Famous Quotations / Quotes
Famous Quotes about Liberty
 

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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
 
Hope for a season bade the world farewell, And Freedom shrieked as Kosciusko fell! . . . . O'er Prague's proud arch the fires of ruin glow.
-- Thomas Campbell
 
Today the grand jury is the total captive of the prosecutor who, if he is candid, will concede that he can indict anybody, at any time, for almost anything, before any grand jury.
-- William J. Campbell
 
Freedom is not a reward or a decoration that is celebrated with champagne...Oh no! It's a...long distance race, quite solitary and very exhausting.
-- Albert Camus
 
The welfare of humanity is always the alibi of tyrants.
-- Albert Camus
 
The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.
-- Albert Camus
 
Integrity has no need of rules.
-- Albert Camus
 
Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear.
-- Albert Camus
 
Freedom is not a gift received from the State or leader, but a possession to be won every day by the effort of each and the union of all.
-- Albert Camus
 
An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.
-- Albert Camus
 
Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better.
-- Albert Camus
 
Freedom of the press is perhaps the freedom that has suffered the most from the gradual degradation of the idea of liberty.
-- Albert Camus
 
I'll tell you a big secret, my friend: Don't wait for the Last Judgment. It happens every day.
-- Albert Camus
 
The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience.
-- Albert Camus
 
How many crimes are permitted simply because their authors could not endure being wrong.
-- Albert Camus
 
Absolute justice is achieved by the suppression of all contradiction, therefore it destroys freedom.
-- Albert Camus
 
It is the job of thinking people, not to be on the side of the executioners.
-- Albert Camus
 
Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better.
-- Albert Camus
 
The aim of art, the aim of a life, can only be to increase the sum of freedom and responsibility to be found in every man and in the world. It cannot, under any circumstances, be to reduce or suppress that freedom, even temporarily.
-- Albert Camus
 
The regulation prohibiting abusive comment that tends or is likely to expose a person or a group to hatred or contempt is necessary not only to avoid harm to the persons targeted, but also to ensure that Canadian values are respected for all Canadians. The broadcast of remarks that could expose individuals or groups to hatred or contempt can attract individuals to its cause and in the process create serious discord between various groups in Canadian society to the detriment of all of Canadian society. This harm undermines the cultural, political and social fabric of Canada which the Canadian broadcasting system is expressly meant to safeguard, enrich and strengthen. It also undermines the multicultural and multiracial nature of Canadian society, which the programming of the Canadian broadcasting system should reflect. Protection from the harms of abusive comment is for the benefit of all Canadians.
-- Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission
 
After listening to the recordings containing the remarks made by on-air personalities on 10 and 27 September and 8 October and reading the stenographic notes, the Commission identified several remarks about the complainant related to her physical attributes, and sexual attributes in particular. There are multiple references to the size of her breasts; [translation] 'her incredible set of boobs' ... The Commission considers that the remarks made about Ms. Chiasson were abusive and tended to expose her, and women in general, to contempt on the basis of sex, in contravention of section 3(b) of the Regulations. Further, the remarks do not meet the objectives of the broadcasting policy for Canada set out in the Act. The remarks did not meet the objective of high standard of programming required by section 3(1)(g) of the Act.
-- Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission
 
[I]f the public are bound to yield obedience to laws to which they cannot give their approbation, they are slaves to those who make such laws and enforce them.
-- Candidus
 
A false conclusion once arrived at and widely accepted is not easily dislodged and the less it is understood the more tenaciously it is held.
-- Georg Cantor
 
Our tax system is based on individual self-assessment and voluntary compliance.
-- Mortimer Caplin
 
The world looks as if it has been left in the custody of trolls.
-- Father Robert F. Capon
 
When I sell liquor, it's called bootlegging; when my patrons serve it on Lake Shore Drive, it's called hospitality.
-- Al Capone
 
Remember to vote early -- and often.
-- Al Capone
 
You can do more with a kind word and a gun than with just a kind word.
-- Al Capone
 
You cannot become a truly effective advocate unless you know all sides of your subject thoroughly, opposing arguments as well as your own.
-- G. R. Capp
 
Reasonable argument is impossible when authority becomes the arbiter.
-- Orson Scott Card
 
It is time for our school systems to stop accepting the gospel of that false religion and start doing their due diligence. Our children should be taught about the demonstrable solar cycles; and the whole human-caused Global Warming theory, along with the Hockey Stick Hoax, should be taught only as another example, after Piltdown Man and pre-Copernican theories of planetary movement, of how science can be corrupted when ideology gets ahead of the data.
-- Orson Scott Card
 
If pigs could vote, the man with the slop bucket would be elected swineherd every time, no matter how much slaughtering he did on the side.
-- Orson Scott Card
 
The only way to learn is by changing your mind.
-- Orson Scott Card
 
The great ideals of liberty and equality are preserved against the assaults of opportunism, the expediency of the passing hour, the erosion of small encroachments, the scorn and derision of those who have no patience with general principles.
-- Justice Benjamin Cardozo
 
Of...freedom [of thought and speech] one may say that it is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom.
-- Justice Benjamin Cardozo
 
Justice, though due to the accused, is due the accuser also. The concept of fairness cannot be strained till it is narrowed to a filament. We are to keep our balance true.
-- Justice Benjamin Cardozo
 
It is for ordinary minds, not for psychoanalysts, that our rules of evidence are framed. They have their source very often in considerations of administrative convenience, or practical expediency, and not in rules of logic.
-- Justice Benjamin Cardozo
 
We, Negro Americans, sing with all loyal Americans:\\ My country 'tis of thee,\\ Sweet land of liberty,\\ Of thee I sing.\\ Land where my fathers died,\\ Land of the Pilgrims' pride\\ From every mountainside\\ Let freedom ring!\\ \\ That's exactly what we mean -- from every mountain side, let freedom ring. Not only from the Green Mountains and White Mountains of Vermont and New Hampshire; not only from the Catskills of New York; but from the Ozarks in Arkansas, from the Stone Mountain in Georgia, from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia -- let it ring not only for the minorities of the United States, but for the disinherited of all the earth -- may the Republican Party, under God, from every mountainside, LET FREEDOM RING!
-- Rev. Archibald Carey, Jr.
 
Free discussion is the only necessary Constitution -- the only necessary Law of the Constitution.
-- Richard Carlile
 
Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure there is one less rascal in the world.
-- Thomas Carlyle
 
Weak eyes are fondest of glittering objects.
-- Thomas Carlyle
 
Every human being has a right to hear what other wise human beings have spoken to him. It is one of the Rights of Men; a very cruel injustice if you deny it to a man.
-- Thomas Carlyle
 
Democracy is, by the nature of it, a self-canceling buisness: and gives in the long run a net result of zero.
-- Thomas Carlyle
 
I choose free libraries as the best agencies for improving the masses of the people, because they give nothing for nothing. They only help those who help themselves. They never pauperize. They reach the aspiring and open to these chief treasures of the world -- those stored up in books. A taste for reading drives out lower tastes.
-- Andrew Carnegie
 
As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do.
-- Andrew Carnegie
 
All honor's wounds are self-inflicted.
-- Andrew Carnegie
 
There is not such a cradle of democracy upon the earth as the Free Public Library, this republic of letters, where neither rank, office, nor wealth receives the slightest consideration.
-- Andrew Carnegie
 
I believe Socialism is the grandest theory ever presented, and I am sure it will someday rule the world. Then we will have attained the Millennium... Then men will be content to work for the general welfare and share their riches with their neighbors.
-- Andrew Carnegie
 
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain -- and most fools do.
-- Dale Carnegie
 
As the federal government has progressively become larger over the decades, every significant introduction of government regulation, taxation and spending has been to the benefit of some big business.
-- Timothy P. Carney
 
In a free country there is much clamor, with little suffering; in a despotic state there is little complaint, with much grievance.
-- Hippolyte Lazare Carnot
 
I was taught when I was a young reporter that it's news when we say it is. I think that's still true -- it's news when 'we' say it is. It's just who 'we' is has changed. Members of the public, people with modems, people with cell phones are now producers, editors. They can push and push and push on a story until it ends up being acknowledged by everyone.
-- David Carr
 
...no nation which signs this [UN] Charter can justly maintain that any of its acts are its own business, or within its own domestic jurisdiction, if the security council says that these acts are a threat to the peace.
-- William Carr
 
Without morals a republic cannot subsist any length of time; they therefore who are decrying the Christian religion, whose morality is so sublime and pure (and) which insures to the good eternal happiness, are undermining the solid foundation of morals, the best security for the duration of free governments.
-- Charles Carroll
 
When I use a word...it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less....The question is...which is to be master -- that's all.
-- Lewis Carroll
 
Contrariwise", continued Tweedledee, "If it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.
-- Lewis Carroll
 
My mother worked as a domestic, two, sometimes three jobs at a time because she didn’t want to be on welfare. She felt very strongly that if she gave up and went on welfare, that she would give up control of her life and of our lives, and I think she was probably correct about that. … But, one thing that she provided us was a tremendous example of what hard work is like.
-- Dr. Ben Carson
 
The more solid the family foundation, the more likely you are to be able to resist peer pressure. Human beings are social creatures. We all want to belong, we all have that desire, and we will belong, one way or another. If the family doesn’t provide that, the peers will, or a gang will, or you will find something to belong to. That’s why it becomes so critical for families with young children to understand what a critical anchor they are.
-- Dr. Ben Carson
 
There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One is roots; the other, wings.
-- Hodding Carter
 
The law is not the private property of lawyers, nor is justice the exclusive province of judges and juries. In the final analysis, true justice is not a matter of courts and law books, but of a commitment in each of us to liberty and mutual respect.
-- Jimmy Carter
 
The decision to attack the entire nation [of Yugoslavia] has been counterproductive, and our destruction of civilian life has now become senseless and excessively brutal. ... The United States' insistence on the use of cluster bombs, designed to kill or maim humans, is condemned almost universally and brings discredit on our nation (as does our refusal to support a ban on land mines). Even for the world's only superpower, the ends don't always justify the means.
-- Jimmy Carter
 
America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense, it is the other way around. Human rights invented America.
-- Jimmy Carter
 
We are of course a nation of differences. Those differences don’t make us weak. They’re the source of our strength.
-- Jimmy Carter
 
If you fear making anyone mad, then you ultimately probe for the lowest common denominator of human achievement.
-- Jimmy Carter
 
In the life of the human spirit, words are action, much more so than many of us realize who live in countries where freedom of expression is taken for granted. The leaders of totalitarian nations understand this very well. The proof is that words are precisely the action for which dissidents in those countries are being persecuted.
-- Jimmy Carter
 
I think that every true reformer, every real friend of liberty, will agree with me in saying that if we must erect safeguards, they should be rather for the security of the individual than of the mass, and that our chiefest care must be to train the majority to respect the rights of the minority, to prevent the claims of the few from being trampled under foot by the caprice or passion of the many.
-- Sir Richard John Cartwright
 
The Democratic constituency is just like a herd of cows. All you have to do is lay out enough silage and they come running. That’s why I became an operative working with Democrats. With Democrats all you have to do is make a lot of noise, lay out the hay, and be ready to use the ole cattle prod in case a few want to bolt the herd.
-- James Carville (Questionable)
 
For good or evil, man is a free creative spirit. This produces the very queer world we live in, a world in continuous creation and therefore continuous change and insecurity.
-- 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.
-- Joyce Cary
 
Every wrong seems possible today, and is accepted.  I don't accept it.
-- Pablo Casals
 
The love of one's country is a splendid thing. But why should love stop at the border?
-- Pablo Casals
 
Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries.
-- Douglas Casey
 
The growth of drug-related crime is a far greater evil to society as a whole than drug taking. Even so, because we have been seduced by the idea that governments should legislate for our own good, very few people can see how dangerously absurd the present policy is.
-- John Casey
 
Considering that senior officials at the Internal Revenue Service are fully aware of the fact that there is no law currently in existence making a U.S. citizen liable for or required to pay either the income tax or the social security employment tax, only a truly generous citizen would, upon discovering this, continue to voluntarily donate these taxes to the government by allowing them to be withheld from his paycheck on a 100% voluntary W-4 withholding agreement. But, then again, the IRS would be dead in the water without the "voluntary (and docile) compliance" of employers and employees and has said so all along.
-- William Cash
 
The freedom to express varying and often opposing ideas is essential to a variety of conceptions of democracy. If democracy is viewed as essentially a process – a way in which collective decisions for a society are made – free expression is crucial to the openness of the process and to such characteristics as elections, representation of interests, and the like.
-- Jonathan D. Casper
 


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