Freedom and Liberty Quotes

 

“Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good.” Thomas Paine
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“The man who does not do his own thinking is a slave, and is a traitor to himself and his fellow men.” Robert G. Ingersoll (1833-1899)
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“Make men wise, and by that very operation you make them free. Civil liberty follows as a consequence of this; no usurped power can stand against the artillery of opinion.” William Godwin (1756-1836)
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“But this is slavery, not to speak one’s thought.” Euripides (480-406 B.C.), The Phoenician Women, 411-409 B.C.
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“Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.” Frederick Douglass
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“Our safety, our liberty, depends upon preserving the Constitution of the United States as our Fathers made it inviolate. The people of the United States are the rightful masters of both Congress and the Courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.” Abraham Lincoln
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“I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion.” Thomas Jefferson, September 28, 1820
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“If large numbers of people believe in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech even if the law forbids it. But if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them.” George Orwell [Eric Arthur Blair] (1903-1950), British author
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“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. To be your own man is hard business. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.” Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
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“Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.” Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
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“I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample underfoot.” Horace Greeley (1811-1872), editor of the New York Tribune
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“Most of the major ills of the world have been caused by well-meaning people who ignored the principle of individual freedom, except as applied to themselves, and who were obsessed with fanatical zeal to improve the lot of mankind.” Henry Grady Weaver (1889-1949), American author, General Motors marketing executive who made the cover of Time in 1938
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“Power, after all, is not just military strength. It is the social power that comes from democracy, the cultural power that comes from freedom of expression and research, the personal power that entitles every Arab citizen to feel that he or she is in fact a citizen, and not just a sheep in some great shepherd’s flock.” Edward Said (1935-2003)
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“It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once.” David Hume (1711-1776), Scottish philosopher, historian and economist
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“I have never had a feeling, politically, that did not spring from the Declaration of Independence that all should have an equal chance. This is the sentiment embodied in the Declaration of Independence, I would rather be assassinated on this spot than surrender it.” Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), 16th US President
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“The Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions.” Daniel Webster (1782-1852), US Senator
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“The highest manifestation of life consists in this: that a being governs its own actions. A thing which is always subject to the direction of another is somewhat of a dead thing.” Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), Italian philosopher and theologian
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“And reason teaches all mankind who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions.” John Locke
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“No provision in our Constitution ought to be dearer to man than that which protects the rights of conscience against the enterprises of the civil authority.” Thomas Jefferson, American 3rd US President (1801-09)
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”Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual).” Ayn Rand


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Index to Quotes