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Famous Quotes about Liberty
 
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Perhaps the surest test of an individual's integrity is his refusal to do or say anything that would damage his self-respect.
-- Thomas S. Monson		 
It is work, work that one delights in, that is the surest guarantor of happiness. But even here it is a work that has to be earned by labor in one's earlier years. One should labor so hard in youth that everything one does subsequently is easy by comparison.
-- Ashley Montagu		 
I believe more follies are committed out of complaisance to the world, than in following our own inclinations.
-- Mary Wortley Montagu		 
Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty without any proof.
-- Ashley Montague		 
Trust is a two way street. If your government does not trust you, how can you trust your government?
-- Bruce Montague		 
A lie will easily get you out of a scrape, and yet, strangely and beautifully, rapture possesses you when you have taken the scrape and left out the lie.
-- Charles Edward Montague		 
Discipline must come through liberty... We do not consider an individual disciplined when he has been rendered as artificially silent as a mute and as immovable as a paralytic. He is an individual annihilated, not disciplined.
-- Maria Montessori		 
No one can be free unless he is independent... In reality, he who is served is limited in his independence...
-- Maria Montessori		 
We fought the Revolutionary War for no taxation without representation, it seems to me that we are much worse off today, because we are heavily taxed, and only the king's corporations control this Country, together with mob rule, of the special interests.
-- James Montgomery		 
I have had more trouble with myself than with any other man I have ever met.
-- Dwight Lyman Moody		 
If the political-correctness fascists get their way, we can safely assume it will be correct-thinking, “political cleansing” squads deciding what we can or cannot say on the Intenet. These people fear public debate and demand homogenization of “acceptable” attitudes compatible with their emotional, utopian idealism.
-- Charles W. Moore		 
Sitting here, we are not at liberty to add one jot of power to the national government beyond what the people have granted by the constitution; and, on the other hand, we are bound to support that constitution as it stands, and to give a fair and rational scope to all the powers which it clearly contains.
-- Houston v. Moore		 
[T]he income tax is incompatible with a free society. The IRS routinely intrudes on our basic civil liberties and privacy rights -- and its intrusions are getting worse all the time. I want an America where it is no longer the government's business how much money you make and what you do with it.
-- Stephen Moore		 
Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.
-- Thomas Moore		 
Better to dwell in freedom's hall, With a cold damp floor and mouldering wall, Than bow the head and bend the knee In the proudest palace of slaverie.
-- Thomas Moore		 
We create an environment where it is alright to hate, to steal, to cheat, and to lie if we dress it up with symbols of respectability, dignity and love.
-- Whitney Moore, Jr.		 
The wealthy, not only by private fraud but also by common laws, do every day pluck and snatch away from the people some part of their daily living. Therefore, when I consider and weigh in my mind these commonwealths which nowadays do flourish, I perceive nothing but a certain conspiracy of rich men in procuring their own commodities under the name and authority of the commonwealth. They invent and devise all means and crafts, first how to keep safely without fear of losing that which they have unjustly gathered together, and next how to hire and abuse the work and labor of the people for as little money and effort as possible.
-- Thomas More		 
I have not one doubt, even if I am in agreement with the National Rifle Association, that that kind of record keeping procedure [gun registration] is the first step to eventual confiscation under one administration or another.
-- Charles Morgan		 
One cannot shut ones eyes to things not seen with eyes.
-- Charles Langbridge Morgan		 
A book is the only place in which you can examine a fragile thought without breaking it, or explore an explosive idea without fear it will go off in your face... one of the few havens remaining where a man's mind can get both provocation and privacy.
-- Charles Langbridge Morgan		 
A man always has two reasons for what he does -- a good one, and the real one.
-- J. P. Morgan		 
Capital must protect itself in every way... Debts must be collected and loans and mortgages foreclosed as soon as possible. When through a process of law the common people have lost their homes, they will be more tractable and more easily governed by the strong arm of the law applied by the central power of leading financiers. People without homes will not quarrel with their leaders. This is well known among our principle men now engaged in forming an imperialism of capitalism to govern the world. By dividing the people we can get them to expend their energies in fighting over questions of no importance to us except as teachers of the common herd.
-- J. P. Morgan (Questionable)		 
Populism is rising because liberals have become unbearable, Okay? And I speak as a liberal… Liberals have become utterly, pathetically illiberal and it’s a massive problem. What’s the point of calling yourself a liberal if you don’t allow anyone else to have a different view? You know, this snowflake culture we operate in, this victimhood culture that everyone, has to think in a certain way, behave a certain way. Everyone has to have a bleeding heart… You say a joke 10 years ago that offended somebody you can never host the Oscars… So what’s happening around the world? Populism is rising because people are fed up with the PC culture. They’re fed up with the snowflake culture. They’re fed up with everyone being offended by everything… They just want to tell people, not just how to lead their life but if you don’t lead it the way I tell you to, It’s a kind of version of fascism.
-- Piers Morgan		 
We can hardly expect the nation-state to make itself superfluous, at least not overnight. Rather what we must aim for is really nothing more than caretakers of a bankrupt international machine which will have to be transformed slowly into a new one. The transition will not be dramatic, but a gradual one. People will still cling to national symbols.
-- Henry Morgenthau, Jr.		 
We've been asleep for about 50 years. Ever since the end of World War II we just steadily handed our future and our bank accounts and now our children, handed them all over to the federal government...
-- Michael Moriarty		 
National Health? Socialized pension funds? State-controlled television? Search and seizure laws? Forfeiture laws? If we're not living in the Soviet Union of the United States we certainly have returned to 1776 and 'taxation without representation.'
-- Michael Moriarty		 
If the American Revolution had produced nothing but the Declaration of Independence, it would have been worthwhile.... The beauty and cogency of the preamble, reaching back to remotest antiquity and forward to an infinite future, having lifted the hearts of millions of men and will continue to do.... These words are more revolutionary than anything written by Robespierre, Marx, or Lenin, more explosive than the atom, a continual challenge to ourselves as well as an inspiration to the oppressed of all the world.
-- Samuel Eliot Morison		 
If the American Revolution had produced nothing but the Declaration of Independence, it would have been worthwhile.
-- Samuel Eliot Morison		 
There is only one success: to be able to spend your life in your own way, and not to give others absurd maddening claims upon it.
-- Christopher Darlington Morley		 
Since people, in a competitive or any other society, are by no means always just to each other, some regulation by the state in its capacity of umpire is unavoidable, What must be kept in mind is that the greatest injustice of all is done when the umpire forgets that he too is bound by the rules, and begins to make them as between contestants in behalf of his own prejudices.
-- Felix Morley		 
[L]iberty, or the absence of coercion, or the leaving people to think, speak, and act as they please, is in itself a good thing. It is the object of a favourable presumption. The burden of proving it inexpedient always lies, and wholly lies, on those who wish to abridge it by coercion, whether direct or indirect.
-- John Morley		 
You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.
-- John Viscount Morley		 
The political spirit is the great force in throwing the love of truth and accurate reasoning into a secondary place.
-- John Viscount Morley		 
The means prepare the end, and the end is what the means have made of it.
-- John Viscount Morley		 
No man can climb out beyond the limitations of his own character.
-- John Viscount Morley		 
When it is a duty to worship the sun it is pretty sure to be a crime to examine the laws of heat.
-- John Viscount Morley		 
I am one who believes that as a first step the U.S. should move expeditiously to disarm the civilian population, other than police and security officers, of all handguns, pistols and revolvers ...no one should have a right to anonymous ownership or use of a gun.
-- Prof. Dean Morris		 
Each state enjoys sovereign power.
-- Gouverneur Morris		 
The rich will strive to establish their dominion and enslave the rest. They always did...they always will. They will have the same effect here as elsewhere, if we do not, by the power of government, keep them in their proper spheres.
-- Gouverneur Morris		 
Corruption and some other offenses ought to be impeachable, but the cases ought to be enumerated and defined.
-- Gouverneur Morris		 
The prime function of the criminal law is to protect our persons and our property; these purposes are now engulfed in a mass of other distracting, inefficiently performed, legislative duties. When the criminal law invades the spheres of private morality and social welfare, it exceeds its proper limits at the cost of neglecting its primary tasks. This unwarranted extension is expensive, ineffective, and criminogenic.
-- Norval Morris		 
Whoever controls the media, controls the mind.
-- Jim Morrison		 
Access to knowledge is the superb, the supreme act of truly great civilizations. Of all the institutions that purport to do this, free libraries stand virtually alone in accomplishing this.
-- Toni Morrison		 
Not to forgive is to be imprisoned by the past, by old grievances that do not permit life to proceed with new business. Not to forgive is to yield oneself to another's control... to be locked into a sequence of act and response, of outrage and revenge, tit for tat, escalating always. The present is endlessly overwhelmed and devoured by the past. Forgiveness frees the forgiver. It extracts the forgiver from someone else's nightmare.
-- Lance Morrow		 
The busybodies have begun to infect American society with a nasty intolerance -- a zeal to police the private lives of others and hammer them into standard forms -- A Nation of Finger Pointers.
-- Lance Morrow		 
Zealotry of either kind -- the puritan's need to regiment others or the victim's passion for blaming everyone except himself -- tends to produce a depressing civic stupidity. Each trait has about it the immobility of addiction. Victims become addicted to being victims: they derive identity, innocence and a kind of devious power from sheer, defaulting helplessness. On the other side, the candlesnuffers of behavioral and political correctness enact their paradox, accomplishing intolerance in the name of tolerance, regimentation in the name of betterment.
-- Lance Morrow		 
The liberal insists that the individual must remain so supreme as to make the State his servant.
-- Wayne Morse		 
We owe to democracy, at least in part, the regime of discussion with which we live; we owe it to the principal modern liberties: those of thought, press and association. And the regime of free discussion is the only one which permits the ruling class to renew itself… which eliminates that class quasi-automatically when it no longer corresponds to the interests of the country.
-- Gaetano Mosca		 
If we can just pass a few more laws, we could all be criminals!
-- Vinnie Moscaritolo		 
Once a matter has become, in one way or another, the subject of regulation by the United Nations, be it by resolution or the General Assembly or by convention between member States [Nations] at the insistence of the United Nations, that subject ceases to be a matter being 'essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of the member States...'
-- Moses Moskowitz		 
The freedom of any society varies proportionately with the volume of its laughter.
-- Zero Mostel		 
If you think there is freedom of the press in the United States, I tell you there is no freedom of the press... They come out with the cheap shot. The press should be ashamed of itself. They should come to both sides of the issue and hear both sides and let the American people make up their minds.
-- Bill Moyers		 
The single most exciting thing you encounter in government is competence, because it's so rare.
-- Daniel Patrick Moynihan		 
When a person goes to a country and finds their newspapers filled with nothing but good news, he can bet there are good men in jail.
-- Daniel Patrick Moynihan		 
Every happening, great and small, is a parable whereby God speaks to us, and the art of life is to get the message.
-- Malcolm Muggeridge		 
The courts are not bound by mere forms, nor are they to be misled by mere pretences. They are at liberty — indeed, are under a solemn duty — to look at the substance of things, whenever they enter upon the inquiry whether the legislature has transcended the limits of its authority. If therefore, a statute purporting to have been enacted to protect the public health, the public morals, or the public safety, has no real or substantial relation to those objects, or is a palpable invasion of rights secured by the fundamental law, it is the duty of the courts to so adjudge, and thereby give effect to the Constitution.
-- Mugler v. Kansas		 
All truth is safe, and nothing else is safe; and he who keeps back the truth or withholds it from men, from motives of expediency, is either a coward, or a criminal, or both.
-- Max Muller		 
The increase in the assets of the Federal Reserve Banks from 143 Million dollars in 1913 to 45 Billion dollars in 1949 went directly to the private stockholders of the [Federal Reserve] banks.
-- Eustace Mullins		 
Federal Reserve Notes Are Not Dollars.
-- Russell Munk		 
It is important therefore that in these schools the precepts of morality and religion should be inculcated, and habits of subordination and obedience formed. One of the greatest blessings which the State can confer upon her children is to instill into their minds at an early period moral and religious truths. ... Thousands of unfortunate children are growing up in perfect ignorance of their moral and religious duties. Their parents equally unfortunate know not how to instruct them, and have not the opportunity or ability of placing them under the care of those who could give them instruction. The State, in the warmth of her affection and solicitude for their welfare, must take charge of those children and place them in schools where their minds can be enlightened and their hearts can be trained to virtue.
-- Archibald D. Murphey		 
Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion all have a double aspect – freedom of thought and freedom of action.
-- Frank Murphy		 
The civil liberties of people of all ideologies are threatened by a government determined to appear tough on terrorism. The government is going to be given broad new powers to investigate people for political activities -- activities on both sides of the political spectrum.
-- Laura Murphy		 
The reason there are so few female politicians is that it is too much trouble to put makeup on two faces.
-- Maureen Murphy		 
Conscience is that still, small voice that is sometimes too loud for comfort.
-- Bert Murray		 
We believe that human happiness requires freedom and that freedom requires limited government.
-- Charles Alan Murray		 
We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.
-- Edward R. Murrow		 
I am entirely persuaded that the American public is more reasonable, restrained and mature than most of the broadcast industry's planners believe. Their fear of controversy is not warranted by the evidence.
-- Edward R. Murrow		 
If none of us ever read a book that was “dangerous,” had a friend who was “different,” or joined an organization that advocated “change,” we would all be the kind of people Joe McCarthy wants.
-- Edward R. Murrow		 
The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer.
-- Edward R. Murrow		 
We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason if we remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes which were, for the moment, unpopular.
-- Edward R. Murrow		 
State intervention in economic production arises only when private initiative is lacking or insufficient, or when the political interests of the State are involved. This intervention may take the form of control, assistance or direct management.
-- Benito Mussolini		 
The Fascist State lays claim to rule in the economic field no less than in others; it makes its action felt throughout the length and breadth of the country by means of its corporate, social, and educational institutions, and all the political, economic, and spiritual forces of the nation, organised in their respective associations, circulate within the State.
-- Benito Mussolini		 
The Government has been compelled to levy taxes which unavoidably hit large sections of the population. The Italian people are disciplined, silent and calm, they work and know that there is a Government which governs, and know, above all, that if this Government hits cruelly certain sections of the Italian people, it does not so out of caprice, but from the supreme necessity of national order.
-- Benito Mussolini		 
The measures adopted to restore public order are: First of all, the elimination of the so-called subversive elements. [...] They were elements of disorder and subversion. On the morrow of each conflict I gave the categorical order to confiscate the largest possible number of weapons of every sort and kind. This confiscation, which continues with the utmost energy, has given satisfactory results.
-- Benito Mussolini		 
The corporate State considers that private enterprise in the sphere of production is the most effective and useful instrument in the interest of the nation. In view of the fact that private organisation of production is a function of national concern, the organiser of the enterprise is responsible to the State for the direction given to production.
-- Benito Mussolini		 


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