LIBERTY QUOTES V

quotations about liberty

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.

GEORGE SUTHERLAND

Associated Press v. National Labor Relations Board, 1938


A lion is at liberty who can follow the laws of his own nature, who can eat when his stomach tells him, who can sleep when his fierce eyes grow weary, who can scratch long furrows in a forest tree when his claws feel so disposed. He is not at liberty when he lives in a cage, is fed on horseflesh at 4 p.m., and is compelled at the point of a red-hot poker to spell P-I-G -- PIG, in the presence of a diverted crowd.

ROBERT HUGH BENSON

Intellectual Slavery

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It seemed to me much more than the mere question whether the negro should remain in slavery; that it really involved the question whether liberty should be strangled on the continent dedicated to liberty.

LYMAN ABBOTT

Reminiscences

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Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.

LORD ACTON

The History of Freedom in Antiquity

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No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.

GIDEON J. TUCKER

Final Accounting in the Estate of A. B.


We are right to take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties.

JAMES MADISON

attributed, Quote Junkie Presidents Edition

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What is so beneficial to the people as liberty, which we see not only to be greedily sought after by men, but also by beasts, and to be preferred to all things.

CICERO

attributed, Day's Collacon

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Liberty may be an uncomfortable blessing unless you know what to do with it. That is why so many freed slaves returned to their masters, why so many emancipated women are only too glad to give up the racket and settle down. For between announcing that you will live your own life, and the living of it lie the real difficulties of any awakening.

WALTER LIPPMANN

Drift and Mastery

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Both liberty and equality are among the primary goals pursued by human beings throughout many centuries; but total liberty for wolves is death to the lambs, total liberty of the powerful, the gifted, is not compatible with the rights to a decent existence of the weak and the less gifted.

ISAIAH BERLIN

The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the History of Ideas


Many politicians of our time are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition, that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story, who resolved not to go into the water till he had learnt to swim. If men are to wait for liberty till they become wise and good in slavery, they may indeed wait for ever.

THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY

Critical and Historical Essays


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


The idea of intellectual liberty is under attack from two directions. On the one side are its theoretical enemies, the apologists of totalitarianism, and on the other its immediate, practical enemies, monopoly and bureaucracy.

GEORGE ORWELL

"Notes on Nationalism"

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Ignorance may be bliss, but it certainly is not freedom, except in the minds of those who prefer darkness to light and chains to liberty. The more true information we can acquire, the better for our enfranchisement.

ROBERT HUGH BENSON

Intellectual Slavery


Liberty, as it is conceived by current opinion, has nothing inherent about it; it is a sort of gift or trust bestowed on the individual by the state pending good behavior.

MARY MCCARTHY

The Contagion of Ideas

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An armed and trained militia is the firmest bulwark of republics ... without standing armies their liberty can never be in danger, nor with large ones safe.

JAMES MADISON

First Inaugural Address, Mar. 4, 1809


The liberty of man consists solely in this: that he obeys natural laws because he has himself recognized them as such, and not because they have been externally imposed upon him by any extrinsic will whatever, divine or human, collective or individual.

MIKHAIL BAKUNIN

God and the State

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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

U. S. Declaration of Independence, Jul. 4, 1776

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If to break loose from the bounds of reason, and to want that restraint of examination and judgment which keeps us from choosing or doing the worst, be liberty, true liberty, madmen and fools are the only freemen: but yet, I think, nobody would choose to be mad for the sake of such liberty, but he that is mad already.

JOHN LOCKE

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding


Our individual liberty is the very essence of America. It is what makes America unique. If you aren't free to protect yourself--when government puts its thumb on that freedom--then you aren't free at all.

WAYNE LAPIERRE

speech, March 15, 2013


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

THOMAS JEFFERSON

letter to W.S. Smith, Nov. 13, 1787

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