Famous Quotations / Quotes
Famous Quotes about Liberty
 
Click on the name to open the full quote and the details about the quote's origin. Quotes are also grouped by Category and Author.  
 
Whilst America hath been the land of promise to Europeans, and their descendants, it hath been the vale of death to millions of the wretched sons of Africa ... Whilst we were offering up vows at the shrine of Liberty ... whilst we swore irreconcilable hostility to her enemies ... whilst we adjured the God of Hosts to witness our resolution to live free or die ... we were imposing on our fellow men, who differ in complexion from us, a slavery, ten thousand times more cruel than the utmost extremity of those grievances and oppressions, of which we complained.
-- St. George Tucker		 
To the extent that these [New Deal policies] developed, they were tortured interpretations of a document [the Constitution] intended to prevent them.
-- Rexford Tugwell		 
Characteristically, however, the overthrow of the dictator simply means that there will be another dictator. ... the policies they follow will probably not be radically different. If we look around the world, we quickly realize that these policies will not be radically different from those that would be followed by a democracy either.
-- Gordon Tullock		 
Our system is changing and [Congress] is the one branch that must act if we are to reverse those changes. We are seeing the emergence of a different model of government, a model long-ago rejected by the framers. ... A dominant presidency has occurred with very little congressional opposition. Indeed, when President Obama pledged to circumvent Congress, he received rapturous applause from the very body that he was proposing to make practically irrelevant. Now many members are contesting the right of this institution to even be heard in federal court. ... This body is moving from self-loathing to self-destruction in a system that is in crisis. The president's pledge to effectively govern alone is alarming, and what is most alarming is his ability to fulfill that pledge. When a president can govern alone, he can become a government unto himself, which is precisely the danger the framers sought to avoid.
-- Jonathan Turley		 
Marijuana leads to homosexuality ... and therefore to AIDS.
-- Carlton Turner		 
History does not exist for us until and unless we dig it up, interpret it, and put it together. Then the past comes alive, or, more accurately, it is revealed for what it has always been - a part of the present.
-- Frederick W. Turner III		 
We must not allow ourselves to become like the system we oppose. We cannot afford to use methods of which we will be ashamed when we look back, when we say, '...we shouldn't have done that.' We must remember, my friends, that we have been given a wonderful cause. The cause of freedom! And you and I must be those who will walk with heads held high. We will say, 'We used methods that can stand the harsh scrutiny of history.'
-- Bishop Desmond Tutu		 
If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.
-- Bishop Desmond Tutu		 
Stability and peace in our land will not come from the barrel of a gun, because peace without justice is an impossibility.
-- Bishop Desmond Tutu		 
Whenever there is a simple error that most laymen fall for, there is always a slightly more sophisticated version of the same problem that experts fall for.
-- Amos Tversky		 
There is no distinctly native American criminal class save Congress.
-- Mark Twain		 
Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned.
-- Mark Twain		 
How you can win the population for war: At first, the statesman will invent cheap lying, that impute the guilt of the attacked nation, and each person will be happy over this deceit, that calm the conscience. It will study it detailed and refuse to test arguments of the other opinion. So he will convince step for step even therefrom that the war is just and thank God, that he, after this process of grotesque even deceit, can sleep better.
-- Mark Twain		 
Now what I contend is that my body is my own, at least I have always so regarded it. If I do harm through my experimenting with it, it is I who suffers, not the state.
-- Mark Twain		 
A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining and wants it back the minute it begins to rain.
-- Mark Twain		 
We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world; and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don't know anything and can't read.
-- Mark Twain		 
When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory – must follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God the Father fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!

'O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle – be Thou near them! With them – in spirit – we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with hurricanes of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it – for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.'

[After a pause.] Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits.
-- Mark Twain

 
A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.
-- Mark Twain		 
No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the congress is in session.
-- Mark Twain		 
Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn't.  You cannot shirk this and be a man.  To decide against your conviction is to be an unqualified and excusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let me label you as they may.
-- Mark Twain		 
If the desire to kill and the opportunity to kill came always together, who would escape hanging?
-- Mark Twain		 
A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.
-- Mark Twain		 
Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it.
-- Mark Twain		 
Often, the less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it.
-- Mark Twain		 
In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.
-- Mark Twain		 
Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing the matter with this, except that it ain't so.
-- Mark Twain		 
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines, Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream.
-- Mark Twain		 
Often, the surest way to convey information is to tell the strict truth.
-- Mark Twain		 
A classic is a book which people praise and don't read.
-- Mark Twain		 
Observe, I do not mean to suggest that the custom of lying has suffered any decay or interruption -- no, for the Lie, as Virtue, as Principle, is eternal; the Lie, as a recreation, a solace, a refuge in time of need, the fourth Grace, the tenth Muse, man's best and surest friend, is immortal, and cannot perish from the earth while this club remains. My complaint, simply concerns the decay of the art of lying. No high-minded man, no man of right feeling, can contemplate the lumbering and slovenly lying of the present day without grieving to see a noble art so prostituted. ... If this finest of the fine art arts had everywhere received the attention, encouragement, and conscientious practice and development which this club has devoted to it, I should not need to utter this lament, or cry a single tear. I do not say this to flatter. I say it in a spirit of just and appreciative recognition.
-- Mark Twain		 
Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
-- Mark Twain		 

-- Mark Twain		 
Congressman is the trivialist distinction for a full grown man.
-- Mark Twain		 
It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.
-- Mark Twain		 
Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
-- Mark Twain		 
Carlye said, A lie cannot live; it shows he did not know how to tell them.
-- Mark Twain		 
It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either.
-- Mark Twain		 
It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that makes horse races.
-- Mark Twain		 
Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.
-- Mark Twain		 
One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.
-- Mark Twain		 
Let me make the superstitions of a nation and I care not who makes its laws or its songs either.
-- Mark Twain		 
... if it is a Miracle, any sort of evidence will answer, but if it is a Fact, proof is necessary.
-- Mark Twain		 
The history of the race, and each individual's experience, are thick with evidence that a truth is not hard to kill and that a lie told well is immortal.
-- Mark Twain		 
One of the proofs of the immortality of the soul is that myriads have believed in it. They have also believed the world was flat.
-- Mark Twain		 
Don't go around saying the world owes you a living; the world owes you nothing; it was here first.
-- Mark Twain		 
Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.
-- Mark Twain		 
We are discreet sheep; we wait to see how the drove is going, and then go with the drove. We have two opinions: one private, which we are afraid to express; and another one - the one we use - which we force ourselves to wear to please Mrs. Grundy, until habit makes us comfortable in it, and the custom of defending it presently makes us love it, adore it, and forget how pitifully we came by it. Look at it in politics.
-- Mark Twain		 
Fleas can be taught nearly anything that a Congressman can.
-- Mark Twain		 
I am aware that when even the brightest mind in our world has been trained up from childhood in a superstition of any kind, it will never be possible for that mind, in its maturity, to examine sincerely, dispassionately, and conscientiously any evidence or any circumstance which shall seem to cast a doubt upon the validity of that superstition... (more)
-- Mark Twain		 
Irreverence is the champion of liberty and its only sure defense.
-- Mark Twain		 
When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.
-- Mark Twain		 
All Congresses and Parliaments have a kindly feeling for idiots, and a compassion for them, on account of personal experience and heredity.
-- Mark Twain		 
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
-- Mark Twain		 
Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.
-- Mark Twain		 
Travel is lethal to prejudice.
-- Mark Twain		 
When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.
-- Mark Twain		 
My kind of loyalty was to one's country, not to its institutions or its officeholders. The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease, and death.
-- Mark Twain		 
We are discreet sheep; we wait to see how the drove is going, and then go with the drove.
-- Mark Twain		 
It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either.
-- Mark Twain		 
The mania for giving the Government power to meddle with the private affairs of cities or citizens is likely to cause endless trouble, through the rivaly of schools and creeds that are anxious to obtain official recognition, and there is great danger that our people will lose our independence of thought and action which is the cause of much of our greatness, and sink into the helplessness of the Frenchman or German who expects his government to feed him when hungry, clothe him when naked, to prescribe when his child may be born and when he may die, and, in time, to regulate every act of humanity from the cradle to the tomb, including the manner in which he may seek future admission to paradise.
-- Mark Twain		 
Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.
-- Mark Twain		 
Each must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, and which course is patriotic and which isn’t. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your convictions is to be an unqualified and inexcusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let man label you as they may. If you alone of all the nation shall decide one way, and that way be the right way according to your convictions of the right, you have done your duty by yourself and by your country- hold up your head! You have nothing to be ashamed of.
-- Mark Twain		 
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.
-- Mark Twain		 
Adam was not alone in the Garden of Eden, however, and does not deserve all the credit; much is due to Eve, the first woman, and Satan, the first consultant.
-- Mark Twain		 
For in a Republic, who is "the country?" Is it the Government which is for the moment in the saddle? Why, the Government is merely a servant -- merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn't. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them.
-- Mark Twain		 
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.
-- Mark Twain		 
I wasn't worth a cent two years ago, and now I owe two million dollars.
-- Mark Twain		 
Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform.
-- Mark Twain		 
Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed.
-- Mark Twain		 
Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
-- Mark Twain		 
It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.
-- Mark Twain		 
If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.
-- Mark Twain		 
Duties are not performed for duty's sake, but because their neglect would make the man uncomfortable. A man performs but one duty -- the duty of contenting his spirit, the duty of making himself agreeable to himself.
-- Mark Twain		 
Few things are more irritating than when someone who is wrong is also very effective in making his point.
-- Mark Twain		 
When in doubt, tell the truth.
-- Mark Twain		 


Daily Quotes
Ready to be inspired?
Sign up for a daily dose of Liberty Quotes!
Leave us your email address to subscribe.
Email:

Here's the Daily Quote history.

Browse quotes by
Authors, Categories,
and Cryptograms!



The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations
A classic since 1953 with over 20,000 quotes from over 3,000 authors.


Famous Last Words
Apt Observations, Pleas, Curses, Benedictions, Sour Notes, Bons Mots, and Insights from People on the Brink of Departure


Stretch Your Wings
Famous Black Quotations for the Young


American Quotations
An exhaustive collection of profound quotes from the founding fathers, presidents, statesmen, scientists, constitutions, court decisions


The Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations


Last Words of Saints and Sinners
700 Final Quotes from the Famous, the Infamous, and the Inspiring Figures of History


America's God and Country: Encyclopedia of Quotations
Contains over 2,100 profound quotations from founding fathers, presidents, constitutions, court decisions and more


The Law
This 1850 classic is an absolute must read for anyone interested in law, justice, truth, or liberty. A most compelling and revolutionary look at The Law.


Bartlett's Familiar Quotations
A Collection of Passages, Phrases, and Proverbs Traced to Their Sources in Ancient and Modern Literature (17th Edition)


The Stupidest Things Ever Said by Politicians
Rise up, America -- and laugh out loud at the greatest gaffes that no spin doctor could possibly fix!


The 776 Even Stupider Things Ever Said
Another great collection of stupidity


Quotable Quotes
Wit and Wisdom for All Occasions from America's Most Popular Magazine


The Most Brilliant Thoughts of All Time
You don't have to be a genius to sound like one. Here's a collection of the most profound and provocative wit and wisdom in the English language in two lines or less.


2,715 One-Line Quotations for Speakers, Writers & Raconteurs
Invaluable sampler of witticisms, epigrams, sayings, bon mots, platitudes and insights chosen for their brevity and pithiness.


Phillips' Book of Great Thoughts Funny Sayings
A stupendous collection of quotes, quips, epigrams, witticisms, and humorous comments for personal enjoyment and ready reference.


Quick Quips and Quotes; 532 Things I Wish I Had Said
Quick Quips and Quotes is the Ultimate Collection of one liners.


Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes
The ultimate anthology of anecdotes, now revised with over 700 new entries.


Quotations for Public Speakers
A Historical, Literary, and Political Anthology


Liberty - The American Revolution
This compelling series traces the events leading up to the war and America's fight for freedom.


Founding Fathers
The story of how these disparate characters fomented rebellion in the colonies, formed the Continental Congress, fought the Revolutionary War, and wrote the Constitution


Libertarianism: A Primer
David Boaz, director of the Cato Institute, has written a simple introduction to Libertarianism inteneded to appeal to disgruntled Democrats and Republicans everywhere.


The Libertarian Reader
Classic and Contemporary Writings from Lao-Tzu to Milton Friedman


Thomas Paine: Collected Writings
All the classics: Common Sense / The Crisis / Rights of Man / The Age of Reason / Pamphlets, Articles, and Letters


(c) Copyright 1999-2025