Famous Quotations / Quotes
Famous Quotes about Liberty
 

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The highest glory of the American Revolution was this; it connected, in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity.
-- John Quincy Adams
 
Law logic -- an artificial system of reasoning, exclusively used in courts of justice, but good for nothing anywhere else.
-- John Quincy Adams
 
Sadly today, much of the political Left has become a hate group. As a hate group, they truly believe they alone have the unique right to censor others, to defame others, even to violently attack and murder others whose speech they don’t like. This is now evident everywhere throughout Leftist culture, including in Hollywood and the Oscars. With Google clearly being run by Leftists, and Facebook run by Leftists, and most of the internet gatekeepers dominated by intolerant Leftists, the shocking realization is that none of us are safe from the hatred, intolerance and censorship of the techno-liberals who tell themselves “the ends justify the means” to silence Trump supporters and defame those who support Trump.
-- Mike Adams
 
Capitalism and communism stand at opposite poles. Their essential difference is this: The communist seeing the rich man and his fine home says, “No man should have so much.” The capitalist seeing the same thing says, “All men should have as much.”
-- Phelps Adams
 
He 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 Adams
 
A 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 Adams
 
A standing army, however necessary it may be at some times, is always dangerous to the liberties of the people. Such power should be watched with a jealous eye.
-- Samuel Adams
 
How strangely will the Tools of a Tyrant pervert the plain Meaning of Words!
-- Samuel Adams
 
The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil Constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors: they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men.
-- Samuel Adams
 
Let us disappoint the Men who are raising themselves upon the ruin of this Country.
-- Samuel Adams
 
Driven from every other corner of the earth, freedom of thought and the right of private judgment in matters of conscience, direct their course to this happy country as their last asylum.
-- Samuel Adams
 
In short, it is the greatest Absurdity to suppose it in the Power of one or any Number of Men, at the entering into Society, to renounce their essential natural Rights or the Means of preserving those Rights, when the grand End of civil Government, from the very Nature of its Institution, is for the Support, Protection and Defense of those very Rights: The principal of which, as is before observed, are Life, Liberty, and Property.
-- Samuel Adams
 
It is a very great mistake to imagine that the object of loyalty is the authority and interest of one individual man, however dignified by the applause or enriched by the success of popular actions.
-- Samuel Adams
 
How strangely will the Tools of a Tyrant pervert the plain Meaning of Words!
-- Samuel Adams
 
If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.
-- Samuel Adams
 
Shame on the men who can court exemption from present trouble and expense at the price of their own posterity's liberty!
-- Samuel Adams
 
The Legislative has no Right to absolute arbitrary Power over the Lives and Fortunes of the People: Nor can Mortals assume a Prerogative not only too high for Men but for Angels, and therefore reserv’d for the Exercise of the Deity alone.
-- Samuel Adams
 
If ever a time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin.
-- Samuel Adams
 
If our Trade be taxed, why not our Lands, or Produce in short, everything we possess? They tax us without having legal representation.
-- Samuel Adams
 
It is always dangerous to the liberties of the people to have an army stationed among them, over which they have no control ... The Militia is composed of free Citizens. There is therefore no danger of their making use of their Power to the destruction of their own Rights, or suffering others to invade them.
-- Samuel Adams
 
Let us contemplate our forefathers, and posterity, and resolve to maintain the rights bequeathed to us from the former, for the sake of the latter. The necessity of the times, more than ever, calls for our utmost circumspection, deliberation, fortitude and perseverance. Let us remember that "if we suffer tamely a lawless attack upon our liberty, we encourage it, and involve others in our doom," it is a very serious consideration ... that millions yet unborn may be the miserable sharers of the event.
-- Samuel Adams
 
All Men have a Right to remain in a State of Nature as long as they please: And in case of intolerable Oppression, civil or religious, to leave the Society they belong to and enter into another. When Men enter into Society, it is by voluntary Consent, and they have a Right to demand and insist upon the performance of such Conditions and previous Limitations as form an equitable original Compact.
-- Samuel Adams
 
Among the natural Rights of the Colonists are these: First, a Right to Life; secondly, to Liberty; thirdly, to Property; together with the Right to support and defend them in the best Manner they can. Those are evident Branches of, rather than Deductions from, the Duty of Self-Preservation, commonly called the first Law of Nature.
-- Samuel Adams
 
If men, through fear, fraud, or mistake, should in terms renounce or give up any natural right, the eternal law of reason and the grand end of society would absolutely vacate such renunciation. The right to freedom being the gift of Almighty God, it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift and voluntarily become a slave.
-- Samuel Adams
 
Governors have no Right to seek and take what they please; by this, instead of being content with the Station assigned them, that of honorable Servants of the Society, they would soon become Absolute Masters, Despots,and Tyrants. Hence, as a private Man has a Right to say what Wages he will give in his private Affairs, so has a Community to determine what they will give and grant of their Substance for the Administration of public Affairs.
-- Samuel Adams
 
It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds.
-- Samuel Adams
 
No 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 Adams
 
Were 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?
-- Samuel Adams
 
The said constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.
-- Samuel Adams
 
And that the said Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press,  or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms; or to raise standing armies, unless necessary for the defense of the United States, or of some one or more of them; or to prevent the people from petitioning, in a peaceable and orderly manner, the federal legislature, for a redress of grievances; or to subject the people to unreasonable searches and seizures of their persons, papers or possessions.
-- Samuel Adams
 
All might be free if they valued freedom, and defended it as they should.
-- Samuel Adams
 
A day, an hour, of virtuous liberty Is worth a whole eternity in bondage.
-- Joseph Addison
 
Clinton realized that America could not economically afford the Protocol Gore negotiated. The Clinton-Gore's Energy Department found Kyoto would lead to $400 billion a year in lost output. ... Gore tries to throw Enron on the back of the current administration. But it was Enron Board Chairman Kenneth Lay who sold Clinton-Gore on Kyoto's cap and trade system. Gore, Clinton, and Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin met with Lay on Aug. 7, 1997 to go over goals and procedures for the Kyoto session. ... The corporate smoking memo here was not that from an ExxonMobil adviser to oppose Dr. Watson, but the Enron internal memo saying Kyoto 'would do more to promote Enron's business than almost any other regulatory initiative'.
-- Ken Adelman
 
A lie would have no sense unless the truth were felt dangerous.
-- Alfred Adler
 
Dogma is the convictions of one man imposed authoritatively upon others.
-- Felix Adler
 
In a country of such recent civilization as ours, whose almost limitless treasures of material wealth invite the risks of capital and the industry of labor, it is but natural that material interests should absorb the attention of the people to a degree elsewhere unknown.
-- Felix Adler
 
Through the rapid proliferation of laws reaching every corner of human existence, “the government is manufacturing more criminals now than ever before.” The list of illegal activities includes more minutiae than one would think possible. Beer-makers are barred from listing alcohol content on bottles, and liquor distilleries cannot advertise on TV. Filling one’s own prairie pothole can land a property owner in jail, as can protecting private property from unlawful intruders. Placing handbills in neighbors’ mailboxes is strictly prohibited, and attempting to sell nectarines of an improper size is a federal offense. Companies are no longer allowed to give salaried professionals partial days off without pay, and in Texas it is a crime to call oneself an interior designer without the government’s permission. It is perhaps easier to recount all that remains legal than all that is now prohibited.
-- Jonathan H. Adler
 
Freedom is the emancipation from the arbitrary rule of other men.
-- Mortimer Adler
 
Do you think someone who is about to rape you is going to stop and think about a condom?
-- Eli Adorno
 
I would far rather be ignorant than wise in the foreboding of evil.
-- Aeschylus
 
Death is better, a milder fate than tyranny.
-- Aeschylus
 
Time as he grows old teaches all things.
-- Aeschylus
 
Destiny waits alike for the free man as well as for him enslaved by another's might.
-- Aeschylus
 
In war, truth is the first casualty.
-- Aeschylus
 
Words are the physicians of the mind diseased.
-- Aeschylus
 
Only when man's life comes to its end in prosperity can one call that man happy.
-- Aeschylus
 
I know how men in exile feed on dreams of hope
-- Aeschylus
 
It is in the character of very few men to honor without envy a friend who has prospered.
-- Aeschylus
 
For somehow this is tyranny's disease, to trust no friends.
-- Aeschylus
 
It is thrifty to prepare today for the wants of tomorrow.
-- Aesop
 
Beware lest you lose the substance by grasping at the shadow.
-- Aesop
 
The shaft of the arrow had been feathered with one of the eagle's own plumes. We often give our enemies the means of our own destruction.
-- Aesop
 
Better to starve free than be a fat slave.
-- Aesop
 
The smaller the mind the greater the conceit.
-- Aesop
 
The gods help them that help themselves.
-- Aesop
 
Any excuse will serve a tyrant.
-- Aesop
 
Familiarity breeds contempt.
-- Aesop
 

-- Aesop
 
Be content with your lot; one cannot be first in everything.
-- Aesop
 
Never trust the advice of a man in difficulties.
-- Aesop
 
Do not count your chickens before they are hatched.
-- Aesop
 
Self-conceit may lead to self-destruction.
-- Aesop
 
We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.
-- Aesop
 
While I see many hoof marks going in, I see none coming out. It is easier to get into the enemy's toils than out again.
-- Aesop
 
Better be wise by the misfortunes of others than by your own.
-- Aesop
 
Union gives strength.
-- Aesop
 
I will have nought to do with a man who can blow hot and cold with the same breath.
-- Aesop
 
Outside show is a poor substitute for inner worth.
-- Aesop
 
Beware lest you lose the substance by grasping at the shadow.
-- Aesop
 
Vices are their own punishment.
-- Aesop
 
A crust eaten in peace is better than a banquet partaken in anxiety.
-- Aesop
 
Appearances often are deceiving.
-- Aesop
 
Slow and steady wins the race.
-- Aesop
 
We would often be sorry if our wishes were gratified.
-- Aesop
 
No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.
-- Aesop
 


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