Famous Quotations / Quotes
Famous Quotes about Liberty
 
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The Pearl Harbor of the 21st century took place today.
-- George W. Bush		 
I don’t give a goddamn. I’m the President and the Commander-in-Chief. Do it my way. ... Stop throwing the Constitution in my face. It’s just a goddamned piece of paper!
-- George W. Bush		 
We will fight with full force and might of the United States military.
-- George W. Bush		 
Saddam Hussein's regime is a gray and gathering danger.
-- George W. Bush		 
We need an energy bill that encourages consumption.
-- George W. Bush		 
I want him [Saddam Hussein]. I want -- I want justice. There is an old poster seen out west. As I recall, it said, Wanted Dead or Alive.
-- George W. Bush		 
The liberation of Iraq is a crucial advance in the campaign against terror. We've removed an ally of al Qaeda.
-- George W. Bush		 
There is no telling how many wars it will take to secure freedom in the homeland.
-- George W. Bush		 
The choice is his [Saddam Hussein's], and if he does not disarm, the United States of America will lead a coalition and disarm him in the name of Peace.
-- George W. Bush		 
I'm a war president. I make decisions here in the Oval Office and foreign policy matters with war on my mind.
-- George W. Bush		 
And our security will require all Americans to be forward-looking and resolute, to be ready for pre-emptive action.
-- George W. Bush		 
If this were a dictatorship, it’d be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I’m the dictator.
-- George W. Bush		 
There will be no going back to the era before September 11th, 2001, to false comfort in a dangerous world.
-- George W. Bush		 
There are some who feel like that, you know, the conditions are such that they can attack us there [in Iraq]. My answer is, 'Bring 'em on.'
-- George W. Bush		 
We've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the September 11th.
-- George W. Bush		 
Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists.
-- George W. Bush		 
During my senior year I joined Skull and Bones, a secret society, so secret I can’t say anything more.
-- George W. Bush		 
Our enemies are a radical network of terrorists -- and every government that supports them.
-- George W. Bush		 
They misunderestimated me.
-- George W. Bush		 
We're too great a nation to allow the evildoers to affect our soul.
-- George W. Bush		 
Presumably man's spirit should be elevated if he can better review his shady past and analyze more completely and objectively his present problems.
-- Vannevar Bush		 
My liberty is not for sale.
-- Edward Bushell		 
The love of liberty that is not a real principle of dutiful behavior to authority is as hypocritical as the religion that is not productive of a good life.
-- Bishop Joseph Butler		 
The one serious conviction that a man should have is that nothing is to be taken too seriously.
-- Nicholas Murray Butler		 
The old world order died with the setting of that day’s sun and a new world order is being born while I speak, with birth-pangs so terrible that it seems almost incredible that life could come out of such fearful suffering and such overwhelming sorrow.
-- Nicholas Murray Butler		 
Politics is the art of the possible.
-- R. A. Butler		 
He that complies against his will, Is of his own opinion still.
-- Samuel Butler		 
The more unpopular an opinion is, the more necessary it is that the holder should be somewhat punctilious in his observance of conventionalities generally.
-- Samuel Butler		 
The most important service rendered by the press and the magazines is that of educating people to approach printed matter with distrust.
-- Samuel Butler		 
Authority intoxicates,\\ And makes mere sots of magistrates;\\ The fumes of it invade the brain,\\ And make men giddy, proud and vain.
-- Samuel Butler		 
There should be some schools called deformatories to which people are sent if they are too good to be practical.
-- Samuel Butler		 
I don't mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy.
-- Samuel Butler		 
I spent 33 years in the Marines. Most of my time being a high-class muscle man for big business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenue in. I helped in the rape of half-a-dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street...
-- Major General Smedley Darlington Butler		 
I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else. If a nation comes over here to fight, then we'll fight. The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag.
-- Major General Smedley Darlington Butler		 
My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of the higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military.
-- Major General Smedley Darlington Butler		 
War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses.
-- Major General Smedley Darlington Butler		 

-- Major General Smedley Darlington Butler		 
I wouldn't go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.
-- Major General Smedley Darlington Butler		 
No legal tender law is ever needed to make men take good money; its only use is to make them take bad money.
-- Stephen T. Byington		 
A hand from Washington will be stretched out and placed upon every man’s business; the eye of the Federal inspector will be in every man’s counting house. The law will of necessity have inquisitorial features, it will provide penalties. It will create a complicated machinery. Under it businessmen will be hauled into courts distant from their homes. Heavy fines imposed by distant and unfamiliar tribunals will constantly menace the taxpayer. An army of Federal inspectors, spies and detectives will descend upon the state. They will compel men of business to show their books and disclose the secrets of their affairs. They will dictate forms of bookkeeping. They will require statements and affidavits. On the one hand the inspector can blackmail the taxpayer and on the other, he can profit by selling his secret to his competitor.
-- Richard Evelyn Byrd, Sr.		 
A hand from Washington will be stretched out and placed upon every man's business; the eye of the federal inspector will be in every man's counting house.... The law will of necessity have inquisical features, it will provide penalties, it will create complicated machinery. Under it, men will be hauled into courts distant from their homes. Heavy fines imposed by distant and unfamiliar tribunals will constantly menace the taxpayer. An army of federal inspectors, spies, and detectives will descend upon the state.
-- Richard Evelyn Byrd, Sr.		 
Is it any wonder, why the approval ratings of the Congress go up every time we go into recess?
-- Sen. Robert C. Byrd		 
The purpose of life is to live a life of purpose.
-- Robert Byrne		 
Sound the loud timbrel o'er Egypt's dark sea! Jehovah hath triumphed--his people are free.
-- Lord Byron		 
Hereditary bondsmen! Know ye not Who would be free themselves must strike the blow?
-- Lord Byron		 
For Freedom's battle once begun, Bequeath'd by bleeding sire to son, Though baffled oft is ever won.
-- Lord Byron		 
Yet, Freedom! yet thy banner, torn, but flying, Streams like the thunder-storm against the wind.
-- Lord Byron		 
The wish, which ages have not yet subdued In man, to have no master save his mood.
-- Lord Byron		 
Know ye not who would be free themselves must strike the blow? by their right arms the conquest must be wrought?
-- Lord Byron		 
He makes a solitude, and calls it - peace.
-- Lord Byron		 
Who would be free themselves must strike the blow.
-- Lord Byron		 
My time has been passed viciously and agreeably; at thirty-one so few years months days hours or minutes remain that "Carpe Diem" is not enough. I have been obliged to crop even the seconds -- for who can trust to tomorrow?
-- Lord Byron		 
I wish men to be free, as much from mobs as kings,—from you as me.
-- Lord Byron		 
The statute mandating recitation of the pledge [of allegiance] is secular because it aims to foster democracy, which is both necessary to the survival of the concept and entirely independent of religion. [...] It is clear in the 2001 [Virginia] state law that no student is forced to accept the beliefs the pledge espouses.
-- James C. Cacheris		 
When the swords flash let no idea of love, piety, or even the face of your fathers move you.
-- Gaius Julius Caesar		 
All bad precedents began as justifiable measures.
-- Gaius Julius Caesar		 
Men willingly believe what they wish.
-- Gaius Julius Caesar		 
Beware of the leader, who strikes the war drum in order to transfer the citizens into patriotic glow, patriotism is indeed a double-sided sword. It makes the blood so boldly, like it constricts the intellect. And if the striking of the war drum reached a fiebrige height and the blood is cooking and hating, and the intellect is dismissed, the leader doesn't need to reject the citizens rights. The citizens, cought by anxiety and blinded through patriotism, will subordinate all their rights to the leader and this even with happy courage. Why do I know that? I know it, because this is, what I did. And I am Gajus Julius Cäsar.
-- Gaius Julius Caesar (False)		 
I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones.
-- John Cage		 
The people’s right to obtain information does not, of course, depend on any assured ability to understand its significance or use it wisely. Facts belong to the people simply because they relate to interests that are theirs, government that is theirs, and votes that they may desire to cast, for they are entitled to an active role in shaping every fundamental decision of state.
-- Edmond Cahn		 
“Due process,” a standard that arose in our system of law and stemmed from the desire to provide rational procedure and fair play, is equally indispensable in every other kind of social or political enterprise.
-- Edmond Cahn		 
Do not blame Caesar, blame the people of Rome who have so enthusiastically acclaimed and adored him and rejoiced in their loss of freedom and danced in his path and given him triumphal processions. Blame the people who hail him when he speaks in the Forum of the new wonderful good society which shall now be Rome's, interpreted to mean more money, more ease, more security, and more living fatly at the expense of the industrious.
-- Justice Millard Fillmore Caldwell		 
To maintain the ascendancy of the Constitution over the lawmaking majority is the great and essential point on which the success of the [American] system must depend; unless that ascendancy can be preserved, the necessary consequence must be that the laws will supersede the Constitution; and, finally, the will of the Executive, by influence of its patronage, will supersede the laws ...
-- John C. Calhoun		 
A power has risen up in the government greater than the people themselves, consisting of many and various powerful interests, combined in one mass, and held together by the cohesive power of the vast surplus in banks.
-- John C. Calhoun		 
The government of the absolute majority is but the government of the strongest interests; and when not effectively checked, is the most tyrannical and oppressive that can be devised... [To read the Constitution is to realize that] no free system was ever farther removed from the principle that the absolute majority, without check or limitation, ought to govern.
-- John C. Calhoun		 
It is federal, because it is the government of States united in a political union, in contradistinction to a government of individuals, that is, by what is usually called, a social compact. To express it more concisely, it is federal and not national because it is the government of a community of States, and not the government of a single State or Nation.
-- John C. Calhoun		 
Government has within it a tendency to abuse its powers.
-- John C. Calhoun		 
Stripped of all its covering, the naked question is, whether ours is a federal or consolidated government; a constitutional or absolute one; a government resting solidly on the basis of the sovereignty of the States, or on the unrestrained will of a majority; a form of government, as in all other unlimited ones, in which injustice, violence, and force must ultimately prevail.
-- John C. Calhoun		 
In March, 1915, the J.P. Morgan interests, the steel, shipbuilding, and powder interest, and their subsidiary organizations, got together 12 men high up in the newspaper world and employed them to select the most influential newspapers in the United States and sufficient number of them to control generally the policy of the daily press. … They found it was only necessary to purchase the control of 25 of the greatest papers. An agreement was reached; the policy of the papers was bought, to be paid for by the month; an editor was furnished for each paper to properly supervise and edit information regarding the questions of preparedness, militarism, financial policies, and other things of national and international nature considered vital to the interests of the purchasers.
-- Oscar Callaway		 
I regret to say it, but we are gradually turning over the business of Congress, turning over all our constitutional rights, turning over our powers delegated by the people to a lot of editors, theorists, and college professors who are not capable of conducting our affairs and to whom we should not abdicate.
-- Oscar Callaway		 
It would not be unreasonable, by analogy with a motor vehicle licence, that a permit to reproduce should also be needed with a minimum age of, for example, twenty-five, and a proof required that the parents are of sufficient maturity and financial resource to take proper care of the child. Young, sexually active, but emotionally immature teenagers would need help.
-- Sir Roy Yorke Calne		 
Nobody these days holds the written word in such high esteem as police states do...
-- Italo Calvino		 
An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought.
-- Simon Cameron		 
Politics is made up largely of irrelevancies.
-- Dalton Camp		 
When we regard a man as morally responsible for an act, we regard him as a legitimate object of moral praise or blame in respect of it. But it seems plain that a man cannot be a legitimate object of moral praise or blame for an act unless in willing the act he is in some important sense a ‘free’ agent. Evidently free will in some sense, therefore, is a precondition of moral responsibility.
-- C. Arthur Campbell		 


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