
- Variants:
- O liberté, comme on t'a jouée!
  - O Liberty, how thou hast been played with!
    - As quoted in Letters Containing a Sketch of the Politics of France (1795) by Helen Maria Williams, Vol. 1, p. 201

I should be as unwilling as any man to concur in anything injurious to the rights of the subject. The Habeas Corpus is a very wise and beneficial statute: and the Judges have always been disposed to put such a construction upon it as will favour the real liberty of the subject. But we must be careful that those Acts which have been made for the benefit of the subject are not turned into engines of oppression: nor must we, under the idea of promoting general liberty, withhold that degree of favour from individuals which is consistent with the security of the public.
- Giles Rooke, J., in Huntley v. Luscombe (1801), 1 Bos. and Pull. Rep. 538.

Freedom is nothing but a vain phantom when one class of men can starve another with impunity. Equality is nothing but a vain phantom when the rich, through monopoly, exercise the right of life or death over their like. The republic is nothing but a vain phantom when the counter-revolution can operate every day through the price of commodities, which three quarters of all citizens cannot afford without shedding tears.
- Jacques Roux, Scripta et Acta. Textes presentés par Walter Markov. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin, 1969;

Liberty is not a cruise ship full of pampered passengers. Liberty is a man-of-war, and we are all crew.
- Kenneth W. Royce, in Boston's Gun Bible (2000)

That treacherous phantom which men call Liberty.
- John Ruskin, Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849), Ch. VIII, Section XXI

Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate.
- Bertrand Russell, Sceptical Essays (1928), Ch. 13: Freedom in Society

Too little liberty brings stagnation, and too much brings chaos.
- Bertrand Russell, Authority and the Individual (1949), p. 37

The real disturbers of the peace are those who, in a free state, seek to curtail the liberty of judgment which they are unable to tyrannize over. ~ Baruch Spinoza

Few men desire liberty; most men wish only for a just master.
- Sallust (Gaius Sallustius Crispus) in Histories

Do you wish to be free? Then above all things, love God, love your neighbor, love one another, love the common weal; then you will have true liberty.
- Girolamo Savonarola, as quoted in Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895) edited by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 378

I must have liberty
Withal, as large a charter as the wind,
To blow on whom I please.
- William Shakespeare, As You Like It (c.1599-1600), Act II, scene 7, line 47

Why, headstrong liberty is lash'd with woe;
There's nothing, situate under heaven's eye
But hath his bound, in earth, in sea, in sky.
- William Shakespeare, The Comedy of Errors, Act II, scene 1, line 15

So every bondman in his own hand bears
The power to cancel his captivity.
- William Shakespeare, Julius Cæsar (1599), Act I, scene 3, line 101

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
- George Bernard Shaw, "Maxims for Revolutionists," appendix 2 to Man and Superman, in The Collected Works of Bernard Shaw, vol. 10, p. 218 (1930)

The only rational liberty is that which is born of subjection, reared in the fear of God and the love of man, and made courageous in the defense of a trust and the prosecution of duty.
- William G. Simms, as quoted in Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895) edited by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 378

What matters for individual liberty is not the source of law but its extent.
- Quentin Skinner, describing the view of Hobbes, Liberty Before Liberalism (1998), p. 85

Liberty — precious boon of Heaven — is meek and reasonable. She admits, that she belongs to all — to the high and the low; the rich and the poor; the black and the white — and, that she belongs to them all equally…. But true liberty acknowledges and defends the equal rights of all men, and all nations.
- Gerrit Smith, remarks in the House of Representatives (27 June 1854), Congressional Globe, vol. 23, Appendix, p. 1016

Deep in the frozen regions of the north,
A goddess violated brought thee forth,
Immortal Liberty!
- Tobias Smollett, Ode to Independence, line 5

The ultimate aim of government is not to rule, or restrain, by fear, nor to exact obedience, but contrariwise, to free every man from fear, that he may live in all possible security; in other words, to strengthen his natural right to exist and work without injury to himself or others.
No, the object of government is not to change men from rational beings into beasts or puppets, but to enable them to develop their minds and bodies in security, and to employ their reason unshackled; neither showing hatred, anger, or deceit, nor watched with the eyes of jealousy and injustice. In fact, the true aim of government is liberty.
- Baruch Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise (1670), Ch. 20, That In a Free State Every Man May Think What He Likes, and Say What He Thinks
- Variant translation: The last end of the state is not to dominate men, nor to restrain them by fear; rather it is so to free each man from fear that he may live and act with full security and without injury to himself or his neighbor. The end of the state, I repeat, is not to make rational beings into brute beasts and machines. It is to enable their bodies and their minds to function safely. It is to lead men to live by, and to exercise, a free reason; that they may not waste their strength in hatred, anger and guile, nor act unfairly toward one another. Thus the end of the state is really liberty.

The real disturbers of the peace are those who, in a free state, seek to curtail the liberty of judgment which they are unable to tyrannize over.
- Baruch Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise (1670)

Behold! in Liberty's unclouded blaze
We lift our heads, a race of other days.
- Charles Sprague, Centennial Ode, Stanza 22

The men of the future will yet fight their way to many a liberty that we do not even miss.
- Max Stirner ([Johann] Kaspar Schmidt), The Ego and His Own (1845), as translated by Steven T. Byington (1973), edited by James J. Martin, Part 1, Ch. 2, p. 127

The saddest epitaph which can be carved in memory of a vanished liberty is that it was lost because its possessors failed to stretch forth a saving hand while yet there was time.
- Justice George Sutherland, in his dissenting opinion on Associated Press v. National Labor Relations Board, 301 US 141 (1938)

Libertatem natura etiam mutis animalibus datam.
- Liberty is given by nature even to mute animals.
  - Tacitus, Annales (AD 117), IV. 17

Eloquentia, alumna licentiæ, quam stulti libertatem vocabant.
- [That form of] eloquence, the foster-child of licence, which fools call liberty.
  - Tacitus, Dialogus de Oratoribus, 46

Illustrious confessors of Jesus Christ, a Christian finds in prison the same joys as the prophets tasted in the desert. Call it not a dungeon, but a solitude. When the soul is in heaven, the body feels not the weight of fetters; it carries the whole man along with it.
- Tertullian, p. 380

Since well before 1787, liberty has been understood as freedom from government action, not entitlement to government benefits.
- Clarence Thomas, dissenting opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges (26 June 2015), pp. 16-17.

Whatever restraint is larger than the necessary protection of the party, can be of no benefit to either, it can only be oppressive; and if oppressive, it is, in the eye of the law unreasonable.
- C. J. Nicholas Conyngham Tindal, Horner v. Graves (1831), 7 Bing. 743

Christianity is the companion of liberty in all its conflicts — the cradle of its infancy, and the Divine source of its claims.
- Alexis de Tocqueville, p. 379

Of course, there are dangers in religious freedom and freedom of opinion. But to deny these rights is worse than dangerous, it is absolutely fatal to liberty. The external threat to liberty should not drive us into suppressing liberty at home. Those who want the Government to regulate matters of the mind and spirit are like men who are so afraid of being murdered that they commit suicide to avoid assassination.
- Harry S. Truman, in address at the National Archives dedicating a shrine for the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights (15 December 1952)]

That religion which holds that all men are equal in the sight of the great Father will not refuse to acknowledge that all citizens are equal in the sight of the law.
- Alexis de Tocqueville, p. 379

I had reasoned dis out in my mind; there was one of two things I had a right to, liberty, or death; if I could not have one, I would have de oder; for no man should take me alive; I should fight for my liberty as long as my strength lasted, and when de time came for me to go, de Lord would let dem take me.
- Modernized rendition: I had reasoned this out in my mind; there was one of two things I had a right to, liberty, or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other; for no man should take me alive; I should fight for my liberty as long as my strength lasted, and when the time came for me to go, the Lord would let them take me.
- Harriet Tubman, the phrase "Liberty or Death" is a slogan made famous during the independence struggle of several countries. Quote reported in Harriet, The Moses of Her People (1886) by Sarah Hopkins Bradford.

No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.
- Gideon J. Tucker in Final Accounting in the Estate of A. B. (1866)

The Judge is intrusted with the liberties of the people, and his saying is the Law.
- Sir Thomas Twisden, 1st Baronet, J., King v. Wagstaffe (1665), Sir Thomas Ray. Rep. 138

Our history has shown us that insecurity threatens liberty. Yet, if our liberties are curtailed, we lose the values that we are struggling to defend.
- The 9/11 Commission Report by the U. S. National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States

It would indeed be ironic if, in the name of national defense, we would sanction the subversion of one of those liberties which make the defense of our nation worthwhile.
- Earl Warren, United States v. Robel (1967)

It does not seem to admit of doubt that the general policy of the law is opposed to all restraints upon liberty of individual action which are injurious to the interests of the State or community.
- Lord Watson, Nordenfelt v. Maxim Nordenfelt, &c. Co. (1894), L. R. App. Ca. [1894], p. 552; also per Lord Macnaghten, id., p. 565. See also E. Underwood & Son, Ltd. v. Barker, L. R. 1 C. D. [1899], p. 311 et seq

The contest, for ages, has been to rescue Liberty from the grasp of executive power.
- Daniel Webster, speech in the Senate (27 May 1834), on President Andrew Jackson's protest, The Works of Daniel Webster, 10th edition (1857), Vol. 4, p. 133

If the true spark of religious and civil liberty be kindled, it will burn.
- Daniel Webster, address in Charlestown, Massachusetts at the Bunker Hill Monument (17 June 1825)

On the light of Liberty you saw arise the light of Peace, like
"another morn,
Risen on mid-noon;"
and the sky on which you closed your eye was cloudless.
- Daniel Webster, speech regarding The Bunker Hill Monument (1825)

God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to guard and defend it.
- Daniel Webster, remarks in the Senate (3 June 1834), The Writings and Speeches of Daniel Webster (1903), Vol. 7, p. 47

Liberty exists in proportion to wholesome restraint.
- Daniel Webster, speech at the Charleston Bar Dinner (10 May 1847)

I shall defer my visit to Faneuil Hall, the cradle of American liberty, until its doors shall fly open, on golden hinges, to lovers of Union as well as of Liberty.
- Daniel Webster, letter (April, 1851), after being refused the use of the Hall after his speech on the Compromise Measures (7 March 1850). The Aldermen reversed their decision. Mr. Webster began his speech: "This is Faneuil Hall—Open!"

The history of liberty is a history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it.
- Woodrow Wilson, governor of New Jersey, address to the New York Press Club, New York City (9 September 1912), The Papers of Woodrow Wilson (1978), edited by Arthur S. Link, vol. 25, p. 124

I would rather belong to a poor nation that was free than to a rich nation that had ceased to be in love with liberty. But we shall not be poor if we love liberty, because the nation that loves liberty truly sets every man free to do his best and be his best, and that means the release of all the splendid energies of a great people who think for themselves. A nation of employees cannot be free any more than a nation of employers can be.
- Woodrow Wilson, address on Latin American policy to the fifth annual convention of the Southern Commercial Congress, Mobile, Alabama (27 October 1913), The Papers of Woodrow Wilson (1978), edited by Arthur S. Link, vol. 28, p. 451. The first sentence is inscribed on a plaque in the stairwell of the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty.

Liberty is its own reward.
- Woodrow Wilson, Speech in New York City (9 September 1912)

Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of the government. The history of liberty is a history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it.
- Woodrow Wilson, Speech at New York Press Club (9 September 1912), in The papers of Woodrow Wilson, 25:124

I would rather belong to a poor nation that was free than to a rich nation that had ceased to be in love with liberty.
- Woodrow Wilson, Address on Latin American Policy before the Southern Commercial Congress (27 October 1913), Mobile, Alabama.

To give liberty to a slave before he understands its value is, perhaps, rather to impose a penalty than to bestow a blessing; but it is not clear to me that the southern planters are duly exerting themselves to prepare the way for that change in the condition of their black populations which they profess to think not only desirable but inevitable.
- Frances Wright, Letter XXVIII (April 1820) Views of Society and Manners in America (1821)

We tax our ingenuity to draw nice distinctions. We are told of political liberty — of religious liberty — of moral liberty. Yet, after all, is there more than one liberty; and these divisions, are they not the more and the less of the same thing? The provision we have referred to in our political institutions, as framed in accordance with the principle inherent in ourselves, insures to us all of free action that statues can insure.
- Frances Wright, Independence Day speech at New Harmony (4 July 1828), sometimes noted as the first major public address by a woman to occur in the United States, as published in Course of Popular Lectures as Delivered by Frances Wright (1829) Address I, p. 171 - 182 (Full text online at Wikisource)

It is for Americans, more especially to nourish a nobler sentiment; one more consistent with their origin, and more conducive to their future improvement. It is for them more especially to know why they love their country, not because it is their country, but because it is the palladium of human liberty.
- Frances Wright, Independence Day speech at New Harmony (4 July 1828), sometimes noted as the first major public address by a woman to occur in the United States, as published in Course of Popular Lectures as Delivered by Frances Wright (1829) Address I, p. 171 - 182 (Full text online at Wikisource)

Liberty means, not the mere voting at elections, but the free and fearless exercise of the mental faculties, and that self-possession which springs out of well-reasoned opinions and consistent practice. It is for them to honour principles rather than men — to commemorate events rather than days; when they rejoice, to know for what they rejoice, and to rejoice only for what has brought, and what brings, peace and happiness to men. The event we commemorate this day has procured much of both, and shall procure, in the onward course of human improvement, more than we can now conceive of. For this — for the good obtained, and yet in store for our race — let us rejoice! But let us rejoice as men, not as children — as human beings, rather than as Americans — as reasoning beings, not as ignorants. So shall we rejoice to good purpose and in good feeling; so shall we improve the victory once on this day achieved, until all mankind hold with us the jubilee of independence.
- Frances Wright, Independence Day speech at New Harmony (4 July 1828), sometimes noted as the first major public address by a woman to occur in the United States, as published in Course of Popular Lectures as Delivered by Frances Wright (1829) Address I, p. 171 - 182 (Full text online at Wikisource)

Liberty sets the mind free, fosters independence and unorthodox thinking and ideas. But it does not offer instant prosperity or happiness and wealth to everyone. This is something that politicians in particular must keep in mind.
- Boris Yeltsin, as quoted in Russia and the Independent States (1993) by Daniel C. Diller, p. 446

He is the freeman whom the truth makes free.
- Author not cited; reported in Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895) edited by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 377
  - Variant of John 8:32 in the Bible; "And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free."

This page includes quotes and information about them presented much as they appeared in the following Public Domain collections:

Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895) edited by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert

The Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904) edited by James William Norton-Kyshe, p. 161-162

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 437-39

Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1989) by the U.S. Library of Congress

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