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Famous Quotes about Liberty
 
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Fortunately, political freedom and economic progress are natural partners.  Despite capitalism's lingering reputation as the source of all the world's evils, the fact remains that every single democracy is a capitalist country.  Half a century of economic experimentation proved beyond doubt that tyranny cannot yield prosperity. ... Socialism collapsed because it is a policy of unrestrained intervention.  It tries to fix what is 'wrong' with the spontaneous, self-organizaing phenomenon called capitalism.  But, of course, a natural process cannot be 'fixed.' ... Socialism is an ideology. Capitalism is a natural phenomenon.
-- Michael Rothschild		 
Either the application for renewal of the charter (for the First Bank of the United States) is granted, or the United States will find itself involved in a most disastrous war.
-- Baron Nathan Mayer Rothschild		 
I care not what puppet is placed on the throne of England to rule the Empire, ...The man that controls Britain's money supply controls the British Empire. And I control the money supply.
-- Baron Nathan Mayer Rothschild		 
Nature never deceives us; it is always we who deceive ourselves.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau		 
I prefer liberty with danger to peace with slavery.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau		 
The strongest is never strong enough to be always the master, unless he transforms his strength into right, and obedience into duty.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau		 
Man was born free, and everywhere he is in chains.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau		 
There is no subjugation so perfect as that which keeps the appearance of freedom for in that way one captures volition itself.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau		 
The most absolute authority is that which penetrates into a man’s innermost being and concerns itself no less with his will than with his actions.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau		 
There is no subjugation so perfect as that which keeps the appearance of freedom for in that way one captures volition itself.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau		 
The problem is to find a form of association which will defend and protect with the whole common force the person and goods of each associate, and in which each, while uniting himself with all, may still obey himself alone, and remain as free as before.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau		 
Liberty is not to be found in any form of government; she is in the heart of the free man; he bears her with him everywhere.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau		 
Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau		 
The surest way to ruin a promising career in economics, whether professional or academic, is to venture into the 'cranks and crackpots' world of suggestions for reform of the financial system.
-- Michael Rowbotham		 
This assumption about religion being necessary for morality is recognized and used as a justification for religion. When atheists provide arguments showing that religious beliefs are incorrect and illogical, a frequent response is that religion is still good because it's needed for morality. The question of truth is dismissed as less important than the question of usefulness. If morality is a good thing, then atheist arguments fall on deaf ears. And more, the act of willfully ignoring evidence or argument is performed with a sense of moral pride. This position rests on the myth that morality requires religion, and that you have to accept religion despite any flaws or abandon morality. This justification of religion is just one more consequence of the myth.
-- Joseph Rowlands		 
Liberty is not a cruise ship full of pampered passengers. Liberty is a man-of-war, and we are all crew.
-- Kenneth W. Royce		 
In March, 1982, Kennesaw, Georgia, passed a mandatory gun ownership ordinance which requires all heads of households to own a firearm—handgun, rifle or shotgun. In 1982, our crime against persons, which include murder, rape, armed robbery, aggravated assault and residential burglary, decreased 74%. In 1983 these same crimes decreased [an additional] 46%. ... I would also like you to be aware that our population has increased in excess of 20% since 1982. We have had no accidents nor incidents involving our citizens with regards to firearms. ... It is a pleasure to see our senior citizens strolling the streets at night without fear of becoming a victim of violent crime.
-- Robert L. Ruble		 
The blame for [the national debt] lies with the Congress and the President, with Democrats and Republicans alike, most all of whom have been unwilling to make the hard choices or to explain to the American people that there is no such thing as a free lunch.
-- Warren Rudman		 
Ruff's Third Law of Economic Dynamics: "An economy in motion tends to stay in motion, and an economy at rest tends to stay at rest. A free market is constantly in motion. A centrally planned market slows until it eventually dies completely.
-- Mike Ruff		 
I never could believe that Providence had sent a few men into the world, ready booted and spurred to ride, and millions ready saddled and bridled to be ridden.
-- Richard Rumbold		 
Political scientists almost everywhere have promoted the expansion of government power. They have functioned as the clergy of oppression.
-- Rudolph J. Rummel		 
Nobody can be trusted with unlimited power. The more power a regime has, the more likely people will be killed. This is a major reason for promoting freedom.
-- Rudolph J. Rummel		 
The more power a government has, the more it can act arbitrarily according to the whims and desires of the elite and murder its foreign and domestic subjects. The more constrained the power of governments, the more power is diffused, checked and balanced, the less it will aggress on others and commit democide. ... In total, during the first eighty-eight years of this century, almost 170 million men, women, and children have been shot, beaten, tortured, knifed, burned, starved, frozen, crushed, or worked to death; buried alive, drowned, hung, bombed, or killed in any other of the myriad ways governments have inflicted death on unarmed, helpless citizens and foreigners. The dead could conceivably be nearly 360 million people. It is as though our species has been devastated by a modern Black Plague. And indeed it has, but a plague of Power, not of germs.
-- Rudolph J. Rummel		 
The way to virtually eliminate genocide and mass murder appears to be through restricting and checking power. This means to foster democratic freedom.
-- Rudolph J. Rummel		 
What will follow will not be a repeat of any other conflict. It will be of a force and scope and scale that has been beyond what has been seen before.
-- Donald Rumsfeld		 
Freedom can exist only in the society of knowledge. Without learning, men are incapable of knowing their rights
-- Dr. Benjamin Rush		 
Liberty without virtue would be no blessing to us.
-- Dr. Benjamin Rush		 
The only foundation for... a republic is to be laid in Religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments.
-- Dr. Benjamin Rush		 
Controversy is only dreaded by the advocates of error.
-- Dr. Benjamin Rush		 
Let our pupil be taught that he does not belong to himself, but that he is public property. Let him be taught to love his family, but let him be taught, at the same time, that he must forsake, and even forget them, when the welfare of his country requires it.
-- Dr. Benjamin Rush		 
Freedom of speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself. What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.
-- Salman Rushdie		 
Free societies…are societies in motion, and with motion comes tension, dissent, friction. Free people strike sparks, and those sparks are the best evidence of freedom’s existence.
-- Salman Rushdie		 
The worst, most insidious effect of censorship is that, in the end, it can deaden the imagination of the people. Where there is no debate, it is hard to go on remembering, every day, that there is a suppressed side to every argument.
-- Salman Rushdie		 
To make your children capable of honesty is the beginning of education.
-- John Ruskin		 
One evening, when I was yet in my nurse’s arms, I wanted to touch the tea urn, which was boiling merrily... My nurse would have taken me away from the urn, but my mother said 'Let him touch it.' So I touched it -- and that was my first lesson in the meaning of liberty.
-- John Ruskin		 
Let us reform our schools, and we shall find little reform needed in our prisons.
-- John Ruskin		 
Without seeking, truth cannot be known at all. It can neither be declared from pulpits, nor set down in articles, nor in any wise prepared and sold in packages ready for use. Truth must be ground for every man by itself out of it such, with such help as he can get, indeed, but not without stern labor of his own.
-- John Ruskin		 
Large fortunes are all founded either on the occupation of land, or lending or the taxation of labor.
-- John Ruskin		 
Wise laws and just restraints are to a noble nation not chains, but chains of mail, -- strength and defense, though something of an incumbrance.
-- John Ruskin		 
The highest reward for man’s toil is not what he gets for it, but what he becomes by it.
-- John Ruskin		 
There is no wealth but life.
-- John Ruskin		 
That treacherous phantom which men call Liberty.
-- John Ruskin		 
Dogma demands authority, rather than intelligent thought, as the source of opinion; it requires persecution of heretics and hostility to unbelievers; it asks of its disciples that they should inhibit natural kindness in favour of systematic hatred.
-- Bertrand Russell		 
Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day.
-- Bertrand Russell		 
It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.
-- Bertrand Russell		 
The argument against the persecution of opinion does not depend upon what the excuse for persecution may be. The argument is that we none of us know all truth, that the discovery of new truth is promoted by free discussion and rendered very difficult by suppression.
-- Bertrand Russell		 
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.
-- Bertrand Russell		 
Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
-- Bertrand Russell		 
In all affairs it’s a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.
-- Bertrand Russell		 
What a man believes upon grossly insufficient evidence is an index into his desires -- desires of which he himself is often unconscious. If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way.
-- Bertrand Russell		 
I think the subject which will be of most importance politically is Mass Psychology. ...It's importance has been enormously increased by the growth of modern methods of propaganda ...Although this science will be diligently studied, it will be rigidly confined to the governing class. The populace will not be allowed to know how its convictions were generated.
-- Bertrand Russell		 
To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.
-- Bertrand Russell		 
The essence of the liberal outlook lies not in what opinions are held, but in how they are held: instead of being viewed dogmatically, they are held tentatively, with a consciousness that new evidence may at any moment lead to their abandonment.
-- Bertrand Russell		 
Heretical views arise when the truth is uncertain, and it is only when the truth is uncertain that censorship is invoked.
-- Bertrand Russell		 
It is clear that thought is not free if the profession of certain opinions make it impossible to earn a living.
-- Bertrand Russell		 
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.
-- Bertrand Russell		 
Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure.
-- Bertrand Russell		 
There is no nonsense so errant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action.
-- Bertrand Russell		 
Man has existed for about a million years. He has possessed writing for about 6,000 years, agriculture somewhat longer, but perhaps not much longer. Science, as a dominant factor in determining the belief of educated men, has existed for about 300 years; as a source of economic technique, for about 150 years. In this brief period it has proved itself an incredibly powerful revolutionary force. When we consider how recently it has risen to power, we find ourselves forced to believe that we are at the very beginning of its work in transforming human life.
-- Bertrand Russell		 
These men - ..., the politicians, ... - use their position, their knowledge, and their power of disseminating misinformation to arouse and stimulate the latent instinct for bloodshed. When they have succeeded, they say they are reluctantly forced to war by the pressure of public opinion.
-- Bertrand Russell		 
What's the difference between a bright, inquisitive five-year-old, and a dull, stupid nineteen-year-old? Fourteen years of the British educational system.
-- Bertrand Russell		 
When the state intervenes to insure the indoctrination of some doctrine, it does so because there is no conclusive evidence in favor of that doctrine.
-- Bertrand Russell		 
Freedom in general may be defined as the absence of obstacles to the realization of desires.
-- Bertrand Russell		 
Envy is the basis of Democracy.
-- Bertrand Russell		 
If we were all given by magic the power to read each other's thoughts, I suppose the first effect would be to dissolve all friendships.
-- Bertrand Russell		 
We may define a Puritan as a man who holds that certain kinds of acts, even if they have no visible bad effects upon others than the agent, are inherently sinful, and, being sinful, ought to be prevented by whatever means is most effectual - the criminal law if possible, and, if not that, then public opinion backed by economic pressure.
-- Bertrand Russell		 
The laws in question can, therefore, only be justified by the theory of vindictive punishment, which holds that certain sins, though they may not injure anyone except the sinner, are so heinous as to make it our duty to inflict pain upon the delinquent. This point of view, under the influence of Benthamism, lost its hold during the nineteenth century. But in recent years, with the general decay of Liberalism, it has regained lost ground, and has begun to threaten a new tyranny as oppressive as any in the Middle Ages.
-- Bertrand Russell		 
The practical objection to Puritanism, as to every form of fanaticism, is that it singles out certain evils as so much worse than others that they must be suppressed at all costs. The fanatic fails to recognise that the suppression of a real evil, if carried out too drastically, produces other evils which are even greater.
-- Bertrand Russell		 
Next to enjoying ourselves, the next greatest pleasure consists in preventing others from enjoying themselves, or, more generally, in the acquisition of power. Consequently those who live under the dominion of Puritanism become exceedingly desirous of power. Now love of power does far more harm than love of drink or any of the other vices against which Puritans protest. Of course, in virtuous people love of power camouflages itself as love of doing good, but this makes very little difference to its social effects. It merely means that we punish our victims for being wicked, instead of for being our enemies. In either case, tyranny and war result. Moral indignation is one of the most harmful forces in the modern world, the more so as it can always be diverted to sinister uses by those who control propaganda.
-- Bertrand Russell		 
The earth becomes more crowded, and our dependence upon our neighbours becomes more intimate. In these circumstances life cannot remain tolerable unless we learn to let each other alone in all matters that are not of immediate and obvious concern to the community. We must learn to respect each other's privacy, and not to impose our moral standards upon each other. The Puritan imagines that his moral standard is the moral standard; he does not realize that other ages and other countries, and even other groups in his own country, have moral standards different from his, to which they have as good a right as he has to his. Unfortunately, the love of power which is the natural outcome of Puritan self-denial makes the Puritan more executive than other people, and makes it difficult for others to resist him. Let us hope that a broader education and a wider knowledge of mankind may gradually weaken the ardour of our too virtuous masters.
-- Bertrand Russell		 
I pray that no child of mine would ever descend into such a place as a library. They are indeed most dangerous places and unfortunate is she or he who is lured into such a hellhole of enjoyment, stimulus, facts, passion and fun.
-- Willy Russell		 
With lies you may get ahead in the world - but you can never go back.
-- Russian proverb		 
Teachers are directed to instruct their pupils... and to awaken in them a sense of their responsibility toward the community of the nation.
-- Bernhard Rust		 
It is in the American interest to put an end to Nationhood. That is the goal in global government. America must get out of the United Nations or our sovereign Republic will not survive.
-- Walt Rustow		 
You just can't beat the person who never gives up.
-- Babe Ruth		 


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