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Famous Quotes about Liberty
 
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This Constitution, ...shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby
-- U.S. Constitution, Article VI		 
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
-- U.S. Constitution, Ninth Amendment		 
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.
-- U.S. Constitution, Second Amendment		 
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
-- U.S. Constitution, Tenth Amendment		 
The pages of history shine instances of the jury’s exercise of its prerogative to disregard uncontradicted evidence and instructions of the judge.
-- U.S. Court of Appeals District of Columbia		 
Jury lawlessness is the greatest corrective of law in its actual administration. The will of the state at large imposed on a reluctant community, the will of a majority imposed on a vigorous and determined minority, find the same obstacle in the local jury that formerly confronted kings and ministers.
-- U.S. Court of Appeals District of Columbia		 
[T]he jury, as the conscience of the community, must be permitted to look at more than logic.
-- U.S. Court of Appeals First Circuit		 
The pages of history shine on instances of the jury's exercise of it's prerogative to disregard instructions of the judge.
-- U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia		 
We recognize, as appellants urge, the undisputed power of the jury to acquit, even if its verdict is contrary to the law as given by the judge, and contrary to the evidence. This is a power that must exist as long as we adhere to the general verdict in criminal cases, for the courts cannot search the minds of the jurors to find the basis upon which they judge. If the jury feels that the law under which the defendant is accused, is unjust, or that exigent circumstances justified the actions of the accused, or for any reason which appeals to their logic of passion, the jury has the power to acquit, and the courts must abide by that decision.
-- U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Maryland		 
From now onwards the jury enters on a new phase of its history, and for the next three centuries it will exercise its power of veto on the use of the criminal law against political offenders who have succeeded in obtaining popular sympathy.
-- U.S. Court of Appeals Sixth Circuit		 
We [the U.S.] must account sufficiently for the interests of the advanced industrial nations to discourage them from challenging our leadership or seeking to overturn the established political and economic order . . . we must maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.
-- U.S. Department of Defense Planning Guide for 1994-1999		 
The United States must cultivate a mental view toward world settlement after this war which will enable us to impose our own terms, amounting perhaps to a pax-Americana.
-- U.S. Department of State		 
Oil resources constitute a stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in world history.
-- U.S. State Department Memo, 1944		 
[The] purpose of a jury is to . . . make available the common sense judgment of the community as a hedge against the overzealous or mistaken prosecutor and in preference to the professional or perhaps over conditioned or biased response of a judge.
-- U.S. Supreme Court		 
Since it was first recognized in [the] Magna Carta, trial by jury has been a prized shield against oppression ....
-- U.S. Supreme Court		 
Congress may not abdicate or transfer to others its legitimate functions.
-- U.S. Supreme Court		 
[T]he jury has the power to bring a verdict in the teeth of both law and fact.
-- U.S. Supreme Court		 
Emitting bills of credit, or the creation of money by private corporations, is what is expressly forbidden by Article 1, Section 10 of the U.S. Constitution.
-- U.S. Supreme Court (False)		 
In this country sovereignty resides in the people, and Congress can exercise no power which they have not, by their Constitution, entrusted to it: All else is withheld.
-- U.S. Supreme Court		 
It may not be amiss, here, Gentleman, to remind you of the good old rule, that on questions of fact, it is the province of the jury, on questions of law, it is the province of the court to decide. But it must be observed that by the same law, which recognizes this reasonable distribution of jurisdiction, you have nevertheless a right to take upon yourselves to judge of both, and to determine the law as well as the fact in controversy. ... For, as on the one hand, it is presumed, that juries are the best judges of facts; it is, on the other hand, presumable, that the court are the best judges of law. But still both objects are lawfully, within your power of decision.
-- U.S. Supreme Court		 
The right of the people peacefully to assemble for lawful purposes existed long before the adoption of the Constitution of the United States. In fact, it is and always has been one of the attributes of a free government. It 'derives its source,' to use the language of Chief Justice Marshall, in 'Gibbons v Ogden,' 9 Wheat., 211, 'from those laws whose authority is acknowledged by civilized man throughout the world.' It is found wherever civilization exists. It was not... a right granted to the people by the Constitution... The second and tenth counts are equally defective. The right there specified is that of 'bearing arms for a lawful purpose.' This is not a right granted by the constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence.
-- U.S. vs. Cruickshan		 
The pages of history shine on instances of the jury's exercise of its prerogative to disregard instructions of the judge...
-- U.S. vs. Dougherty		 
Liberty is the hardest test that one can inflict on a people. To know how to be free is not given equally to all men and all nations.
-- Paul Valéry		 
Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.
-- Paul Valéry		 
The world acquires value only through its extremists play. They are the gadflies that keep society from being too complacent.
-- Paul Valéry		 
Just as there is a very short distance between the U.S. and Cuba, there is a very short distance between a democracy and a dictatorship where the government gets to decide what to do, how to think, and how to live. And sometimes your freedom is not taken away at gunpoint, but instead it is done one piece of paper at a time, one seemingly meaningless rule at a time, one small silencing at a time. Never allow the government – or anyone else – to tell you what you can or cannot believe or what you can and cannot say or what your conscience tells you to have to do or not do.
-- Armando Valladares		 
The difference between [people who take civil liberties seriously] and others ... is that such serious people begin with a constitutional understanding that declines to trivialize the Second Amendment or the Fourteenth Amendment, just as they likewise decline to trivialize any other right expressly identified elsewhere in the Bill of Rights. It is difficult to see why they are less than entirely right in this unremarkable view. That it has taken the NRA to speak for them, with respect to the Second Amendment, moreover, is merely interesting -- perhaps far more as a comment on others, however, than on the NRA.
-- William Van Alstyne		 
The Second Amendment, like the First Amendment, is ... not mysterious. Nor is it equivocal. Least of all is it opaque. Rather, one may say, today it is simply unwelcome in any community that wants no one (save perhaps the police?) to keep or bear arms at all. But ... it is for them to seek repeal of this amendment (and so the repeal of its guarantee), in order to have their way. Or so the Constitution itself assuredly appears to require, if that is the way things are to be.
-- William Van Alstyne		 
Wisdom doesn't automatically come with old age. Nothing does - except wrinkles. It's true, some wines improve with age. But only if the grapes were good in the first place.
-- Abigail Van Buren		 
I agree that marijuana laws are overdue for an overhaul. I also favor the medical use of marijuana -- if it's prescribed by a physician. I cannot understand why the federal government should interfere with the doctor-patient relationship, nor why it would ignore the will of a majority of voters who have legally approved such legislation.
-- Abigail Van Buren		 
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice, but in practice, there is.
-- Jan L.A. van de Snepscheut		 
An unexamined idea, to paraphrase Socrates, is not worth having and a society whose ideas are never explored for possible error may eventually find its foundations insecure.
-- Mark Van Doren		 
To be what no one ever was, to be what everyone has been: Freedom is the mean of those extremes that fence all effort in.
-- Mark Van Doren		 
Respect for the truth is an acquired taste.
-- Mark Van Doren		 
The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore.
-- Vincent van Gogh		 
Any formal attack on ignorance is bound to fail because the masses are always ready to defend their most precious possession -- their ignorance.
-- Hendrik van Loon		 
Is it not ironical that in a planned society of controlled workers given compulsory assignments, where religious expression is suppressed, the press controlled, and all media of communication censored, where a puppet government is encouraged but denied any real authority, where great attention is given to efficiency and character reports, and attendance at cultural assemblies is mandatory, where it is avowed that all will be administered to each according to his needs and performance required from each according to his abilities, and where those who flee are tracked down, returned, and punished for trying to escape - in short in the milieu of the typical large American secondary school - we attempt to teach 'the democratic system'?
-- Royce Van Norman		 
The media can now wistfully reflect on their glory days of the 1970's when the majority of people actually bought into their bullshit.
-- Laura K. Van Onymous		 
Anyone who tells you that "It Can't Happen Here" is whistling past the graveyard of history. There is no 'house rule' that bars tyranny coming to America. History is replete with republics whose people grew complacent and descended into imperial butchery and chaos.
-- Mike Vanderboegh		 
Using the power of the law to ensure that the law abiding are at the mercy of the lawless is an act of barbarism beyond the realms of logic. The dreamers and fools who force us to endure the carnage should be on trial along with the criminals they are creating.The world is not made more civil by forcing the civilized to be the victims of the predators. How dare you, any of you, refuse good law abiding citizens the right to defend themselves in a country where there were 25,000 murders, 105,000 reported rapes, and 975,000 armed robberies LAST YEAR?
-- Lon VanOstran		 
The tragedy of the police state is that it always regards all opposition as a crime, and there are no degrees.
-- Robert Gilbert Vansittart		 
A real patriot is the fellow who gets a parking ticket and rejoices that the system works.
-- Bill Vaughan		 
A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won't cross the street to vote in a national election.
-- Bill Vaughan		 
I support people having a gun in public full stop, not just in your home. We don't have the right to bear arms because of burglars; we have the right to bear arms to resist the supreme power of a corrupt and abusive government. It's not about duck hunting; it's about the ability of the individual. It's the same reason we have freedom of speech.
-- Vince Vaughn		 
Productive, private citizens in outlying regions of our nation and states are financially burdened to pay for a parasite public economy of lawmakers, lobbyists, contractors, and bureaucrats in the political centers.
-- Richard K. Vedder		 
Government cannot be your parent.
-- Jesse Ventura		 
The prohibition of drugs causes crime. You don’t have to legalize, just decriminalize it.
-- Jesse Ventura		 
There’s too many laws altogether.
-- Jesse Ventura		 
You want to know my definition of gun control? Being able to stand at 25 meters and put two rounds in the same hole. That’s gun control.
-- Jesse Ventura		 
That frequent recurrence to fundamental principles, and a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, industry and frugality, are absolutely necessary to preserve the blessings of liberty, and keep government free. The people ought, therefore, to pay particular attention to these points, in the choice of officers and representatives, and have a right to exact a due and constant regard to them, from their legislators and magistrates, in the making and executing such laws as are necessary for the good government of the State.
-- Vermont Declaration of Rights		 
The soul of our country needs to be awakened... When leaders act contrary to conscience, we must act contrary to leaders.
-- Veterans Fast for Life		 
Whereas it has been proposed that the United States of America become a part of a world federal government; and ... this program...would entail the surrender of our national sovereignty and...bring into being a form of government whose authority would supercede that of the Constitution of The United States Government; and ...institute a system of laws where-by American citizens could be tried by aliens in controversion of the provisions of the Constitution of the United States; and ...the Veterans of Foreign Wars is composed solely of men who have worn the uniform of the United States on foreign shores and in hostile waters in time of war and from their personal experiences are familiar with the traditions and operations of other countries; and ...many of our comrades rest forever in foreign soil and their sacrifices were made to retain the dignity and sovereignty of the United States of America: Now therefore, be it Resolved by the Fiftieth Annual Convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States, That we hereby declare that we are unalterably opposed to any program which would entail the surrender of any part of the sovereignty of the United States of America in favor of a world government...
-- Veterans of Foreign Wars		 
The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western world. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity -- much less dissent.
-- Gore Vidal		 
When you control opinion, as corporate America controls opinion in the United States by owning the media, you can make the [many] believe almost anything you want, and you can guide them.
-- Gore Vidal		 
You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, and that's good enough.
-- Dr. Edwin Vieira		 
Democracy, though slowly attained and never by revolutionary jumps, is the best government on earth when it tries to make all its citizens aristocrats. But not when it guillotines whoever is individual, superior, or just different.
-- Peter Viereck		 
The first duty of government is to protect the citizen from assault. Unless it does this, all the civil rights and civil liberties in the world aren't worth a dime.
-- Richard A. Viguerie		 
The basis of the First Amendment is the hypothesis that speech can rebut speech, propaganda will answer propaganda, free debate of ideas will result in the wisest governmental policies.
-- Frederick M. Vinson		 
A man without religion is like a fish without a bicycle.
-- Vique's Law		 
Yield not to evils, but attack all the more boldly.
-- Virgil		 
Had the states been despoiled of their sovereignty by the generality of the preamble, and had the Federal Government been endowed with whatever they should judge to be instrumental towards the union, justice, tranquility, common defence, general welfare, and the preservation of liberty, nothing could have been more frivolous than an enumeration of powers.
-- Virginia’s General Assembly		 
The rights enumerated in this Bill of Rights shall not be construed to limit other rights of the people not therein expressed.
-- Virginia Declaration of Rights		 
That religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence; and therefore all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience; and that it is the duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love and charity towards each other.
-- Virginia Declaration of Rights		 
[T]his Assembly doth explicitly and peremptorily declare, that it views the powers of the Federal Government, as resulting from the compact, to which the States are parties, as limited by the plain sense and intention of the instrument constituting the compact as no further valid than they are authorized by the grants enumerated in that compact; and that in case of a deliberate, palpable and dangerous exercise of other powers, not granted by the said compact, the States who are parties thereto, have the right, and are duty bound, to interpose, for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining within their respective limits, the authorities, rights and liberties appertaining to them.
-- Virginia Resolution of 1798		 
The rights of human beings cannot be considered outside the perogatives of governments, and the very understanding of human rights is a governmental concept.
-- Andrei Vishinsky		 
It is a sobering fact that the prominence of central banks in this century has coincided with a general tendency towards more inflation, not less. [I]f the overriding objective is price stability, we did better with the nineteenth-century gold standard and passive central banks, with currency boards, or even with ‘free banking.’ The truly unique power of a central bank, after all, is the power to create money, and ultimately the power to create is the power to destroy.
-- Paul Volcker		 
It is a sobering fact that the prominence of central banks in this century has coincided with a general tendency towards more inflation, not less. [I]f the overriding objective is price stability, we did better with the nineteenth-century gold standard and passive central banks, with currency boards, or even with 'free banking.' The truly unique power of a central bank, after all, is the power to create money, and ultimately the power to create is the power to destroy.
-- Paul Volcker		 
Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value -- zero.
-- Voltaire		 
God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.
-- Voltaire		 
I may not agree with what you say, but to the death I will defend your right to say it.
-- Voltaire (False)		 
It is clear that the individual who persecutes a man, his brother, because he is not of the same opinion, is a monster.
-- Voltaire		 
Those who can make you believe in absurdities can make you commit atrocities!
-- Voltaire		 
Let the laws be clear, uniform and precise; to interpret laws is almost always to corrupt them.
-- Voltaire		 
The superfluous is very necessary.
-- Voltaire		 
The art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one party of citizens to give to the other.
-- Voltaire		 


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