Famous Quotations / Quotes
Famous Quotes about Liberty
 
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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		 
It is the characteristic of the most stringent censorships, that they give credibility to the opinions they attack.
-- Voltaire		 
What is not in nature can never be true.
-- Voltaire		 
All men have equal rights to liberty, to their property, and to the protection of the laws.
-- Voltaire		 
In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other.
-- Voltaire		 
The secret of being tiresome is to tell everything.
-- Voltaire		 
To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.
-- Voltaire		 
Liberty is not and cannot be anything but the power of doing what we will.
-- Voltaire		 
It is better to risk saving a guilty man than to condemn an innocent one.
-- Voltaire		 
Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too.
-- Voltaire		 
Many are destined to reason wrongly; others, not to reason at all; and others to persecute those who do reason.
-- Voltaire		 
It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.
-- Voltaire		 
We have a natural right to make use of our pens as of our tongue, at our peril, risk and hazard.
-- Voltaire		 
It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.
-- Voltaire		 
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
-- Voltaire		 
It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue.
-- Voltaire		 
Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road.
-- Voltaire		 
Your book is dedicated by the soundest reason. You had better get out of France as quickly as you can.
-- Voltaire		 
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.
-- Voltaire		 
It is amusing that a virtue is made of the vice of chastity; and it's a pretty odd sort of chastity at that, which leads men straight into the sin of Onan, and girls to the waning of their color.
-- Voltaire		 
History is fables agreed upon.
-- Voltaire		 
The monster, fanaticism, still exists, and whoever seeks after truth will run the risk of being persecuted.
-- Voltaire		 
The ideal form of government is democracy tempered with assassination.
-- Voltaire		 
Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.
-- Voltaire		 
What is tolerance? -- it is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly -- that is the first law of nature.
-- Voltaire		 
I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write.
-- Voltaire		 
The safest course is to do nothing against one's conscience. With this secret, we can enjoy life and have no fear from death.
-- Voltaire		 
The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbors, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.
-- Voltaire		 
We are all full of weakness and errors, let us mutually pardon each other our follies. It is the first law of nature.
-- Voltaire		 
Prejudices are what fools use for reason.
-- Voltaire		 
The tyranny of the many would be when one body takes over the rights of others, and then exercises its power to change the laws in its favor.
-- Voltaire		 
The death of Lincoln was a disaster for Christendom. There was no man in the United States great enough to wear his boots and the bankers went anew to grab the riches. I fear that foreign bankers with their craftiness and tortuous tricks will entirely control the exuberant riches of America and use it to systematically corrupt civilisation.
-- Otto von Bismarck		 
The less people know about how sausages and laws are made, the better they'll sleep at night.
-- Otto von Bismarck		 
A little caution outflanks a large cavalry.
-- Otto von Bismarck		 
War is not merely a political act but a real political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse, a carrying out of the same by other means.
-- Karl von Clausewitz		 
No one starts a war -- or rather no one in his senses ought to do so -- without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve in that war and how he intends to conduct it.
-- Karl von Clausewitz		 
If we cannot live so as to be happy, let us at least live so as to deserve it.
-- Immanuel Hermann von Fichte		 
Fifty-one percent of a nation can establish a totalitarian regime,  suppress minorities and still remain democratic.
-- Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn		 
Ten million ignorances do not constitute one knowledge.
-- Clemens von Metternich		 
The essential characteristic of Western civilization that distinguishes it from the arrested and petrified civilizations of the East was and is its concern for freedom from the state. The history of the West, from the age of the Greek polis down to the present-day resistance to socialism, is essentially the history of the fight for liberty against the encroachments of the officeholders.
-- Ludwig Von Mises		 
The essential characteristic of Western civilization that distinguishes it from the arrested and petrified civilizations of the East was and is its concern for freedom from the state.
-- Ludwig Von Mises		 
The market is not a place, a thing, or a collective entity. It is a process.
-- Ludwig von Mises		 
The worst evils which mankind has ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments. The state can be and has often been in the course of history the main source of mischief and disaster.
-- Ludwig von Mises		 


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