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|  Peter Abelard | The key to wisdom is this -- constant and frequent questioning ... for by doubting we are led to question and by questioning we arrive at the truth. | |
| Henry Brooks Adams | Absolute liberty is absence of restraint; responsibility is restraint; therefore, the ideally free individual is responsible to himself. | |
| Aesop | Self-conceit may lead to self-destruction. | |
| Dante Alighieri | Mankind is at its best when it is most free. This will be clear if we grasp the principle of liberty. We must recall that the basic principle is freedom of choice, which saying many have on their lips but few in their minds. | |
| Lisa Alther | I’ve always felt that a person’s intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting points of view he can entertain simultaneously on the same topic. | |
| Marcus Aurelius Antoninus | The best way of avenging thyself is not to become like the wrong-doer. | |
| Aristotle | Men regard it as their right to return evil for evil -- and if they cannot, feel they have lost their liberty. | |
| Kingman Brewster | Universities should be safe havens where ruthless examination of realities will not be distorted by the aim to please or inhibited by the risk of displeasure. | |
| Patrick J. Buchanan | The village atheist has the right to be heard; he has no right to be heeded. While he has a right not to have his own children indoctrinated in what he believes are false and foolish teachings, he has no right to dictate what other children may be taught. | |
| Buddha | Words have the power to both destroy and heal. When words are both true and kind, they can change our world. | |
| Edmund Burke | But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint. | |
| Edmund Burke | Toleration is good for all, or it is good for none. | |
| Joyce Cary | It is sometimes said that toleration should be refused to the intolerant. In practice this would destroy it... The only remedy for dogmatism and lies is toleration and the greatest possible liberty of expression. | |
| Rufus Choate | Appropriated to justice, to security, to reason, to restraint; where there is no respect of persons; where will is nothing and power is nothing and numbers are nothing, and all are equal and all secure before the law. | |
| James Fenimore Cooper | The disposition of all power is to abuses, nor does it at all mend the matter that its possessors are a majority. Unrestrained political authority, though it be confided to masses, cannot be trusted without positive limitations, men in bodies being but an aggregation of the passions, weaknesses and interests of men as individuals. | |
| Alan Dershowitz | If we move away from the American tradition of lawyers defending those with whom they vehemently disagree -- as we temporarily did during the McCarthy period -- we weaken our commitment to the rule of law... So beware of an approach which limits advocacy to that which is approved by the standards of political correctness. | |
| Dionysius, the Elder | Let thy speech be better than silence, or be silent. | |
| Brian Doherty | It’s never more important to move slowly and carefully before granting the state new powers than in the wake of tragedies. | |
| Justice William O. Douglas | The Fifth Amendment is an old friend and a good friend. It is one of the great landmarks in men’s struggle to be free of tyranny, to be decent and civilized. | |
| Richard M. Ebeling | Who is the fascist? Individualism and the political philosophy of limited government is not only inconsistent with but is the
exact opposite of fascism and Nazism. Under fascism and Nazism, the state reigns supreme with absolute power over everyone and all forms of
property. It can well be asked: who is the fascist, when the president of the United States and many Democrats and Republicans in congress call for
expanded authority for the FBI and other federal security agencies to intrude into the lives of the American citizenry? Who is the fascist, when the
call is made for increased power for the FBI to undertake “roving wiretapping” or have easier access to the telephone and credit-card records of the
general population? Who is the fascist, when the proposal is made to make it easier for the FBI to investigate and infiltrate any political organization
or association because the government views it as a potential terrorist danger? | |
| Thomas I. Emerson | It is frequently said that speech that is intentionally provocative and therefore invites physical retaliation can be punished or suppressed. Yet, plainly no such general proposition can be sustained. Quite the contrary…. The provocative nature of the communication does not make it any the less expression. Indeed, the whole theory of free expression contemplates that expression will in many circumstances be provocative and arouse hostility. The audience, just as the speaker, has an obligation to maintain physical restraint. | |
| Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi | Nonviolence is not a garment to be put on and off at will. Its seat is in the heart, and it must be an inseparable part of our very being. | |
| Alexander Hamilton | To judge from the history of mankind, we shall be compelled to conclude,
that the fiery and destructive passions of war, reign in the human breast,
with much more powerful sway, than the mild and beneficent sentiments of peace;
and, that to model our political systems upon speculations of lasting tranquility,
is to calculate on the weaker springs of the human character. | |
| Friedrich August von Hayek | Human reason can neither predict nor deliberately shape its own future. Its advances consist in finding out where it has been wrong. | |
| Friedrich August von Hayek | The ultimate decision about what is accepted as right and wrong will be made not by individual human wisdom but by the disappearance of the groups that have adhered to the "wrong" beliefs. | |
| Friedrich August von Hayek | I am certain that nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice. | |
| George Stillman Hillard | If liberty with law is fire on the hearth, liberty without law is fire on the floor. | |
| Eric Hoffer | Absolute power corrupts even when exercised for humane purposes. The benevolent despot who sees himself as a shepherd of the people still demands from others the submissiveness of sheep. The taint inherent in absolute power is not its inhumanity but its anti-humanity. | |
| Jacob G. Hornberger | The lesson that Americans today have forgotten or never learned -- the lesson which our ancestors tried so hard to teach -- is that the greatest threat to our lives, liberty, property, and security is not some foreign government, as our rulers so often tell us. The greatest threat to our freedom and well-being lies with our own government!. | |
| Justice Charles Evans Hughes | Our institutions were not devised to bring about uniformity of opinion; if they had we might well abandon hope. It is important to remember, as has well been said, 'the essential characteristic of true liberty is that under its shelter many different types of life and character and opinion and belief can develop unmolested and unobstructed.' | |
| William Ralph Inge | A man may build himself a throne of bayonets, but he cannot sit on it. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | But with respect to future debt; would it not be wise and just for that nation to declare in the constitution they are forming that neither the legislature, nor the nation itself can validly contract more debt, than they may pay within their own age, or within the term of 19 years. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground: That 'all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people' (10th Amendment). To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specifically drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible to any definition. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, an hundred. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | The policy of American government is to leave its citizens free, neither restraining them nor aiding them in their pursuits. | |
| Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. | We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools. | |
| Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. | The limitation of riots, moral questions aside, is that they cannot win and their participants know it. Hence, rioting is not revolutionary but reactionary because it invites defeat. It involves an emotional catharsis, but it must be followed by a sense of futility. | |
| Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. | Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. | |
| Walter Lippmann | We must protect the right of our opponents to speak because we must hear what they have to say. | |
| John Locke | [F]or nothing is to be accounted hostile force, but where it leaves not the remedy of such an appeal; and it is such force alone, that puts him that uses it into a state of war, and makes it lawful to resist him. A man with a sword in his hand demands my purse in the high-way, when perhaps I have not twelve pence in my pocket: this man I may lawfully kill. To another I deliver 100 pounds to hold only whilst I alight, which he refuses to restore me, when I am got up again, but draws his sword to defend the possession of it by force, if I endeavour to retake it. The mischief this man does me is a hundred, or possibly a thousand times more than the other perhaps intended me (whom I killed before he really did me any); and yet I might lawfully kill the one, and cannot so much as hurt the other lawfully. The reason whereof is plain; because the one using force, which threatened my life, I could not have time to appeal to the law to secure it: and when it was gone, it was too late to appeal. The law could not restore life to my dead carcass: the loss was irreparable; which to prevent, the law of nature gave me a right to destroy him, who had put himself into a state of war with me, and threatened my destruction. But in the other case, my life not being in danger, I may have the benefit of appealing to the law, and have reparation for my 100 pounds that way. | |
| Lucanus | The liberty of the people, he says, whom power restrains unduly, perishes through liberty.
[Lat., Libertas, inquit, populi quem regna coercent,
Libertate perit.] | |
| James Madison | If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself. | |
| Neil A. McDonald | Whatever the immediate gains and losses, the dangers to our safety arising from political suppression are always greater than the dangers to the safety resulting from political freedom. Suppression is always foolish. | |
| John Stuart Mill | If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. | |
| John Stuart Mill | The only freedom deserving the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it. Each is the proper guardian of his own health, whether bodily, or mental and spiritual. Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest. | |
| John Stuart Mill | The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant. | |
| John Stuart Mill | Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest. | |
| John Milton | Here the great art lies, to discern in what the law is to bid restraint and punishment, and in what things persuasion only is to work. | |
| General George S. Patton, Jr. | I don't measure a man's success by how high he climbs but how high he bounces when he hits bottom. | |
| Plato | Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. | |
| Jonathan Rauch | A liberal society stands on the proposition that we should all take seriously the idea that we might be wrong. This means we must place no one, including ourselves, beyond the reach of criticism (no final say); it means that we must allow people to err, even where the error offends and upsets, as it often will. | |
| William Rawle | The prohibition is general. No clause in the Constitution could by any rule of construction be conceived to give congress a power to disarm the people. Such a flagitious attempt could only be made under some general pretense by a state legislature. But if in any blind pursuit of inordinate power, either should attempt it, this amendment may be appealed to as a restraint on both. | |
| Leonard E. Read | It is incorrect to think of liberty as synonymous with unrestrained action. Liberty does not and cannot include any action, regardless of sponsorship, which lessens the liberty of a single human being. To argue contrarily is to claim that liberty can be composed of liberty negations, patently absurd. Unrestraint carried to the point of impairing the liberty of others is the exercise of license, not liberty. To minimize the exercise of license is to maximize the area of liberty. Ideally, government would restrain license, not indulge in it; make it difficult, not easy; disgraceful, not popular. A government that does otherwise is licentious, not liberal. | |
| John P. Reid | Restraint of government is the true liberty and freedom of the people. | |
| Will Rogers | It will take America fifteen years of steady taking care of our own business and letting everybody else's alone, to get us back to where everybody speaks to us again. | |
| Eleanor Roosevelt | We do not move forward by curtailing people’s liberty because we are afraid of what they may do or say. | |
| Franklin D. Roosevelt | The creed of our democracy is that liberty is acquired and kept by men and women who are strong and self-reliant, and possessed of such wisdom as God gives mankind -- men and women who are just, and understanding, and generous to others -- men and women who are capable of disciplining themselves. For they are the rulers and they must rule themselves. | |
| John Ruskin | Wise laws and just restraints are to a noble nation not chains, but chains of mail, -- strength and defense, though something of an incumbrance. | |
| 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. | |
| Socrates | Think not those faithful who praise all thy words and actions,
but those who kindly reprove thy faults. | |
| William Graham Sumner | | |
| William Graham Sumner | If I want to be free from any other man’s dictation,
I must understand that I can have no other man under my control. | |
| William Graham Sumner | If I want to be free from any other man’s dictation, I must understand that I can have no other man under my control. | |
| William Howard Taft | Constitutions are checks upon the hasty action of the majority. They are the self-imposed restraints of a whole people upon a majority of them to secure sober action and a respect for the rights of the minority. | |
| Henry David Thoreau | That government is best which governs least. | |
| Unknown | Be more aware of your responsibilities than of your rights. | |
| Chad Walsh | From the utopian viewpoint, the United States constitution is a singularly hard-bitten and cautious document, for it breathes the spirit of skepticism about human altruism and incorporates a complex system of checks, balances and restrictions, so that everybody is holding the reins on everybody else. | |
| George Washington | A passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one nation the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained, and by exciting jealousy, ill-will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld. And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens who devote themselves to the favorite nation, facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity; gilding, with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation. | |
| Daniel Webster | Liberty exists in proportion to wholesome restraint. | |