quotations about liberty
The struggle for liberty is nothing but the constant active appropriation of the idea of liberty. He who possesses liberty otherwise than as an aspiration possesses it soulless, dead. 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, Feb. 17, 1871
You are welcome to your dainties; but for me, a dry crust with liberty against a king's luxury with a chain.
THOMAS JAMES
Aesop's Fables: A New Version, Chiefly from Original Sources
Liberty is not a cruise ship full of pampered passengers. Liberty is a man-of-war, and we are all crew.
KENNETH W. ROYCE
Boston's Gun Bible
Half-liberty comes with wisdom, full liberty with death.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
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.
JOSE MARTI
My Race
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
What is liberty? The measure of dignity.
GIANNINA BRASCHI
Yo-Yo Boing!
We can only protect liberty by making it relevant to the modern world.
TONY BLAIR
final speech to the Labour Party Annual Conference as leader, 26 September 2006
Liberty is life; slavery is death.
A. VINET
attributed, Day's Collacon
Liberty is a principle; its community is its security; exclusiveness is its doom.
LOUIS KOSSUTH
Select Speeches of Kossuth
It is true that liberty is precious -- so precious that it must be rationed.
VLADIMIR LENIN
attributed, Soviet Communism: A New Civilization
And now that the legislator and do-gooders have so futilely inflicted so many systems upon society, may they finally end where they should have begun: May they reject all systems, and try liberty: for liberty is an acknowledgement of faith in God and His works.
FREDERICK BASTIAT
The Law
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
The most culpable of the excesses of Liberty is the harm she does herself.
MADAME SWETCHINE
"Airelles", The Writings of Madame Swetchine
Liberty and slavery are perfect antagonisms; the one or the other must perish.
J. C. JACKSON
attributed, Day's Collacon
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.
JOSE MARTI
My Race
'Tis liberty alone that gives the flower
Of fleeting life its lustre and perfume;
And we are weeds without it.
WILLIAM COWPER
The Task
The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.
JOHN ADAMS
notes for an oration at Braintree, spring 1772
A people contending for life and liberty are seldom disposed to look with a favorable eye upon either men or measures whose passions, interests or consequences will clash with those inestimable objects.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
letter to General Thomas, Jul. 23, 1775
I must have liberty
Withal, as large a charter as the wind,
To blow on whom I please.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
As You Like It