“To change masters is not to be free.” ——Jose Marti y Perez
“If you want total security, go to prison. There you’re fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking is freedom.” ——Dwight Eisenhower
“If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.” ——George Washington
“The whole drift of our law is toward the absolute prohibition of all ideas that diverge in the slightest form from the accepted platitudes, and behind that drift of law there is a far more potent force of growing custom, and under that custom there is a natural philosophy which erects conformity into the noblest of virtues and the free functioning of personality into a capital crime against society.” ——H. L. Mencken
“I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.” ——Thomas Jefferson
“Oppose with manly firmness any invasions on the rights of the people.” ——Thomas Jefferson
“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
“Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.” ——Edward Everett
“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.” ——Thomas Paine
“When the same man, or set of men, holds the sword and the purse, there is an end of liberty.” ——George Mason
“As long as I have any choice in the matter, I shall live only in a country where civil liberty, tolerance and equality of all citizens before the law prevail.” ——Albert Einstein
“You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.” ——John Morley
“Let us contemplate our forefathers, and posterity, and resolve to maintain the rights bequeathed to us from the former, for the sake of the latter. The necessity of the times, more than ever, calls for our utmost circumspection, deliberation, fortitude, and perseverance. Let us remember that ‘if we suffer tamely a lawless attack upon our liberty, we encourage it, and involve others in our doom.’ It is a very serious consideration that millions yet unborn may be the miserable sharers of the event.” ——Samuel Adams
“Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.” ——William Pitt
“Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence, the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake; since history and experience prove, that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of Republican Government. But that jealousy, to be useful, must be impartial; else it becomes the instrument of the very influence to be avoided, instead of a defense against it. Excessive partiality for one foreign nation, and excessive dislike of another, cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side, and serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other. Real patriots, who may resist the intrigues of the favorite, are liable to become suspected and odious; while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people, to surrender their interests.” ——George Washington
“Formerly no one was allowed to think freely; now it is permitted, but no one is capable of it any more. Now people want to think only what they are supposed to think, and this they consider freedom.” ——Oswald Spengler
“A people may prefer a free government, but if, from indolence, or carelessness, or cowardice, or want of public spirit, they are unequal to the exertions necessary for preserving it; if they will not fight for it when it is directly attacked; if they can be deluded by the artifices used to cheat them out of it; if by momentary discouragement, or temporary panic, or a fit of enthusiasm for an individual, they can be induced to lay their liberties at the feet even of a great man, or trust him with powers which enable him to subvert their institutions; in all these cases they are more or less unfit for liberty: and though it may be for their good to have had it even for a short time, they are unlikely long to enjoy it.” ——John Stuart Mill
“Who are a free people? Not those over whom government is exercised, but those who live under a government so constitutionally checked and controlled that proper provision is made against its being otherwise exercised.” ——John Dickenson
“The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.” ——Plato
“The people who, in order to enjoy the liberty which suites them, resort to the representative system, must exercise an active and constant surveillance over their representatives, and reserve for themselves the right to discard them if they betray their trust, and to revoke the powers which they might have abused.” ——Benjamin Constant
“Most people want security in this world, not liberty.” ——H. L. Mencken
“Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined.” ——Patrick Henry
“From the equality of rights springs identity of our highest interests; you cannot subvert your neighbor’s rights without striking a dangerous blow at your own.” ——Carl Schurz
“Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation we began by declaring that ‘all men are created equal.’ When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read ‘all men are created equal, except Negroes and foreigners and Catholics.’ When it comes to this, I shall prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty — to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy hypocrisy.” ——Abraham Lincoln
“I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not so desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.” ——Henry David Thoreau
“A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular.” ——Adlai Stevenson
“No truly sophisticated proponent of repression would be stupid enough to shatter the facade of democratic institutions.” ——Murray B. Levin
“It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people’s minds.” ——Samuel Adams
“It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.” ——James Madison
“No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices.” ——Edward R. Murrow
“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
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.” ——Theodore Roosevelt
“As I watch government at all levels daily eat away at our freedom, I keep thinking how prosperity and government largesse have combined to make most of us fat and lazy and indifferent to, or actually in favor of, the limits being placed on that freedom.” ——Lyn Nofziger
“Then what is freedom? It is the will to be responsible to ourselves.” ——Friedrich Nietzsche
“One of the things that bothers me most is the growing belief in the country that security is more important than freedom. It ain’t.” ——Lyn Nofziger
“The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty.” ——James Madison
“I think that every true reformer, every real friend of liberty, will agree with me in saying that if we must erect safeguards, they should be rather for the security of the individual than of the mass, and that our chiefest care must be to train the majority to respect the rights of the minority, to prevent the claims of the few from being trampled under foot by the caprice or passion of the many.” ——Richard Cartwright
“Outside Independence Hall when the Constitutional Convention of 1787 ended, Mrs. Powel of Philadelphia asked Benjamin Franklin, ‘Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?’ With no hesitation whatsoever, Franklin responded, ‘A republic, if you can keep it.’” ——Benjamin Franklin
“A man is none the less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years.” ——Lysander Spooner
“Yes, we did produce a near-perfect republic. But will they keep it? Or will they, in the enjoyment of plenty, lose the memory of freedom? Material abundance without character is the path of destruction.” ——Thomas Jefferson
“And what sort of philosophical doctrine is this — that numbers confer unlimited rights, that they take from some persons all rights over themselves, and vest these rights in others… How, then, can the rights of three men exceed the rights of two men?” ——Auberon Herbert
“The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part 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 lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.” ——Thomas Jefferson
“One of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the great struggle for independence.” ——Charles Austin Beard
“There are no boundaries in this struggle to the death. We cannot be indifferent to what happens anywhere in the world, for a victory by any country over imperialism is our victory.” ——Ernesto Che Guevara
“Too long have the workers of the world waited for some Moses to lead them out of bondage. I would not lead you out if I could; for if you could be led out, you could be led back again. I would have you make up your minds there is nothing that you cannot do for yourselves.” ——Eugene Victor Debs
“Place me not with those who are weak of mind and willingly give up the rights of others, for these poor ignorant souls know not that the rights they give up are their own!” ——Warren Friton
“To consider judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions is a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy.” ——Thomas Jefferson
“Whenever legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any further obedience.” ——John Locke
“This is, in theory, still a free country, but our politically correct, censorious times are such that many of us tremble to give vent to perfectly acceptable views for fear of condemnation. Freedom of speech is thereby imperiled, big questions go undebated, and great lies become accepted, unequivocally as great truths.” ——Simon Heffer
“Nothing is more important than freedom. Nothing is more sacred than freedom. Nothing is greater than freedom. Nothing can be permitted to stand in the way of freedom. Freedom is all that makes men great. It is all men have to live for. Without freedom, what good is life?” ——Allen Drury
“To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man.” ——Jean Jacques Rousseau
“The worst enemy of truth and freedom in our society is the compact majority. Yes, the damned, the compact, liberal majority.” ——Henrik Ibsen