Famous Quotations / Quotes
Famous Quotes about Liberty
 
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The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes.
-- Sir Winston Churchill		 
From the days of Spartacus, Weishophf, Karl Marx, Trotski, Belacoon, Rosa Luxenburg, and Ema Goldman, this world conspiracy has been steadily growing. This conspiracy played a definite recognizable role in the tragedy of the French revolution. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the 19th Century. And now at last this band of extraordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their head and have become the undisputed masters of that enormous empire.
-- Sir Winston Churchill		 
Truth is incontrovertible, ignorance can deride it, panic may resent it, malice may destroy it, but there it is.
-- Sir Winston Churchill		 
If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going to do is make the rubble bounce.
-- Sir Winston Churchill		 
This report, by its very length, defends itself against the risk of being read.
-- Sir Winston Churchill		 
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
-- Sir Winston Churchill		 
Give me the facts, and I will twist them the way I want, to suit my argument.
-- Sir Winston Churchill		 
There are a lot of lies going around... and half of them are true.
-- Sir Winston Churchill		 
You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer.
-- Sir Winston Churchill		 
Never give in. Never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.
-- Sir Winston Churchill		 
The price of greatness is responsibility.
-- Sir Winston Churchill		 
Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon.
-- Sir Winston Churchill		 
Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance and the gospel of envy.
-- Sir Winston Churchill		 
I am ready to meet my maker, but whether my maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
-- Sir Winston Churchill		 
I like a man who grins when he fights.
-- Sir Winston Churchill		 
Everybody is in favor of free speech. Hardly a day passes without its being extolled, but some people’s idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone says anything back, that is an outrage.
-- Sir Winston Churchill		 
I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.
-- Sir Winston Churchill		 
Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees all others.
-- Sir Winston Churchill		 
Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free, and life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands.  But if we fall, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age... Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.'
-- Sir Winston Churchill		 
When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.
-- Sir Winston Churchill		 
Today we may say aloud before an awe-struck world: 'We are still masters of our fate. We are still captain of our souls.'
-- Sir Winston Churchill		 
I am in favor of deliberately spreading methodically prepared bacteria among people and animals -- mildew ... to destroy the harvests, anthrax to destroy horses and livestock, and the plague, in order to kill not only entire armies, but also the inhabitants of large regions.
-- Sir Winston Churchill		 
A fanatic is a person who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.
-- Sir Winston Churchill		 
The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers, is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist.
-- Sir Winston Churchill		 
Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most times he will pick himself up and carry on.
-- Sir Winston Churchill		 
A nation that forgets its past is doomed to repeat it.
-- Sir Winston Churchill		 
Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried.
-- Sir Winston Churchill		 
In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.
-- Sir Winston Churchill		 
If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time -- a tremendous whack.
-- Winston Churchill		 
We must never cease to proclaim in fearless tones the great principles of freedom and the rights of man which are the joint inheritance of the English-speaking world and which through Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights, the Habeas Corpus, Trial by Jury, and the English common law, find their most famous expression in the American Declaration of Independence.
-- Winston Churchill		 
An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.
-- Winston Churchill		 
In finance, everything that is agreeable is unsound.
-- Winston Churchill		 
The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.
-- Winston Churchill		 
This truth may be unfashionable, unpalatable, no doubt unpopular, but, if it is the truth, the story of mankind shows that war was universal and unceasing for millions of years before armaments were invented or armies organized. Indeed, the lucid intervals of peace and order only occurred in human history after armaments in the hands of strong governments have come into being, and civilization in every age has been nursed only in cradles guarded by superior weapons and superior discipline.
-- Winston Churchill		 
The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.
-- Winston Churchill		 
The power of the executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charges known to the law, and particularly to deny him judgment by his peers for an indefinite period, is in the highest degree odious, and is the foundation of all totalitarian governments...Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilisation.
-- Winston Churchill		 
The public library is the most dangerous place in town.
-- John Ciardi		 
When you are aspiring to the highest place, it is honorable to reach the second or even the third rank.
-- Marcus Tullius Cicero		 
Freedom suppressed and again regained bites with keener fangs than freedom never endangered.
-- Marcus Tullius Cicero		 
The more laws, the less justice.
-- Marcus Tullius Cicero		 
Freedom suppressed and again regained bites with keener fangs than freedom never endangered.
-- Marcus Tullius Cicero		 
The men who administer public affairs must first of all see that everyone holds onto what is his, and that private men are never deprived of their goods by public men.
-- Marcus Tullius Cicero		 
Wise men are instructed by reason; men of less understanding, by experience; the most ignorant, by necessity; the beasts, by nature.
-- Marcus Tullius Cicero		 
Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.
-- Marcus Tullius Cicero		 
Do not hold the delusion that your advancement is accomplished by crushing others.
-- Marcus Tullius Cicero		 
To freemen, threats are impotent. [Lat., Nulla enim minantis auctoritas apud liberos est.]
-- Marcus Tullius Cicero		 
There exists a law, not written down anywhere, but inborn in our hearts, a law which comes to us not by training or custom or reading, a law which has come to us not from theory but from practice, not by instruction but by natural intuition. I refer to the law which lays down that, if our lives are endangered by plots or violence or armed robbers or enemies, any and every method of protecting ourselves is morally right.
-- Marcus Tullius Cicero		 
We are in bondage to the law in order that we may be free.
-- Marcus Tullius Cicero		 
There exists a law, not written down anywhere but inborn in our hearts; a law which comes to us not by training or custom or reading but by derivation and absorption and adoption from nature itself; a law which has come to us not from theory but from practice, not by instruction but by natural intuition. I refer to the law which lays it down that, if our lives are endangered by plots or violence or armed robbers or enemies, any and every method of protecting ourselves is morally right.
-- Marcus Tullius Cicero		 
The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.
-- Marcus Tullius Cicero		 
A bureaucrat is the most despicable of men, though he is needed as vultures are needed, but one hardly admires vultures whom bureaucrats so strangely resemble. I have yet to meet a bureaucrat who was not petty, dull, almost witless, crafty or stupid, an oppressor or a thief, a holder of little authority in which he delights, as a boy delights in possessing a vicious dog. Who can trust such creatures?
-- Marcus Tullius Cicero		 
Liberty consists in the power of doing that which is permitted by the law.
-- Marcus Tullius Cicero		 
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.
-- Marcus Tullius Cicero		 
When you have no basis for argument, abuse the plaintiff.
-- Marcus Tullius Cicero		 
To be ignorant of what happened before you were born... is to live the life of a child for ever.
-- Marcus Tullius Cicero		 
By doubting we all come at truth.
-- Marcus Tullius Cicero		 
Natural ability without education has more often raised a man to glory and virtue than education without natural ability.
-- Marcus Tullius Cicero		 
The recovery of freedom is so splendid a thing that we must not shun even death when seeking to recover it.
-- Marcus Tullius Cicero		 
We are taxed in our bread and our wine, in our incomes and our investments, on our land and on our property not only for base creatures who do not deserve the name of men, but for foreign nations, complaisant nations who will bow to us and accept our largesse and promise us to assist in the keeping of the peace - these mendicant nations who will destroy us when we show a moment of weakness or our treasury is bare, and surely it is becoming bare! We are taxed to maintain legions on their soil, in the name of law and order and the Pax Romana, a document which will fall into dust when it pleases our allies and our vassals. We keep them in precarious balance only with our gold. Is the heartblood of our nation worth these? Were they bound to us with ties of love, they would not ask our gold. They take our very flesh, and they hate and despise us. And who shall say we are worthy of more? ... When a government becomes powerful it is destructive, extravagant and violent; it is an usurer which takes bread from innocent mouths and deprives honorable men of their substance, for votes with which to perpetuate itself.
-- Marcus Tullius Cicero		 
Endless money forms the sinews of war.
-- Marcus Tullius Cicero		 
A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague.
-- Marcus Tullius Cicero (Questionable)		 
The arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and assistance to foreign hands should be curtailed, lest Rome fall.
-- Marcus Tullius Cicero		 
Avoid any specific discussion of public policy at public meetings.
-- Quintus Tullius Cicero		 
During war, the laws are silent.
-- Quintus Tullius Cicero		 
Gravity is still just a theory, too. Would you like to test it by placing your neck beneath a guillotine?
-- Ralph Cicerone		 
Our major mistakes have not been the result of democracy, but of the erosion of democracy made possible by the mass media’s manipulation of public opinion.
-- Robert Cirino		 
When through a process of law the common people have lost their homes, they will be more tractable and more easily governed...
-- Civil Servants' Year Book		 
Les femmes sont tout à fait compétentes pour assurer leur légitime défense, pourvu que la loi ne les transforme pas en criminelles si elles emploient des moyens efficaces à cette fin." "Women are quite able to see to their own defence, as long as the law does not transform them into criminals if they take effective measures to do so.
-- Claire Joly, Marie Latourelle, Maryse Martin, and Karen Selick		 
There is nothing that can help you understand your beliefs more than trying to explain them to an inquisitor.
-- Frank Clark		 
[The program of American disarmament outlined in State Department Paper 7277] is the fixed, determined and approved policy of the government of the United States.
-- Joseph S. Clark		 
The last damn thing blacks should do is get into the vanguard of banning books. The next step is banning blacks...
-- Dr. Kenneth Clark		 
Perhaps Communists had wormed their way so deeply into our government on both the working and planning levels that they were able to exercise an inordinate degree of power in shaping the course of America in the dangerous postwar era. I could not help wondering and worrying whether we were faced with open enemies across the conference table and hidden enemies who sat with us in our most secret councils.
-- General Mark Clark		 
A right is not what someone gives you; it's what no one can take from you.
-- Ramsey Clark		 
But we’re not a democracy. It’s a terrible misunderstanding and a slander to the idea of democracy to call us that. In reality, we’re a plutocracy: a government by the wealthy.
-- Ramsey Clark		 
Those who do not believe in the ideology of the United States, shall not be allowed to live in the United States.
-- Tom Clark		 
From the standpoint of freedom of speech and the press, it is enough to point out that the state has no legitimate interest in protecting any or all religions from views distasteful to them... It is not the business of government to suppress real or imagined attacks upon a particular religious doctrine.
-- Justice Tom C. Clark		 
Nothing can destroy a government more quickly than its failure to observe its own laws, or worse, its disregard of the charter of its own existence.
-- Justice Tom C. Clark		 
Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.
-- Arthur C. Clarke		 
Any smoothly functioning technology will have the appearence of magic.
-- Arthur C. Clarke		 
It is not uncommon for ignorant and corrupt men to falsely charge others with doing what they imagine they themselves, in their narrow minds and experience, would have done under the circumstances.
-- John Hessin Clarke		 
...there is no provision in the Charter itself that contemplates ending war. It is true the Charter provides for force to bring peace, but such use of force is itself war... The Charter is a war document not a peace document... Not only does the Charter Organization not prevent future wars, but it makes it practically certain that we shall have future wars, and as to such wars it takes from us the power to declare them, to choose the side on which we shall fight, to determine what forces and military equipment we shall use in the war, and to control and command our sons who do the fighting.
-- J. Reuben Clark, Jr.		 
He who wants peace must prepare for war.
-- Claudius		 
Of all the properties which belong to honorable men, not one is so highly prized as that of character.
-- Henry Clay		 
All religions united with government are more or less inimical to liberty. All, separated from government, are compatible with liberty.
-- Henry Clay		 
An oppressed people are authorized, whenever they can, to rise and break their fetters.
-- Henry Clay		 
I would rather be right than President.
-- Henry Clay		 
America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to denigration without the usual interval of civilization.
-- Georges Clemenceau		 
War is too serious a matter to entrust to military men.
-- Georges Clemenceau		 
I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution, and I do not believe that the power and duty of the general government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit. Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character, while it prevents the indulgence among our people of that kindly sentiment and conduct which strengthens the bonds of a common brotherhood.
-- Grover Cleveland		 
I feel obliged to withhold my approval of the plan to indulge in benevolent and charitable sentiment through the appropriation of public funds... I find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution.
-- Grover Cleveland		 
I can find no warrant for such appropriation in the Constitution.
-- Grover Cleveland		 
Honor lies in honest toil.
-- Grover Cleveland		 
The best results in the operation of a government wherein every citizen has a share largely depend upon a proper limitation of the purely partisan zeal and effort and a correct appreciation of the time when the heat of the partisan should be merged in the patriotism of the citizen. ... At this hour the animosities of political strife, the bitterness of partisan defeat, and the exultation of partisan triumph should be supplanted by an ungrudging acquiescence in the popular will and a sober, conscientious concern for the general weal. ... Public extravagance begets extravagance among the people.
-- Grover Cleveland		 
A truly American sentiment recognizes the dignity of labor and the fact that honor lies in honest toil.
-- Grover Cleveland		 
When more of the people's sustenance is exacted through the form of taxation than is necessary to meet the just obligations of government, such exaction becomes ruthless extortion and a violation of the fundamental principles of a free government.
-- Grover Cleveland		 
For the problem of decision-making in our complicated world is not how to get the problem simple enough so that we can all understand it; the problem is how to get our thinking about the problem as complex as humanly possible--and thus approach (we can never match) the complexity of the real world around us.
-- Harlan Cleveland		 
It is wrong always, everywhere and for everyone to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.
-- William Kingdon Clifford		 
All our liberties are due to men who, when their conscience has compelled them, have broken the laws of the land.
-- William Kingdon Clifford		 
There is one thing in the world more wicked than the desire to command, and that is the will to obey.
-- William Kingdon Clifford		 
There is no reason for anyone in this country -- anyone except a police officer or military person -- to buy, to own, to have, to use a handgun. The only way to control handgun use in this country is to prohibit the guns.
-- Bill Clinton (False)		 


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