Famous Quotations / Quotes
Famous Quotes about Liberty
 

 
Famous quotes, quotations, sayings, phrases, idioms, proverbs, and axioms about Liberty and the Responsibility that comes with it. 
 


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

Quotes are organized by Name and Category.

If you'd like, join us on the Liberty Tree Daily Quotes emailing list for a daily dose of Liberty Quotes in your mail box. Leave us your email address to subscribe.
Email:

Here's the Daily Quotes Log to date.


Cryptograms!
Do you like cryptograms? We've got thousands!

Authors
Indexed quotes by Author or Speaker.

Categories
Browse quotes by category or select from the list below.

Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/executive+orders">Executive Orders Quotes</a>]Executive Orders Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/experience">Experience Quotes</a>]Experience Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/experimentation">Experimentation Quotes</a>]Experimentation Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/exploitation">Exploitation Quotes</a>]Exploitation Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/extortion">Extortion Quotes</a>]Extortion Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/extremism">Extremism Quotes</a>]Extremism Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/fabian">Fabian Quotes</a>]Fabian Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/facts">Facts Quotes</a>]Facts Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/failure">Failure Quotes</a>]Failure Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/fairness">Fairness Quotes</a>]Fairness Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/faith">Faith Quotes</a>]Faith Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/falsehood">Falsehood Quotes</a>]Falsehood Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/fame">Fame Quotes</a>]Fame Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/family">Family Quotes</a>]Family Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/famine">Famine Quotes</a>]Famine Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/fanaticism">Fanaticism Quotes</a>]Fanaticism Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/farming">Farming Quotes</a>]Farming Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/fascism">Fascism Quotes</a>]Fascism Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/fascist">Fascist Quotes</a>]Fascist Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/fatalism">Fatalism Quotes</a>]Fatalism Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/fate">Fate Quotes</a>]Fate Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/fbi">FBI Quotes</a>]FBI Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/fda">FDA Quotes</a>]FDA Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/fdr">FDR Quotes</a>]FDR Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/fear">Fear Quotes</a>]Fear Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/federalism">Federalism Quotes</a>]Federalism Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/fed">Fed Quotes</a>]Fed Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/fellowship">Fellowship Quotes</a>]Fellowship Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/feudalism">Feudalism Quotes</a>]Feudalism Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/fiat">Fiat Quotes</a>]Fiat Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/fiction">Fiction Quotes</a>]Fiction Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/fidelity">Fidelity Quotes</a>]Fidelity Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/fight">Fight Quotes</a>]Fight Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/flag">Flag Quotes</a>]Flag Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/folly">Folly Quotes</a>]Folly Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/food">Food Quotes</a>]Food Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/foppery">Foppery Quotes</a>]Foppery Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/forbearance">Forbearance Quotes</a>]Forbearance Quotes
Hide details for [<a href="/quotes_about/force">Force Quotes</a>]Force Quotes
Lord ActonAnd remember, where you have a concentration of power in a few hands, all too frequently men with the mentality of gangsters get control. History has proven that. All power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Michael BadnarikI have the right to do whatever I wish with my property. If I own a pile of wood, I can set fire to it even if it is currently nailed together in the shape of a barn. Cigarettes may not be healthy for me in the long run, but I have the freedom to smoke them anyway. Drinking alcohol may or may not have negative side effects, but even if it does, the government has no authority to prohibit you from consuming it, even if it is "in your own best interest." Since when do we let the government decide what is or isn't good for us? What the hell does Congress know about nutrition, anyway? (For that matter, what does Congress know about the Constitution?) If the government can use force whenever something is "in our best interest" then government should force everyone to wake up at 6am every morning for calisthenics in the front yard. Fast food establishments should be torn down and replaced with bars that serve carrot juice and alfalfa sprouts, since - "it's in your best interest." This paternalistic attitude that "the government knows best" and that you are merely a helpless child is insulting and reprehensible. Hitler used the same attitude to persuade the Germans to subjugate themselves to the "Fatherland.
Frederic BastiatIf every person has the right to defend -- even by force -- his person, his liberty, and his property, then it follows that a group of men have the right to organize and support a common force to protect these rights constantly. Thus the principle of collective right -- its reason for existing, its lawfulness -- is based on individual right. And the common force that protects this collective right cannot logically have any other purpose or any other mission than that for which it acts as a substitute. Thus, since an individual cannot lawfully use force against the person, liberty, or property of another individual, then the common force -- for the same reason -- cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, liberty, or property of individuals or groups.
Frederic BastiatActually, it is not strange that during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the human race was regarded as inert matter, ready to receive everything -- form, face, energy, movement, life -- from a great prince or a great legislator or a great genius. These centuries were nourished on the study of antiquity. And antiquity presents everywhere -- in Egypt, Persia, Greece, Rome -- the spectacle of a few men molding mankind according to their whims, thanks to the prestige of force and of fraud. But this does not prove that this situation is desirable. It proves only that since men and society are capable of improvement, it is naturally to be expected that error, ignorance, despotism, slavery, and superstition should be greatest towards the origins of history. The writers quoted above were not in error when they found ancient institutions to be such, but they were in error when they offered them for the admiration and imitation of future generations. Uncritical and childish conformists, they took for granted the grandeur, dignity, morality, and happiness of the artificial societies of the ancient world. They did not understand that knowledge appears and grows with the passage of time; and that in proportion to this growth of knowledge, might takes the side of right, and society regains possession of itself.
Frederic BastiatIt must be admitted that the tendency of the human race toward liberty is largely thwarted, especially in France. This is greatly due to a fatal desire -- learned from the teachings of antiquity -- that our writers on public affairs have in common: They desire to set themselves above mankind in order to arrange, organize, and regulate it according to their fancy.
Frederic BastiatAnd now that the legislators and do-gooders have so futilely inflicted so many systems upon society, may they finally end where they should have begun: May they reject all systems, and try liberty; for liberty is an acknowledgment of faith in God and His works.
Frederic BastiatSocialists desire to practice legal plunder, not illegal plunder. Socialists, like all other monopolists, desire to make the law their own weapon. And when once the law is on the side of socialism, how can it be used against socialism? For when plunder is abetted by the law, it does not fear your courts, your gendarmes, and your prisons. Rather, it may call upon them for help.
Nathaniel BrandenThe policy of seeking values from human beings by means of force, when practiced by an individual, is called crime. When practiced by a government, it is called statism ...
Nathaniel BrandenForce, governmental coercion, is the instrument by which the ethics of altruism -- the belief that the individual exists to serve others -- is translated into political reality.
Edmund BurkeThe use of force alone is but temporary.  It may subdue for a moment; but it does not remove the necessity of subduing again; and a nation is not governed, which is perpetually to be conquered.
John ChubbDemocracy is essentially coercive. The winner gets to use public authority to impose their policies on the losers.
Edward H. Crane[T]here are, at bottom, basically two ways to order social affairs, Coercively, through the mechanisms of the state -- what we can call political society. And voluntarily, through the private interaction of individuals and associations -- what we can call civil society. ... In a civil society, you make the decision. In a political society, someone else does. ... Civil society is based on reason, eloquence, and persuasion, which is to say voluntarism. Political society, on the other hand, is based on force.
Steven CrowderIt's important to understand that the idea of political correctness, from its inception, was designed as a political weapon to silence voices of dissent ... today’s social media outrage can be tomorrow’s laws.
Steven CrowderThis is why political correctness, or Cultural Marxism,… lends itself so fashionably to easy labels. Transphobic, homophobic, xenophobic, racist, bigoted, Uncle Tom, white privilege, mainsplaining. All of these are slapped on people with "politically incorrect" opinions in an attempt to silence you...
Hate speech is inextricably tied to political correctness, or Cultural Marxism, and that creates intellectual conformity -- or intellectual authoritarianism. And that’s where you start to see things like “safe spaces” or “trigger warnings” or speakers banned from campus, or people with unpopular opinions banned from social media.
Steven CrowderThis is why political correctness, or Cultural Marxism,… lends itself so fashionably to easy labels. Transphobic, homophobic, xenophobic, racist, bigoted, Uncle Tom, white privilege, mainsplaining. All of these are slapped on people with "politically incorrect" opinions in an attempt to silence you...
James A. DornWelfare rights are pseudo-rights: They rely on the force of law to take private property for the use of others without compensation and without consent. Public charity is forced charity; it is not a virtue but a vice.
Justice William O. DouglasWhen a legislature undertakes to proscribe the exercise of a citizen's constitutional rights it acts lawlessly and the citizen can take matters into his own hands and proceed on the basis that such a law is no law at all.
Frederick W. FaberThere is a great deal of self-will in the world, but very little genuine independence of character.
Frank J. FlemingSocialism is the idea that violent force is an appropriate response to peaceful, voluntary exchange.
Milton FriedmanThe use of force to achieve equality will destroy freedom, and the force, introduced for good
purposes, will end up in the hands of people who use it to promote their own interest.
Henry GeorgeCapital is a result of labor, and is used by labor to assist it in further production. Labor is the active and initial force, and labor is therefore the employer of capital.
William GodwinTo dragoon man into the adoption of what we think right, is an intolerable tyranny.
William GodwinLet us consider the effect that coercion produces upon the mind of him against whom it is employed. It cannot begin with convincing; it is no argument. It begins with producing the sensation of pain, and the sentiment of distaste. It begins with violently alienating the mind from the truth with which we wish it to be impressed. It includes in it a tacit confession of imbecility. If he who employs coercion against me could mould me to his purposes by argument, no doubt he would. He pretends to punish me because his argument is important, but he really punishes me because his argument is weak.
Alexander HamiltonIt has been frequently remarked, that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not, of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend, for their political constitutions, on accident and force.
Adolf HitlerBeing daily better informed about their knowledge than my adversaries themselves, I argued till finally one day they applied the one means that wins the easiest victory over reason: terror and force.
Indiana Code(i) A person is justified in using reasonable force against a public servant if the person reasonably believes the force is necessary to:
(1) protect the person or a third person from what the person reasonably believes to be the imminent use of unlawful force;
(2) prevent or terminate the public servant’s unlawful entry of or attack on the person’s dwelling, curtilage, or occupied motor vehicle; or
(3) prevent or terminate the public servant’s unlawful trespass on or criminal interference with property lawfully in the person’s possession, lawfully in possession of a member of the person’s immediate family, or belonging to a person whose property the person has authority to protect.
Dean IngeIf a multitude is to be subjected to a plan, it must be militarized. If individuals are allowed a free choice, the plan is thrown into confusion. Bureaucracy, under an absolute ruler, or rulers, is necessary. Popular consent can be secured only by rigorous censorship and prohibition of free discussion. Espionage is a necessary part of the system, and a considerable amount of terrorism. Since private expenditure must be controlled, it is wise to keep private incomes near a subsistence level and to dole out any surplus on collective pleasures such as free holidays. We shall not understand totalitarian tyranny unless we realize that it is the result of the planned economy.
Thomas JeffersonNo man will labor for himself who can make another labor for him.
Thomas JeffersonIn a republican nation whose citizens are to be led by reason and persuasion and not by force, the art of reasoning becomes of first importance.
Ben JohnsonI have never met a more dedicated bunch of people than I did working in the union, at every level. The work is difficult and demanding, and very few people would do it if they didn’t believe in its righteousness. However, the conviction that you know what’s best insulates you against reflecting morally on your own actions and it teaches you to begin assessing morality in terms of either the ends justifying the means, or even worse, of mere good intention justifying those means.
Matt KibbeThe Rules for Liberty\\\\
1) Don’t hurt people: Free people just want to be left alone, not hassled or harmed by someone else with an agenda or designs over their life and property.\\
2) Don’t take people’s stuff: America’s founders fought to ensure property rights and our individual right to the fruits of our labors.\\
3) Take responsibility: Liberty takes responsibility. Don’t sit around waiting for someone else to solve your problems.\\
4) Work for it: For every action there is an equal reaction. Work hard and you’ll be rewarded.\\
5) Mind your own business: Free people live and let live.\\
6) Fight the power: Thanks to the Internet and the decentralization of knowledge, there are more opportunities than ever to take a stand against corrupt authority.
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.Communism, avowedly secularistic and materialistic, has no place for God. This I could never accept,… I strongly disagreed with Communism’s ethical relativism... there are no fixed, immutable principles; consequently, almost anything—force, violence, murder, lying—is a justifiable means to the ‘millennial’ end.
Charles KochIf somebody smokes a joint, we're gonna go in and bust them? We're gonna raid houses in case somebody has a banned substance? Confiscate their houses? My God, if people don't see that as an abuse of force, of too much government, then we're just not communicating.
Peter KropotkinThe law is an adroit mixture of customs that are beneficial to society, and could be followed even if no law existed, and others that are of advantage to a ruling minority, but harmful to the masses of men, and can be enforced on them only by terror.
Harold J. Laski[C]ivilization means, above all, an unwillingness to inflict unnecessary pain ... those of us who heedlessly accept the commands of authority cannot yet claim to be civilized men.
John Locke[Individuals] have a right to defend themselves and recover by force what by unlawful force is taken from them.


(c) Copyright 1999-2024
Privacy Policy and Terms of Use