Famous Quotations / Quotes
Famous Quotes about Liberty
 
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If I am walking with two other men, each of them will serve as my teacher. I will pick out the good points of the one and imitate them, and the bad points of the other and correct them in myself.
-- Confucius		 
Hold faithfulness and sincerity as first principles.
-- Confucius		 
The superior man cannot be known in little matters, but he may be entrusted with great concerns. The small man may not be entrusted with great concerns, but he may be known in little matters.
-- Confucius		 
Tell me and I forget. Show me and I remember. Let me do and I understand.
-- Confucius		 
To know what is right and not do it is the worst cowardice.
-- Confucius		 
Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance.
-- Confucius		 
The superior man understands what is right. The inferior man understands what is popular.
-- Confucius		 
By nature men are pretty much alike; it is learning and practice that set them apart.
-- Confucius		 
If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant; if what is said is not what is meant, then what must be done remains undone; if this remains undone, morals and art will deteriorate; if justice goes astray, the people will stand about in helpless confusion. Hence there must be no arbitrariness in what is said. This matters above everything.
-- Confucius		 
No mask like open truth to cover lies,\\As to go naked is the best disguise.
-- William Congreve		 
Every citizen has a right to bear arms in defense of himself and the state.
-- Connecticut Constitution		 
You can’t, in sound morals, condemn a man for taking care of his own integrity. It is his clear duty.
-- Joseph Conrad		 
Of all the inanimate objects, of all men’s creations, books are the nearest to us, for they contain our very thoughts, our ambitions, our indignations, our illusions, our fidelity to truth, and our persistent leaning toward error.
-- Joseph Conrad		 
Thus arbitrary power will have divided men of superior intelligence into two groups: the former will be seditious, the latter corrupt...
-- Benjamin Constant		 
No duty, however, binds us to these so-called laws, whose corrupting influence menaces what is noblest in our being...
-- Benjamin Constant		 
First ask yourselves, Gentlemen, what an Englishman, a Frenchman, and a citizen of the United States of America understand today by the word 'liberty'. For each of them it is the right to be subjected only to the laws, and to be neither arrested, detained, put to death nor maltreated in any way by the arbitrary will of one or more individuals. It is the right of everyone to express their opinion, choose a profession and practice it, to dispose of property, and even to abuse it; to come and go without permission, and without having to account for their motives or undertakings. It is everyone's right to associate with other individuals, either to discuss their interests, or to profess the religion which they or their associates prefer, or even simply to occupy their days or hours in a way which is more compatible with their inclinations or whims. Finally, it is everyone's right to exercise some influence on the administration of the government, either by electing all or particular officials, or through representations, petitions, demands to which the authorities are more or less compelled to pay heed. Now compare this liberty with that of the ancients. The latter consisted in exercising collectively, but directly, several parts of the complete sovereignty; in deliberating, in the public square, over war and peace; in forming alliances with foreign governments; in voting laws, in pronouncing judgments; in examining the accounts, the acts, the stewardship of the magistrates; in calling them to appear in front of the assembled people, in accusing, condemning or absolving them. But if this was what the ancients called liberty, they admitted as compatible with this collective freedom the complete subjection of the individual to the authority of the community.
-- Benjamin Constant		 
The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.
-- Constitution for the United States		 
We the People of the united States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
-- Constitution for the USA		 
In all criminal cases whatsoever, the jury shall have the right to determine the law and the facts.
-- Indiana Constitution		 
Every citizen has a right to keep and bear arms; and this right shall never be questioned.
-- Maine Constitution		 
The people have a right to keep and bear arms for the common defense. And as, in times of peace, armies are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be maintained without the consent of the Legislature; and the military power shall always be held in an exact subordination to the Civil authority, and be governed by it.
-- Massachusetts Constitution		 
Every person has a right to keep and bear arms for the defense of himself and the state.
-- Michigan Constitution		 
The right of any person to keep or bear arms in defense of his own home, person, and property, or in aid of the civil power when thereto legally summoned, shall not be called in question, but nothing herein contained shall be held to permit the carrying of concealed weapons.
-- Montana Constitution		 
Every citizen has the right to keep and bear arms for security and defense, for lawful hunting and recreational use and for other lawful purposes.
-- Nevada Constitution		 
All persons have the right to keep and bear arms in defense of themselves, their families, their property and the state.
-- New Hampshire Constitution		 
The doctrine of non-resistance against arbitrary power and oppression, is absurd, slavish, and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind.
-- New Hampshire Constitution		 
All lawful authority comes from God to the people.
-- Constitution of the Irish Free State		 
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury... nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb, nor shall be compelled in any Criminal Case to be a witness against himself, not be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law, nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
-- Constitution of the United States		 
Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed.
-- Constitution of UNESCO		 
That the people have a right to freedom of speech, and of writing, and publishing their sentiments; therefore, the freedom of the press ought not to be restrained.
-- Pennsylvania Constitution		 
The United States shall guarantee to every state in this union a republican form of government...
-- U. S. Constitution		 
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
-- U.S. Constitution		 
America is a country in which I see the most persistant idealism and the blandest of cynicism and the race is on between its vitality and its decadence.
-- Alistair Cooke		 
As for the rage to believe that we have found the secret of liberty in general permissiveness from the cradle on, this seems to me a disastrous sentimentality, which, whatever liberties it sets loose, loosens also the cement that alone can bind society into a stable compound -- a code of obeyed taboos. I can only recall the saying of a wise Frenchman that `liberty is the luxury of self-discipline.' Historically, those peoples that did not discipline themselves had discipline thrust on them from the outside. That is why the normal cycle in the life and death of great nations has been first a powerful tyranny broken by revolt, the enjoyment of liberty, the abuse of liberty -- and back to tyranny again. As I see it, in this country -- a land of the most persistent idealism and the blandest cynicism -- the race is on between its decadence and its vitality.
-- Alistair Cooke		 
Liberty is the luxury of self-discipline, that those nations historically who have failed to discipline themselves have had discipline imposed by others.
-- Alistair Cooke		 
Fidelity to the public requires that the laws be as plain and explicit as possible, that the less knowing may understand, and not be ensnared by them, while the artful evade their force.
-- Samuel Cooke		 
So far as discipline is concerned, freedom means not its absence but the use of higher and more rational forms as contrasted with those that are lower or less rational.
-- Charles Horton Cooley		 
We must pity the poor wretched, timid soul who is too faint-hearted to resist his oppressors. He sings the song of the dammed: “I can’t fight back; I have too much to lose; I own too much property; I have worked too hard to get what I have; They will put me out of business if I resist; I might go to jail; I have my family to think about.” Such poor miserable creatures have misplaced values and are hiding their cowardice behind pretended family responsibility -- blindly refusing to see that the most glorious legacy that one can bequeath to posterity is liberty; and that the only true security is liberty.
-- Marvin Cooley		 
I will no longer pay for the destruction of my country, family, and self. Damn tyranny! Damn the Federal Reserve liars and thieves! Damn all pettifogging, oath-breaking US attorneys and judges.… I will see you all in Hell and shed my blood before I will be robbed of one more dollar to finance a national policy of treason, plunder, and corruption
-- Marvin Cooley		 
The right is general. It may be supposed from the phraseology of this provision that the right to keep and bear arms was only guaranteed to the militia; but this would be an interpretation not warranted by the intent. The militia, as has been explained elsewhere, consists of those persons who, under the law, are liable to the performance of military duty, and are officered and enrolled for service when called upon. . . . [I]f the right were limited to those enrolled, the purpose of the guarantee might be defeated altogether by the action or the neglect to act of the government it was meant to hold in check. The meaning of the provision undoubtedly is, that the people, from whom the militia must be taken, shall have the right to keep and bear arms, and they need no permission or regulation of law for that purpose.
-- Thomas Cooley		 
I sometimes wish that people would put a little more emphasis upon the observance of the law than they do upon its enforcement.
-- Calvin Coolidge		 
It is much more important to kill bad bills than to pass good ones.
-- Calvin Coolidge		 
It is much more important to kill bad bills than to pass good ones.
-- Calvin Coolidge		 
The collection of taxes which are not absolutely required, which do not beyond reasonable doubt contribute to the public welfare, is only a species of legalized larceny. The wise and correct course to follow in taxation is not to destroy those who have already secured success, but to create conditions under which everyone will have a better chance to be successful.
-- Calvin Coolidge		 
I want the people of America to be able to work less for the government and more for themselves. I want them to have the rewards of their own industry. This is the chief meaning of freedom. Until we can reestablish a condition under which the earnings of the people can be kept by the people, we are bound to suffer a very severe and distinct curtailment of our liberty.
-- Calvin Coolidge		 
No matter what anyone may say about making the rich and the corporations pay taxes, in the end they come out of the people who toil.
-- Calvin Coolidge		 
When more and more people are thrown out of work, unemployment results.
-- Calvin Coolidge		 
Liberty is not collective, it is personal. All liberty is individual liberty.
-- Calvin Coolidge		 
We do not need more intellectual power, we need more moral power. We do not need more knowledge, we need more character. We do not need more government, we need more culture. We do not need more law, we need more religion. We do not need more of the things that are seen, we need more of the things that are unseen.... If the foundation is firm, the superstructure will stand.
-- Calvin Coolidge		 
I have never been hurt by anything I didn't say.
-- Calvin Coolidge		 
Nothing is easier than spending public money. It does not appear to belong to anybody. The temptation is overwhelming to bestow it on somebody.
-- Calvin Coolidge		 
We demand entire freedom of action and then expect the government in some miraculous way to save us from the consequences of our own acts.... Self-government means self-reliance.
-- Calvin Coolidge		 
Nature is inexorable. If men do not follow the truth they cannot live.
-- Calvin Coolidge		 
As I went about with my father, when he collected taxes, I knew that when taxes were laid someone had to work hard to earn the money to pay them.
-- Calvin Coolidge		 
Collecting more taxes than is absolutely necessary is legalized robbery.
-- Calvin Coolidge		 
Government price-fixing once started, has alike no justice and no end. It is an economic folly from which this country has every right to be spared.
-- Calvin Coolidge		 
After all, the chief business of the American people is business. They are profoundly concerned with producing, buying, selling, investing and prospering in the world.
-- Calvin Coolidge		 
A wholesome regard for the memory of the great men of long ago is the best assurance to a people of a continuation of great men to come, who shall be able to instruct, to lead, and to inspire. A people who worship at the shrine of true greatness will themselves be truly great.
-- Calvin Coolidge		 
No person was ever honored for what he received. Honor has been the reward for what he gave.
-- Calvin Coolidge		 
No other theory is adequate to explain or comprehend the Declaration of Independence. It is the product of the spiritual insight of the people. We live in an age of science and of abounding accumulation of material things. These did not create our Declaration. Our Declaration created them. The things of the spirit come first. Unless we cling to that, all our material prosperity, overwhelming though it may appear, will turn to a barren sceptre in our grasp. If we are to maintain the great heritage which has been bequeathed to us, we must be like-minded as the fathers who created it. We must not sink into a pagan materialism. We must cultivate the reverence which they had for the things that are holy. We must follow the spiritual and moral leadership which they showed. We must keep replenished, that they may glow with a more compelling flame, the altar fires before which they worshiped.
-- Calvin Coolidge		 
If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions.
-- Calvin Coolidge		 
If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions.
-- Calvin Coolidge		 
Unless the people, through unified action, arise and take charge of their government, they will find that their government has taken charge of them. Independence and liberty will be gone, and the general public will find itself in a condition of servitude to an aggregation of organized and selfish interest.
-- Calvin Coolidge		 
Reason and virtue alone can bestow liberty.
-- Anthony Ashley Cooper		 
Individuality is the aim of political liberty. By leaving to the citizen as much freedom of action and of being as comports with order and the rights of others, the institutions render him truly a free man. He is left to pursue his means of happiness in his own manner.
-- James Fenimore Cooper		 
The disposition of all power is to abuses, nor does it at all mend the matter that its possessors are a majority. Unrestrained political authority, though it be confided to masses, cannot be trusted without positive limitations, men in bodies being but an aggregation of the passions, weaknesses and interests of men as individuals.
-- James Fenimore Cooper		 
Liberty is not a matter of words, but a positive and important condition of society. Its greatest safeguard after placing its foundations in a popular base, is in the checks and balances imposed on the public servants.
-- James Fenimore Cooper		 
It is a governing principle of nature, that the agency which can produce most good, when perverted from its proper aim, is most productive of evil. It behooves the well-intentioned, therefore, vigorously to watch the tendency of even their most highly-prized institutions, since that which was established in the interests of the right, may so easily become the agent of the wrong.
-- James Fenimore Cooper		 
Commerce is entitled to a complete and efficient protection in all its legal rights, but the moment it presumes to control a country, or to substitute its fluctuating expedients for the high principles of natural justice that ought to lie at the root of every political system, it should be frowned on, and rebuked.
-- James Fenimore Cooper		 
The tendency of democracies is, in all things, to mediocrity.
-- James Fenimore Cooper		 
Unrestrained political authority, though it be confided to masses, cannot be trusted without positive limitations, men in bodies being but an aggregation of the passions, weaknesses and interests of men as individuals.
-- James Fenimore Cooper		 
An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it.
-- Col. Jeff Cooper		 
An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it.
-- Jeff Cooper		 
The law, unfortunately, has always been retained on the side of power; laws have uniformly been enacted for the protection and perpetuation of power.
-- Thomas Cooper		 
Every politician, every member of the clerical profession, ought to incur the reasonable suspicion of being an interested supporter of false doctrines, who becomes angry at opposition, and endeavors to cast an odium on free inquiry. Fraud and falsehood only dread examination. Truth invites it.
-- Thomas Cooper		 
When you stretch the truth, watch out for the snapback.
-- Bill Copeland		 
Finally we shall place the Sun himself at the center of the Universe. All this is suggested by the systematic procession of events and the harmony of the whole Universe, if only we face the facts, as they say, `with both eyes open'.
-- Copernicus		 
Democracy consists of choosing your dictators, after they've told you what you think it is you want to hear.
-- Alan Corenk		 
Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.
-- II Corinthians		 
Censorship is contagious, and experience with this culture of regulation teaches us that regulatory enthusiasts herald each new medium of communications as another opportunity to spread the disease.
-- Robert Corn-Revere		 
Do your duty, and leave the rest to heaven.
-- Pierre Corneille		 
I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.
-- Bill Cosby		 
He [a U.S. Senator] knows he's got to buy time on my radio station, so he's going to lend me an ear. We're keeping them alive back home and that's why the newspaper and radio and TV people are more effective lobbyists.
-- Joseph Costello		 
If you pinch the sea of its liberty, though it be walls of stone or brass, it will beat them down.
-- John Cotton		 
In the Jim Crow South, for example, government failed and indeed refused to protect blacks from extra-legal violence. Given our history, it's stunning we fail to question those who would force upon us a total reliance on the state for defense.
-- Robert J. Cottrol		 
In education markets, like the Asian tutoring industry, top teachers are superstars who get to design curricula for thousands or even millions of students and train scores or hundreds of other teachers to use their effective methods. Quality providers expand and are emulated by competitors, and there is a powerful incentive for meaningful innovation. ... One teacher in Korea’s private tutoring sector made $2 million last year because his web-based employer has profit sharing and he’s brilliant at what he does, so he gets tons of students. That’s what should have happened to [Jaime] Escalante. That’s the sort of success that should greet excellence in education at all levels. It doesn’t because we don’t have a market.
-- Andrew J. Coulson		 
[A] possible further difficulty is cited, namely, that arising from the Constitutional provision that only Congress may declare war. This argument is countered with the contention that a treaty will override this barrier, let alone the fact that our participation in such police action as might be recommended by the international security organization need not necessarily be construed as war.
-- Council on Foreign Relations		 
The sovereignty fetish is still so strong in the public mind, that there would appear to be little chance of winning popular assent to American membership in anything approaching a super-state organization. Much will depend on the kind of approach which is used in further popular education.
-- Council on Foreign Relations		 
Some suggested over the weekend that it's wrong to expect Elian Gonzalez to live in a place that tolerates no dissent or freedom of political expression. They were talking about Miami.
-- Katie Couric		 
We consistently have adhered to the principle that the will of the people is the paramount consideration. Our goal today…[is] to reach the result that reflects the will of the voters…. The laws are intended to facilitate and safeguard the right of each voter to express his or her will in the context of our representative democracy. Technical statutory requirements must not be exalted over the substance of this right.
-- Florida Supreme Court		 
The nearer the power to enact laws and control public servants lies with the great body of the people, the more nearly does a government take unto itself the form of a republic -- not in name alone, but in fact.
-- Oregon Supreme Court		 
If it was necessary to tolerate in other people everything that one permits oneself, life would be unbearable.
-- Georges Courteline		 
History is a vast early warning system.
-- Norman Cousins		 
A library, to modify the famous metaphor of Socrates, should be the delivery room for the birth of ideas – a place where history comes to life.
-- Norman Cousins		 
I cannot affirm God if I fail to affirm man. Therefore, I affirm both. Without a belief in human unity I am hungry and incomplete. Human unity is the fulfillment of diversity. It is the harmony of opposites. It is a many-stranded texture, with color and depth.
-- Norman Cousins		 
Our ultimate freedom is the right and power to decide how anybody or anything outside of ourselves will affect us.
-- Steven R. Covey		 
The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.
-- Steven R. Covey		 
One of the problems that the marijuana reform movement consistently faces is that everyone wants to talk about what marijuana does, but no one ever wants to look at what marijuana prohibition does. Marijuana never kicks down your door in the middle of the night. Marijuana never locks up sick and dying people, does not suppress medical research, does not peek in bedroom windows. Even if one takes every reefer madness allegation of the prohibitionists at face value, marijuana prohibition has done far more harm to far more people than marijuana ever could.
-- Richard Cowan		 
It's discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit.
-- Noël Coward		 
It is discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit.
-- Noel Coward		 


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