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Famous Quotes about Liberty
 
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The natural effort of every individual to better his own condition is so powerful that it is alone, and without any assistance, not only capable of carrying on the society to wealth and prosperity, but of surmounting a hundred impertinent obstructions with which the folly of human laws too often encumbers its operations.
-- Adam Smith		 
It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.
-- Adam Smith		 
I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.
-- Adam Smith		 
The natural effort of every individual to better his own condition, when suffered to exert itself with freedom and security is so powerful a principle that it is alone, and without any assistance, not only capable of carrying on the society to wealth and prosperity, but of surmounting a hundred impertinent obstructions with which the folly of human laws too often incumbers its operations; though the effect of these obstructions is always more or less either to encroach upon its freedom, or to diminish its security.
-- Adam Smith		 
How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it.
-- Adam Smith		 
It is the right of our people to organize to oppose any law and any part of the constitution with which they are not in sympathy.
-- Alfred E. Smith		 
The entire American political system is a con, a sleazy mix of legalized bribes, auctioning off of favors, revolving doors between government agencies and the corporations they enrich and the blatant hypocrisy of snake-oil salespeople who know the marks (voters) face a false choice between two parties that are the same poison sold under different labels.
-- Charles Hugh Smith		 
Protection of political speech advanced two important democratic goals:\\1) an informed citizenry that would be capable of making educated decisions on matters of public concern, and \\2) a free and open marketplace of ideas wherein the truth would ultimately prevail… Only through a vigorous and spirited public debate could citizens be educated about the actions of their government and react responsibly.
-- Craig R. Smith		 
The idea that political speech had to be protected at any cost dates to Colonial days, during which the press and the public were not allowed to express themselves freely on matters of public concern. The King and his government often used restrictive measures, such as licensing of printing presses and the doctrine of seditious libel, to silence unfavorable public comment.
-- Craig R. Smith		 
The physical capacity to coerce others can never generate a moral obligation to obey the dictates of [government] power.
-- George H. Smith		 
I do not subscribe to the doctrine that the people are the slaves and property of their government. I believe that government is for the use of the people, and not the people for the use of the government.
-- Gerrit Smith		 
This is precisely the purpose of censorship – not only to block unwanted views, but to keep people who are unhappy from knowing how many millions of others share their unhappiness; to keep the dormant opposition from awakening to its own developing strength.
-- Hedrick Smith		 
It is a general maxim that all governments find a use for as much money as they can raise. Indeed, they have commonly demands for more...I take this as a settled truth, that they will all spend as much as their revenue; that is, will live up to their income.
-- James Smith		 
I have sat on many a promotion panel where the first question of panel members was 'How many seizures have you made?'
-- Joseph R. Smith		 
Education is a private matter between the person and the world of knowledge and experience, and has little to do with school or college.
-- Lillian Smith		 
Our names are labels, plainly printed on the bottled essence of our past behavior.
-- Logan Pearsall Smith		 
Politicians need human misery. ... Government’s a disease masquerading as its own cure.
-- L. Neil Smith		 
One thing about a police state, you can always find the police.
-- L. Neil Smith		 
Nine tenths of everything is tax. Everything you buy has a complicated history of robbery: land, raw materials, energy, tools, buildings, transport, storage, sales, profits. Don’t forget the share you contribute toward the personal income tax of every worker who has anything to do with the process. Inflation by taxation: there are a hundred taxes on a loaf of bread. What kind of living standard would we enjoy if everything cost a tenth of what it does? What kind of world? Think of your home, your car, your TV, your shoes, your supper—all at a 90% discount! Government can’t fight poverty—poverty is its proudest achievement!
-- L. Neil Smith		 
People who object to weapons aren't abolishing violence, they're begging for rule by brute force, when the biggest, strongest animals among men were always automatically 'right.' Guns ended that, and social democracy is a hollow farce without an armed populace to make it work.
-- L. Neil Smith		 
Few things are more laughably pitiable than authority once it has been successfully defied.
-- L. Neil Smith		 
Guns cause crime like flies cause garbage.
-- L. Neil Smith		 
Each day, it seemed, another law was passed to impoverish and diminish them, punishing them for whatever success they achieved and rewarding their less competent and industrious neighbors.
-- L. Neil Smith		 
[N]o one’s ever been able to show me any difference between democracy and brute force. It’s just a majority ganging up on a minority with the minority giving in to avoid getting massacred.
-- L. Neil Smith		 
Congress will ever exercise their powers to levy as much money as the people can pay. They will not be restrained from direct taxes by the consideration that necessity does not require them.
-- Melancton Smith		 
It is necessary that the powers vested in government should be precisely defined, that the people may be able to know whether it moves in the circle of the Constitution. Article I, Section 8 is intolerably vague. The Federal government will push its taxing power to the limit. It is a general maxim that all governments find a use for as much money as they can raise. Indeed, they have commonly demands for more. Hence it is that all as far as we are acquainted are in debt. I take this to be a settled truth that they will all spend as much as their revenue. That is, will live at least up to their income. Congress will ever exercise their powers to levy as much money as the people can pay. They will not be restrained from direct taxes by the consideration that necessity does not require them.
-- Melancton Smith		 
My country, 'tis of thee, Sweet land of liberty, Of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died! Land of the Pilgrims' pride! From ev'ry mountainside, Let freedom ring!
-- Rev. Samuel Francis Smith		 
Freedom of thought, conscience, and expression are numinous values, linked to the defining characteristics of man. The time has come for societies around the world to embrace the idea of an open culture as an aspiration of transcendent importance.
-- Rodney A. Smola		 
A nation committed to an open culture will defend human expression and conscience in all its wonderful variety, protecting freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom of association, freedom of assembly, and freedom of peaceful mass protest.
-- Rodney A. Smola		 
The ultimate aim of the Council on Foreign Relations … is … to create a one-world socialist system and make the United States an official part of it.
-- Dan Smoot		 
Unable to maintain their government-granted monopoly, the powerful railroad interests turned to government to do the regulating and price-fixing which they were unable to do themselves. In fact, the pressure that induced Congress to enact the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 did not come from reformers bemoaning abuses by the powerful railroad interests; it came from the railroad interests themselves, asking Congress to shield them against the harsh winds of competition.
-- Dan Smoot		 
The only valid censorship of ideas is the right of people not to listen.
-- Tommy Smothers		 
Democracy, with its promise of international peace, has been no better guarantee against war than the old dynastic rule of kings.
-- Jan C. Smuts		 
I think I have served the purpose that I came here for, which was to provide a credible election product for our members.
-- Brenda Snipes		 
No one is fit to be trusted with power. ... No one. ... Any man who has lived at all knows the follies and wickedness he's capable of. ... And if he does know it, he knows also that neither he nor any man ought to be allowed to decide a single human fate.
-- C. P. Snow		 
The last person to achieve unambiguous victory in an air war was Zeus.
-- Tony Snow		 
The ['Hillary Care'] plan prescribed some eye popping maximum fines:$5,000 for refusing to join the government mandated health plan; $5,000 for failing to pay premiums on time; 15 years in prison for doctors who received ‘anything of value’ in exchange for helping patients short circuit bureaucracy; $10,000 a day for faulty physician paperwork; and $50,000 for unauthorized patient treatment. When told the plan could bankrupt small businesses, Mrs. Clinton said, 'I can’t be responsible for every under-capitalized small business in America.'
-- Tony Snow		 
Saying it’s okay for the government to spy on you because you’re innocent and you have “nothing to hide”... Is like saying it’s okay for the government to censor free speech because you have “nothing to say.”
-- Edward Snowden		 
But to ban guns because criminals use them is to tell the innocent and law-abiding that their rights and liberties depend not on their own conduct, but on the conduct of the guilty and the lawless, and that the law will permit them to have only such rights and liberties as the lawless will allow. ... For society does not control crime, ever, by forcing the law-abiding to accommodate themselves to the expected behavior of criminals. Society controls crime by forcing the criminals to accommodate themselves to the expected behavior of the law-abiding.
-- Jeffrey R. Snyder		 
Is your life worth protecting? If so, whose responsibility is it to protect it? ... How can you rightfully ask another human being to risk his life to protect yours, when you will assume no responsibility yourself?
-- Jeffrey R. Snyder		 
[O]ne who values his life and takes seriously his responsibilities to his family and community will possess and cultivate the means of fighting back, and will retaliate when threatened with death or grievous bodily injury to himself or a loved one. He will never be content to rely solely on others for his safety....
-- Jeffrey R. Snyder		 
Fortunately, there is a weapon for preserving life and liberty that can be wielded effectively by almost anyone -- the handgun. Small and light enough to be carried habitually, lethal, but unlike the knife or sword, not demanding great skill or strength, it truly is the 'great equalizer.' Requiring only hand-eye coordination and a modicum of ability to remain cool under pressure, it can be used effectively by the old and the weak against the young and the strong, by the one against the many.
-- Jeffrey R. Snyder		 
If you believe it reprehensible to possess the means and will to use lethal force to repel a criminal assault, how can you call upon another to do so for you?
-- Jeffrey R. Snyder		 
Crime is rampant because the law-abiding, each of us, condone it, excuse it, permit it, submit to it. We permit and encourage it because we do not fight back, immediately, then and there, where it happens. Crime is not rampant because we do not have enough prisons, because judges and prosecutors are too soft, because the police are hamstrung with absurd technicalities. The defect is there, in our character. We are a nation of cowards and shirkers.
-- Jeffrey R. Snyder		 
Laws disarming honest citizens proclaim that the government is the master, not the servant, of the people.
-- Jeffrey R. Snyder		 
As the Founding Fathers knew well, a government that does not trust its honest, law-abiding, taxpaying citizens with the means of self-defense is not itself worthy of trust. Laws disarming honest citizens proclaim that the government is the master, not the servant of the people... The Bill of Rights does not grant rights to the people, such that its repeal would legitimately confer upon government the powers otherwise proscribed. The Bill of Rights is the list of the fundamental, inalienable rights, endowed in man by his Creator, that define what it means to be a free and independent people, the rights which must exist to ensure that government governs only with the consent of the people.
-- Jeffrey R. Snyder		 
To own firearms is to affirm that freedom and liberty are not gifts from the state. It is to reserve final judgment about whether the state is encroaching on freedom and liberty, to stand ready to defend that freedom with more than mere words, and to stand outside the state’s totalitarian reach.
-- Jeffrey R. Snyder		 
As the Founding Fathers knew well, a government that does not trust its honest, law-abiding, taxpaying citizens with the means of self-defense is not itself worthy of trust. Laws disarming honest citizens proclaim that the government is the master, not the servant, of the people.
-- Jeffrey R. Snyder		 
If Communism was liberalism in a hurry, liberalism is Communism in slow motion.
-- Joseph Sobran		 
Politicians never accuse you of 'greed' for wanting other people's money --- only for wanting to keep your own money.
-- Joseph Sobran		 
Liberals have a new wish every time their latest wish is granted. Conservatives should make them spell out their principles and ideals. Instead of doing this, conservatives allow liberals to pursue incremental goals without revealing their ultimate destination. So, thanks to the negligence of their opponents, liberals control the terms of every debate by always demanding 'more' while never defining 'enough.' The predictable result is that they always get more, and it's never enough.
-- Joseph Sobran		 
The attempt to silence a man is the greatest honour you can bestow on him. It means that you recognise his superiority to yourself.
-- Joseph Sobran		 
At the end of a century that has seen the evils of communism, Nazism and other modern tyrannies, the impulse to centralize power remains amazingly persistent.
-- Joseph Sobran		 
Politicians never accuse you of ‘greed’ for wanting other people’s money—only for wanting to keep your own money.
-- Joseph Sobran		 
The difference between a politician and a pickpocket is that the pickpocket doesn't get indignant when you tell him to keep his hands to himself.
-- Joseph Sobran		 
In 100 years we have gone from teaching Latin and Greek in high school to teaching Remedial English in college.
-- Joseph Sobran		 
Can the real Constitution be restored? Probably not. Too many Americans depend on government money under programs the Constitution doesn't authorize, and money talks with an eloquence Shakespeare could only envy. Ignorant people don't understand The Federalist Papers, but they understand government checks with their names on them.
-- Joseph Sobran		 
Tyranny seldom announces itself. ...In fact, a tyranny may exist without an individual tyrant. A whole government, even a democratically elected one, may be tyrannical.
-- Joseph Sobran		 
Most Americans aren't the sort of citizens the Founding Fathers expected; they are contented serfs. Far from being active critics of government, they assume that its might makes it right.
-- Joseph Sobran		 
People who create things nowadays can expect to be prosecuted by highly moralistic people who are incapable of creating anything. There is no way to measure the chilling effect on innovation that results from the threats of taxation, regulation and prosecution against anything that succeeds. We’ll never know how many ideas our government has aborted in the name protecting us.
-- Joseph Sobran		 
By a very conservative estimate, a hundred million people have died at the hands of their own governments in this century. Given that record, how bad could anarchy be?
-- Joseph Sobran		 
All in all, the framers would probably agree that it's better to impeach too often than too seldom. If presidents can't be virtuous, they should at least be nervous.
-- Joseph Sobran		 
Not surprisingly, the federal judiciary nearly always rules in favor of the federal government. Judicial review, contrary to the assurances of its advocates, has hardly restrained Congress at all. Instead it has progressively stripped the states of their traditional powers, while allowing federal power to grow unchecked.
-- Joseph Sobran		 
In the current political vocabulary, ‘need’ means wanting to get someone else’s money. ‘Greed,’ which used to mean what “need” now means, has come to mean wanting to keep your own. ‘Compassion’ means the politician’s willingness to arrange the transfer.
-- Joseph Sobran		 
If you want government to intervene domestically, you're a liberal. If you want government to intervene overseas, you're conservative. If you want government to intervene everywhere, you're a moderate. If you don't want government to intervene anywhere, you're an extremist.
-- Joseph Sobran		 
False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.
-- Socrates		 
Are you not ashamed of heaping up the greatest amount of money and honour and reputation, and caring so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul?
-- Socrates		 
Think not those faithful who praise all thy words and actions, but those who kindly reprove thy faults.
-- Socrates		 
I am not an Athenian or a Greek, I am a citizen of the world.
-- Socrates		 
The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways: I to die, and you to live. Which is better, God only knows.
-- Socrates		 
The whole profit of the issuance of money has provided the capital of the great banking business as it exists today. Starting with nothing whatever of their own, they have got the whole world into their debt irredeemably, by a trick. This money comes into existence every time the banks 'lend' and disappears every time the debt is repaid to them. So that if industry tries to repay, the money of the nation disappears. This is what makes prosperity so 'dangerous' as it destroys money just when it is most needed and precipitates a slump. There is nothing left now for us but to get ever deeper and deeper into debt to the banking system in order to provide the increasing amounts of money the nation requires for its expansion and growth. An honest money system is the only alternative.
-- Frederick Soddy		 
The most sinister and anti-social feature about bank-deposit money is that it has no existence. The banks owe the public for a total amount of money which does not exist. In buying and selling, implemented by cheque transactions, there is a mere change in the party to whom the money is owed by the banks. As the one depositor's account is debited, the other is credited and the banks can go on owing for it all the time. The whole profit of the issuance of money has provided the capital of the great banking business as it exists today. Starting with nothing whatever of their own, they have got the whole world into their debt irredeemably, by a trick. This money comes into existence every time the banks 'lend' and disappears every time the debt is repaid to them. So that if industry tries to repay, the money of the nation disappears. This is what makes prosperity so 'dangerous' as it destroys money just when it is most needed and precipitates a slump. There is nothing left now for us but to get ever deeper and deeper into debt to the banking system in order to provide the increasing amounts of money the nation requires for its expansion and growth. An honest money system is the only alternative.
-- Frederick Soddy		 
These six things doth the LORD hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him: A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, An heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief, A false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren.
-- King Solomon		 
For often evil men are rich, and good men poor; But we will not exchange with them Our virtue for their wealth since one abides always, While riches change their owners every day.
-- Solon		 
If through your vices you afflicted are, Lay not the blame of your distress on God; You made your rulers mighty, gave them guards, So now you groan 'neath slavery's heavy rod.
-- Solon		 


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