Famous Quotations / Quotes
Famous Quotes about Liberty
 
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They defend their errors as if they were defending their inheritance.
-- Edmund Burke		 
No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.
-- Edmund Burke		 
No government ought to exist for the purpose of checking the prosperity of its people or to allow such a principle in its policy.
-- Edmund Burke		 
He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.
-- Edmund Burke		 
The 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.
-- Edmund Burke		 
Among a people generally corrupt liberty cannot long exist.
-- Edmund Burke		 
To govern according to the sense and agreement of the interests of the people is a great and glorious object of governance. This object cannot be obtained but through the medium of popular election, and popular election is a mighty evil.
-- Edmund Burke		 
If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free; if our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed.
-- Edmund Burke		 
Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.
-- Edmund Burke		 
Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites.
-- Edmund Burke		 
It is by this tribunal that statesmen [are tried] not upon the niceties of a narrow jurisprudence but upon the enlarged and solid principles of morality.
-- 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		 
When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.
-- Edmund Burke		 
It is a general popular error to suppose the loudest complainers for the public to be the most anxious for its welfare.
-- Edmund Burke		 
All that is necessary for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing.
-- Edmund Burke		 
Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.
-- Edmund Burke		 
The age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists and calculators has succeeded.
-- Edmund Burke		 
In such a strait the wisest may well be perplexed and the boldest staggered.
-- Edmund Burke		 
Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.
-- Edmund Burke		 
People crushed by law have no hope but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws; and those who have much to hope and nothing to lose will always be dangerous...
-- Edmund Burke		 
Tell me what are the prevailing sentiments that occupy the minds of your young peoples, and I will tell you what is to be the character of the next generation.
-- Edmund Burke		 
There never was a bad man that had ability for good service.
-- Edmund Burke		 
I dread our own power and our own ambition; I dread our being too much dreaded. ... We may say that we shall not abuse this astonishing and hitherto unheard-of-power. But every other nation will think we shall abuse it. It is impossible but that, sooner or later, this state of things must produce a combination against us which may end in our ruin.
-- Edmund Burke		 
In a free country every man thinks he has a concern in all public matters,--that he has a right to form and a right to deliver an opinion on them. This it is that fills countries with men of ability in all stations.
-- Edmund Burke		 
Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.
-- Edmund Burke		 
Toleration is good for all, or it is good for none.
-- Edmund Burke		 
Power gradually extirpates for the mind every humane and gentle virtue.
-- Edmund Burke		 
We must not always judge of the generality of the opinion by the noise of the acclamation.
-- Edmund Burke		 
Liberty must be limited in order to be possessed.
-- Edmund Burke		 
There are three estates in Parliament but in the Reporters' Gallery yonder there sits a Fourth Estate more important far than they all. It is not a figure of speech or witty saying, it is a literal fact, very momentous to us in these times.
-- Edmund Burke		 
Liberty, without wisdom, is license.
-- Edmund Burke		 
The first and simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind, is curiosity.
-- Edmund Burke		 
The greater the power the more dangerous the abuse.
-- Edmund Burke		 
All men have equal rights, but not to equal things.
-- Edmund Burke		 
The tyranny of a multitude is a multiplied tyranny.
-- Edmund Burke		 
The people never give up their liberties, but under some delusion.
-- Edmund Burke		 
There is but one law for all, namely, that law which governs all law, the law of our Creator, the law of humanity, justice, equity -- the law of nature, and of nations.
-- Edmund Burke		 
The great inlet by which a colour for oppression has entered into the world is by one man's pretending to determine concerning the happiness of another.
-- Edmund Burke		 
There is no safety for honest men except by believing all possible evil of evil men.
-- Edmund Burke		 
There is no safety for honest men except by believing all possible evil of evil men.
-- Edmund Burke		 
Those who have been intoxicated with power... can never willingly abandon it.
-- Edmund Burke		 
To prove that the Americans ought not to be free, we are obliged to deprecate the value of freedom itself.
-- Edmund Burke		 
People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors.
-- Edmund Burke		 
The only liberty that is valuable is a liberty connected with order; that not only exists along with order and virtue, but which cannot exist at all without them. It inheres in good and steady government, as in its substance and vital principle.
-- Edmund Burke		 
It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do.
-- Edmund Burke		 
My vigour relents. I pardon something to the spirit of liberty.
-- Edmund Burke		 
The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts.
-- Edmund Burke		 
Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little.
-- Edmund Burke		 
Guns are used for self-defense somewhere between 800,000 and 3.6 million times per year .... Using firearm crime and defensive gun use figures most favorable to advocates for stricter gun control, ... the benefits from defensive gun uses exceed the cost of violent firearm crimes ... by between $90 million and $3.5 billion. Using the most credible estimate for defensive gun uses, the benefits range from $1 billion to $38 billion. Putting these dollar figures in more human terms: Guns save lives. The fact is that the best defense against violence is an armed response. For example, women faced with assault are 2.5 times less likely to suffer serious injury if they defend themselves with a gun rather than responding with other weapons or by offering no resistance. ... [P]ersons defending themselves with guns during an assault are injured only 12 percent of the time, compared to 25 percent for those using other weapons, 27 percent for those offering no resistance and nearly 26 percent of those who flee. ... [F]irearms are the safest, most effective way to protect oneself against criminal activity -- which is why American police officers carry guns rather than going unarmed or merely carrying knives.
-- H. Sterling Burnett		 
Too bad all the people who know how to run this country are busy running taxicabs or cutting hair.
-- George Burns		 
Dare to be honest and fear no labor.
-- Robert Burns		 
Liberty's in every blow! Let us do or die.
-- Robert Burns		 
Once the law starts asking questions, there's no stopping them.
-- William S. Burroughs		 
After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it. I sure as hell wouldn't want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military.
-- William S. Burroughs		 
Do what thy manhood bids thee do, From none but self expect applause: He noblest lives and noblest dies Who makes and keeps his self-made laws.
-- Sir Richard Francis Burton		 
The dearest ambition of a slave is not liberty, but to have a slave of his own.
-- Sir Richard Francis Burton		 
As compared with impulsive commitment to the first idea which dawns, that is, with intuitive action, reasoning is patient, exploratory of other possibilities, and deliberative.
-- Edwin Arthur Burtt		 
Your success as a family, our success as a society, depends not on what happens at the White House, but what happens inside your house.
-- Barbara Bush		 
[The war in Iraq is] a rare opportunity to move toward an historic period of cooperation. Out of these troubled times...a new world order can emerge.
-- George Herbert Walker Bush		 
You know what's interesting about Washington? It's the kind of place where second-guessing has become second nature.
-- George Herbert Walker Bush		 
If we do not follow the dictates of our moral compass and stand up for human life, then this lawlessness will threaten the peace and democracy of the emerging new world order we now see, this long dreamed-of vision we’ve all worked toward for so long.
-- George Herbert Walker Bush		 
Freedom and the power to choose should not be the privilege of wealth. They are the birthright of every American.
-- George Herbert Walker Bush		 
It was just one year ago that the world saw this new, invigorated United Nations in action as this Council stood fast against aggression and stood for the sacred principles enshrined in the U.N. Charter. And now it's time to step forward again, make the internal reforms, accelerate the revitalization, accept the responsibilities necessary for a vigorous and effective United Nations. I want to assure the members of this Council and the Secretary-General, the United Nations can count on our full support in this task.
-- George Herbert Walker Bush		 
For two centuries we’ve done the hard work of freedom. And tonight we lead the world in facing down a threat to decency and humanity. What is at stake is more than one small country, it is a big idea—a new world order, where diverse nations are drawn together in common cause to achieve the universal aspirations of mankind: peace and security, freedom, and the rule of law. Such is a world worthy of our struggle, and worthy of our children’s future.
-- George Herbert Walker Bush		 
My vision of a 'new world order' foresees a United Nations with a revitalized peacekeeping function.
-- George Herbert Walker Bush		 
We will succeed in the Gulf. And when we do, the world community will have sent an enduring warning to any dictator or despot, present or future, who contemplates outlaw aggression. The world can therefore seize this opportunity to fulfill the long-held promise of a new world order—where brutality will go unrewarded, and aggression will meet collective resistance.
-- George Herbert Walker Bush		 
Ultimately, our objective is to welcome the Soviet Union back into the world order. Perhaps the world order of the future will truly be a family of nations.
-- George Herbert Walker Bush		 
We have before us the opportunity to forge for ourselves and for future generations a new world order, a world where the rule of law, not the rule of the jungle, governs the conduct of nations. When we are successful, and we will be, we have a real chance at this new world order, an order in which a credible United Nations can use its peacekeeping role to fulfill the promise and vision of the UN’s founders.
-- George Herbert Walker Bush		 
It is the sacred principles enshrined in the UN Charter to which we will henceforth pledge our allegiance.
-- George Herbert Walker Bush (False)		 
If the people were to ever find out what we have done, we would be chased down the streets and lynched.
-- George Herbert Walker Bush		 
Let us never tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories concerning the attacks of September the 11th; malicious lies that attempt to shift the blame away from the terrorists, themselves, away from the guilty.
-- George W. Bush		 
We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans, and confront the worst threats before they emerge.
-- George W. Bush		 
We have every reason to assume the worst.
-- George W. Bush		 
Today the Justice Department did issue a blanket alert. It was in recognition of a general threat we received. This is not the first time the Justice Department have acted like this. I hope it is the last. But given the attitude of the evildoers, it may not be.
-- George W. Bush		 
The Pearl Harbor of the 21st century took place today.
-- George W. Bush		 


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