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/totalitarian">Totalitarian Quotes</a>]Totalitarian Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/trade">Trade Quotes</a>]Trade Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/tradition">Tradition Quotes</a>]Tradition Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/transgression">Transgression Quotes</a>]Transgression Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/travel">Travel Quotes</a>]Travel Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/treason">Treason Quotes</a>]Treason Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/trial">Trial Quotes</a>]Trial Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/tribute">Tribute Quotes</a>]Tribute Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/trilateral+commission">Trilateral Commission Quotes</a>]Trilateral Commission Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/trust">Trust Quotes</a>]Trust Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/truth">Truth Quotes</a>]Truth Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/tyranny">Tyranny Quotes</a>]Tyranny Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/understanding">Understanding Quotes</a>]Understanding Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/unemployment">Unemployment Quotes</a>]Unemployment Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/unification">Unification Quotes</a>]Unification Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/uniformity">Uniformity Quotes</a>]Uniformity Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/union">Union Quotes</a>]Union Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/unity">Unity Quotes</a>]Unity Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/un">UN Quotes</a>]UN Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/usurpation">Usurpation Quotes</a>]Usurpation Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/usury">Usury Quotes</a>]Usury Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/utopian">Utopian Quotes</a>]Utopian Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/utopia">Utopia Quotes</a>]Utopia Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/valor">Valor Quotes</a>]Valor Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/value">Value Quotes</a>]Value Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/vanity">Vanity Quotes</a>]Vanity Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/vassal">Vassal Quotes</a>]Vassal Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/venality">Venality Quotes</a>]Venality Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/vice">Vice Quotes</a>]Vice Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/victimhood">Victimhood Quotes</a>]Victimhood Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/victory">Victory Quotes</a>]Victory Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/vietnam">Vietnam Quotes</a>]Vietnam Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/vigilance">Vigilance Quotes</a>]Vigilance Quotes
Show details for [<a href="/quotes_about/violence">Violence Quotes</a>]Violence Quotes
Hide details for [<a href="/quotes_about/virtue">Virtue Quotes</a>]Virtue Quotes
Lord ActonPower tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Lord ActonLiberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is the highest political end.
Lord ActonFreedom degenerates unless it has to struggle in its own
defence.
Charles Francis AdamsFailure seems to be regarded as the one unpardonable crime, success as the all-redeeming virtue, the acquisition of wealth as the single worthy aim of life. Ten years ago such revelations as these of the Erie Railway would have sent a shudder through the community, and would have placed a stigma on every man who had had to do them. Now they merely incite others to surpass by yet bolder outrages and more corrupt combinations.
John AdamsAll the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise not from defects in their Constitution or Confederation, nor from want of honor or virtue, so much as downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation.
John AdamsThe only foundation of a free Constitution, is pure Virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our People, in a great Measure, than they have it now. They may change their Rulers, and the forms of Government, but they will not obtain a lasting Liberty.
John AdamsIt should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives.
John AdamsThe Revolution was effected before the War commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people; a change in their religious sentiments of their duties and obligations ... This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people, was the real American Revolution.
John AdamsNip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people. When the people give way, their deceivers, betrayers, and destroyers press upon them so fast, that there is no resisting afterwards. The nature of the encroachment upon the American constitution is such, as to grow every day more and more encroaching. Like a cancer, it eats faster and faster every hour. The revenue creates pensioners, and the pensioners urge for more revenue. The people grow less steady, spirited, and virtuous, the seekers more numerous and more corrupt, and every day increases the circles of their dependents and expectants, until virtue, integrity, public spirit, simplicity, and frugality, become the objects of ridicule and scorn, and vanity, luxury, foppery, selfishness, meanness, and downright venality swallow up the whole society.
John AdamsHuman nature itself is evermore an advocate for liberty. There is also in human nature a resentment of injury, and indignation against wrong. A love of truth and a veneration of virtue. These amiable passions, are the "latent spark"... If the people are capable of understanding, seeing and feeling the differences between true and false, right and wrong, virtue and vice, to what better principle can the friends of mankind apply than to the sense of this difference?
John AdamsHuman nature itself is evermore an advocate for liberty. There is also in human nature a resentment of injury, and indignation against wrong. A love of truth and a veneration of virtue. These amiable passions, are the "latent spark"… If the people are capable of understanding, seeing and feeling the differences between true and false, right and wrong, virtue and vice, to what better principle can the friends of mankind apply than to the sense of this difference?
John AdamsSociety's demands for moral authority and character increase
as the importance of the position increases.
John AdamsWisdom and knowledge, as well as virtue, diffused generally among the body of the people, being necessary for the preservation of their rights and liberties, and as these depend on spreading the opportunities and advantages of education in the various parts of the country, and among the different orders of people, it shall be the duty of legislators and magistrates... to cherish the interest of literature and the sciences, and all seminaries of them.
John AdamsHuman nature itself is evermore an advocate for liberty. There is also in human nature a resentment of injury, and indignation against wrong. A love of truth and a veneration of virtue. These amiable passions, are the "latent spark"... If the people are capable of understanding, seeing and feeling the differences between true and false, right and wrong, virtue and vice, to what better principle can the friends of mankind apply than to the sense of this difference?
John AdamsWe have no government armed in power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Our Constitution was made only for a religious and moral people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.
John AdamsPublic virtue cannot exist in a nation without private, and public virtue is the only foundation of republics. There must be a positive passion for the public good, the public interest, honor, power and glory, established in the minds of the people, or there can be no republican government, nor any real liberty: and this public passion must be superior to all private passions.
John AdamsWisdom and knowledge, as well as virtue, diffused generally among the body of the people, being necessary for the preservation of their rights and liberties, and as these depend on spreading the opportunities and advantages of education in the various parts of the country, and among the different orders of people, it shall be the duty of legislators and magistrates… to cherish the interest of literature and the sciences, and all seminaries of them.
John Adams[D]emocracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy, such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes and no man's life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure, and every one of these will soon mould itself into a system of subordination of all the moral virtues and intellectual abilities, all the powers of wealth, beauty, wit and science, to the wanton pleasures, the capricious will, and the execrable cruelty of one or a very few.
John AdamsIt should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives.
John Quincy AdamsThe laws of man may bind him in chains or may put him to death, but they never can make him wise, virtuous, or happy.
John Quincy AdamsAlways vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost.
Samuel AdamsHe therefore is the truest friend to the liberty of his country who tries most to promote its virtue, and who, so far as his power and influence extend, will not suffer a man to be chosen into any office of power and trust who is not a wise and virtuous man...The sum of all is, if we would most truly enjoy this gift of Heaven, let us become a virtuous people.
Samuel AdamsA general dissolution of the principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy.... While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but once they lose their virtue, they will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader.... If virtue and knowledge are diffused among the people, they will never be enslaved. This will be their great security.
Samuel AdamsShame on the men who can court exemption from present trouble
and expense at the price of their own posterity's liberty!
Samuel AdamsNo people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can
any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffused and Virtue is
preserved. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant,
and debauched in their Manners, they will sink under their own
weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders.
Samuel AdamsWere the talents and virtues which heaven has bestowed on men given merely to make them more obedient drudges, to be sacrificed to the follies and ambition of a few? Or, were not the noble gifts so equally dispensed with a divine purpose and law, that they should as nearly as possible be equally exerted, and the blessings of Providence be equally enjoyed by all?
Joseph AddisonA day, an hour, of virtuous liberty Is worth a whole eternity in bondage.
AeschylusIt is in the character of very few men to honor without envy a friend who has prospered.
AesopVices are their own punishment.
Publius Terentius AferModeration in all things.
J. Tucker AlfordIt is precisely this clinging to victimhood as a means of demonstrating one’s virtue and advancing one’s well-being that has led us into a society in which welfare and quotas are “civil rights,” government handouts are “entitlements,” and payment to girls having babies out of wedlock are “compassionate,” while hard-working, ambitious people are “greedy,” punishment of crime is “oppression,” and an independent thinker who stands for courage and self-reliance is dismissed as an “Uncle Tom.”
American Library AssociationThe freedom to read is essential to our democracy. It is continuously under attack… These actions apparently arise from a view that our national tradition of free expression is no longer valid; that censorship and suppression are needed to avoid the subversion of politics and the corruption of morals.
Saint Thomas AquinasThree things are necessary for the salvation of man: to know what he ought to believe; to know what he ought to desire; and to know what he ought to do.
AristotleIt makes no difference whether a good man has defrauded a bad man, or a bad man defrauded a good man, or whether a good or bad man has committed adultery: the law can look only to the amount of damage done.
AristotleA tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious.
AristotleDignity does not come in possessing honors, but in deserving them.
Thurman ArnoldThe spectacle of a judge pouring over the picture of some nude, trying to ascertain the extent to which she arouses prurient interests, and then attempting to write an opinion which explains the difference between that nude and some other nude has elements of low comedy.
Assyrian TabletThe Earth is degenerating today. Bribery and corruption abound. Children no longer obey their parents, every man wants to write a book, and it is evident that the end of the world is fast approaching.
Saint AugustineNear our vineyard there was a pear tree laden with fruit that was not attractive in either flavor or form. One night, when I [at the age of sixteen] had played until dark on the sandlot with some other juvenile delinquents, we went to shake that tree and carry off its fruit. From it we carried off huge loads, not to feast on, but to throw to the pigs, although we did eat a few ourselves. We did it just because it was forbidden.
Tallulah BankheadI'm a foe of moderation, the champion of excess. If I may lift a line from a die-hard whose identity is lost in the shuffle, "I'd rather be strongly wrong than weakly right.


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