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Famous Quotes about Liberty
 
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In the end, the state of the Union comes down to the character of the people. ... I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors, her ample rivers, and it was not there. I sought for it in the fertile fields, and boundless prairies, and it was not there. I sought it in her rich mines, and vast world commerce, and it was not there. Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits aflame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power.
-- Alexis de Tocqueville (Questionable)		 
The man who asks of freedom anything other than itself is born to be a slave.
-- Alexis de Tocqueville		 
Those who believe that they believe in God, but without passion in their hearts, without anguish in mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, without an element of despair even in their consolation, believe only in the God idea, not God Himself.
-- Miguel de Unamuno		 
This monkey mythology of Darwin is the cause of permissiveness, promiscuity, prophylactics, perversions, pregnancies, abortions, pornotherapy, pollution, poisoning and proliferation of crimes of all types.
-- Judge Braswell Dean		 
The media I've had a lot to do with is lazy. We fed them and they ate it every day.
-- Michael Deaver		 
Creativity involves breaking out of established patterns in order to look at things a different way.
-- Edward Debono		 
They have always taught and trained you to believe it to be your patriotic duty to go to war and to have yourselves slaughtered at their command. But in all the history of the world you, the people, have never had a voice in declaring war, and strange as it certainly appears, no war by any nation in any age has ever been declared by the people.
-- Eugene Debs		 
Years ago I recognized my kinship with all living things, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on the earth. I said then and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.
-- Eugene Debs		 
If librarianship is the connecting of people to ideas – and I believe that is the truest definition of what we do – it is crucial to remember that we must keep and make available, not just good ideas and noble ideas, but bad ideas, silly ideas, and yes, even dangerous or wicked ideas.
-- Graceanne A. Decandido		 
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.— That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.— Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world...
-- Declaration of Independence		 
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, ... That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.
-- Declaration of Independence		 
But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.
-- Declaration of Independence		 
I hear much of people's calling out to punish the guilty, but very few are concerned to clear the innocent.
-- Daniel Defoe		 
Some of the same people who laugh at gypsy fortune tellers take economists seriously.
-- William DeFoe		 
Diplomats are only useful in fair weather. As soon as it rains, they drown in every drop.
-- Charles DeGaulle		 
Honest labor bears a lovely face.
-- Thomas Dekker		 
We need a program of psychosurgery for political control of our society. The purpose is physical control of the mind. Everyone who deviates from the given norm can be surgically mutilated. ... The individual may think that the most important reality is his own existence, but this is only his personal point of view. This lacks historical perspective. Man does not have the right to develop his own mind. This kind of liberal orientation has great appeal. We must electronically control the brain. Someday armies and generals will be controlled by electric stimulation of the brain.
-- Dr. Jose Delgado		 
Those with power are frequently least aware of -- or least willing to acknowledge -- its existence [and] those with less power are often most aware of its existence.
-- Lisa Delpit		 
The sentiment that modern day ordinary Canadians do not need firearms for protection is pleasant but unrealistic. To discourage responsible deserving Canadians from possessing firearms for lawful self-defence and other legitimate purposes is to risk sacrificing them at the altar of political correctness.
-- Don Demetrick		 
The best wrestler is not he who has learned thoroughly all the tricks and twists of the art, which are seldom met with in actual wrestling, but he who has well and carefully trained himself in one or two of them, and watches keenly for an opportunity of practising them.
-- Demetrius the Cynic		 
If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, you don't know what you're doing.
-- W. Edwards Deming		 
It is not enough to do your best; you must know what to do, and THEN do your best.
-- W. Edwards Deming		 
We are opposed to state interference with parental rights and rights of conscience in the education of children as an infringement of the fundamental Democratic doctrine that the largest individual liberty consistent with the rights of others insures the highest type of American citizenship and the best government.
-- Democratic National Platform of 1892		 
Today's Democratic Party knows our children's education is not complete unless they learn good values. We applaud the efforts of the Clinton-Gore Administration to promote character education in our schools. Teaching good values, strong character, and the responsibilities of citizenship must be an essential part of American education.
-- Democratic Party Platform of 1996		 
People sometimes rationalize their greed by saying that it is all for the good of their children but this is nothing but an excuse they use to make their despicable actions appear respectable and praiseworthy.
-- Democritus		 
There is one safeguard known generally to the wise, which is an advantage and security to all, but especially to democracies as against despots. What is it? Distrust.
-- Demosthenes		 
There are all kinds of devices invented for the protection and preservation of countries: defensive barriers, forts, trenches, and the like... But prudent minds have as a natural gift one safeguard which is the common possession of all, and this applies especially to the dealings of democracies. What is this safeguard? Skepticism. This you must preserve. This you must retain. If you can keep this, you need fear no harm.
-- Demosthenes		 
Beware lest in your anxiety to avoid war you obtain a master.
-- Demosthenes		 
There's nothing I like less than bad arguments for a view that I hold dear.
-- Daniel Dennett		 
Note, however, that trying to ban guns because of strong moral disapproval of them or because of claims that they are 'scary' or that they may be used in crimes would not constitute a 'compelling state interest' any more than an attempt to restrain publication of a book on moral grounds would be. The concept of a 'compelling state interest' cannot swallow up the very right guaranteed in the first place.
-- Brannon P. Denning		 
When courts fail to engage in oversight or even distort the Constitution to rationalize the ultra vires actions of government, and when academics and political activists aid and abet them in this activity by devising ingenious rationalizations for ignoring the Constitution’s words, they are playing a most dangerous game. For they are putting at risk the legitimacy of the lawmaking process and risking the permanent disaffection of significant segments of the people.
-- Brannon P. Denning		 
Standing armies consist of professional soldiers who owe their livelihood and income to the government. Unlike civilians who render periodic service in local militia, professional soldiers do not own property and therefore do not have any source of income other than the government’s military paymaster. Thus, they are more likely to serve the government’s interests, regardless of whether its leaders are dishonest and corrupt or not. In fact, standing armies may even promote rapacious foreign or domestic policies if such policies enrich the army. In contrast, arms bearing, property owning citizen militiamen have a stake in the health of the republic as a whole and can be trusted to act in the republic’s best interests, whether those interests call for action in support of or against the political leadership of the nation.
-- Anthony J. Dennis		 
The Nazis, for example, used a national firearms registration system eventually to confiscate all guns and, as they deemed necessary, to execute gun owners.
-- Anthony J. Dennis		 
It comes as news to most people to learn that practically all important ethical teachers -- Moses, Aristotle, Jesus, Mohammed, and Saint Thomas Aquinas, for instance -- have denounced lending at interest as usury and as morally wrong.
-- Lawrence Dennis		 
We cannot become what we need to be by remaining what we are.
-- Max DePree		 
Ultimately, however, as the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter pointed out, a powerful bureaucratic class is in the same relation to commerce as was the scorpion in Aesop to the dog on whose back he crossed the river. They will destroy commerce and establish socialism, even if it kills them, because that is their nature.
-- John Derbyshire		 
Rights are not self-evident. They're not unalienable. They are subject to modification just like anything else.
-- Alan Dershowitz		 
Students throughout the totalitarian world risk life and limb for freedom of expression, many American college students are demanding that big brother restrict their freedom of speech on campus. This demand for enhanced censorship is not emanating only from the usual corner – the know-nothing fundamentalist right – it is coming from the radical, and increasingly not-so-radical left as well.
-- Alan Dershowitz		 
Foolish liberals who are trying to read the Second Amendment out of the constitution by claiming it's not an individual right or that it's too much of a safety hazard don’t see the danger of the big picture. They're courting disaster by encouraging others to use this same means to eliminate portions of the Constitution they don't like.
-- Alan Dershowitz		 
We, the People of this country, have no unalienable rights... all our rights are subject to modification... the Constitution of the United States of America is nothing more than a piece of paper and... our government should not be restrained by the Constitution because our government can do good things for people.
-- Alan Dershowitz (False)		 
Our First Amendment expresses a far different calculus for regulating speech than for regulating nonexpressive conduct and that is as it should be. The right to swing your fist should end at the tip of my nose, but your right to express your ideas should not necessarily end at the lobes of my ears.
-- Alan Dershowitz		 
Imagine a legal system in which lawyers were equated with the clients they defended and were condemned for representing controversial or despised clients.
-- Alan Dershowitz		 
You know, being black doesn’t give you a license to call people racist any more than being Jewish gives you license to call people anti-Semitic.
-- Alan Dershowitz		 
If we move away from the American tradition of lawyers defending those with whom they vehemently disagree -- as we temporarily did during the McCarthy period -- we weaken our commitment to the rule of law... So beware of an approach which limits advocacy to that which is approved by the standards of political correctness.
-- Alan Dershowitz		 
Each problem that I solved became a rule which served afterwards to solve other problems.
-- Rene Descartes		 
If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.
-- Rene Descartes		 
In 1983 $21 billion was spent in agricultural subsidies—almost equal to the net income of all American farmers.
-- Patrick Detches		 
The object of any tyrant would be to overthrow or diminish trial by jury, for it is the lamp that shows that freedom lives.
-- Sir Patrick Devlin		 
Minds are like parachutes. They only function when they are open.
-- Sir James Dewar		 
Children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society which is coming where everyone is interdependent.
-- John Dewey (False)		 
The teacher is engaged not simply in the training of individuals, but in the formation of the proper social life.... In this way, the teacher always is the prophet of the true God and the usherer-in of the true Kingdom of God.
-- John Dewey		 
The only freedom that is of enduring importance is the freedom of intelligence, that is to say, freedom of observation and of judgment, exercised in behalf of purposes that are intrinsically worth while. The commonest mistake made about freedom is, I think, to identify it with freedom of movement, or, with the external or physical side of activity.
-- John Dewey		 
Liberty is not just an idea, an abstract principle. It is power, effective power to do specific things. There is no such thing as liberty in general; liberty, so to speak, at large.
-- John Dewey		 
Mankind likes to think in terms of extreme opposites. It is given to formulating its beliefs in terms of Either/Ors, between which it recognizes no intermediate possibilities.
-- John Dewey		 
Our Founders warned us that all republics have eventually fallen into tyranny -- the only difference being the relative timeline of each republic's descent. ... From the summer of 1787 when our Framers deliberated over their magnificent Constitution, we have recognized that the clear statement and equal application of the Law is among the most critical duties of any government. If we allow ourselves to lose this, we may as well be back in ancient Rome, subject to the whim of every petty tyrant in the taxing bureau or the zoning board. For it doesn't matter whether the regulator's foot is shod in a jack boot or a Roman sandal; if he can hold you down with that boot upon your neck, then we are no longer in the America that our Founding Fathers intended for us.
-- John F. Di Leo		 
Conscience warns us before it reproaches us.
-- Comtesse Diane		 
It’s a rare person who wants to hear what he doesn’t want to hear.
-- Dick Cavett		 
Take nothing on its looks; take everything on evidence. There's no better rule.
-- Charles Dickens		 
I have known a vast quantity of nonsense talked about bad men not looking you in the face. Donīt trust that conventional idea. Dishonesty will stare honesty out of countenance any day in the week, if anything is to be got by it.
-- Charles Dickens		 
Indeed nations, in general, are not apt to think until they feel; and therefore nations in general have lost their liberty: For as violations of the rights of the governed, are commonly not only specious, but small at the beginning, they spread over the multitude in such a manner, as to touch individuals but slightly. Thus they are disregarded. The power or profit that arises from these violations centering in few persons, is to them considerable. For this reason the governors having in view their particular purposes, successively preserve an uniformity of conduct for attaining them. They regularly increase the first injuries, till at length the inattentive people are compelled to perceive the heaviness of their burthens -- They begin to complain and inquire — but too late. They find their oppressors so strengthened by success, and themselves so entangled in examples of express authority on the part of their rulers, and of tacit recognition on their own part, that they are quite confounded: for millions entertain no other idea of the legality of power, than it is founded on the exercise of power.
-- John Dickenson		 
Who are a free people? Not those over whom government is exercised, but those who live under a government so constitutionally checked and controlled that proper provision is made against its being otherwise exercised.
-- John Dickenson		 
Truth is so rare that it is delightful to tell it.
-- Emily Dickinson		 
Hope is that thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words and never stops... at all.
-- Emily Dickinson		 
Kings or parliaments could not give the rights essential to happiness... We claim them from a higher source -- from the King of kings, and Lord of all the earth. They are not annexed to us by parchments and seals. They are created in us by the decrees of Providence, which establish the laws of our nature. They are born with us; exist with us; and cannot be taken from us by any human power, without taking our lives.
-- John Dickinson		 
Don't let your mouth write no check that your tail can't cash.
-- Bo Diddley		 
Watch out for the fellow who talks about putting things in order! Putting things in order always means getting other people under your control.
-- Denis Diderot		 
To brand man with infamy, and let him free, is an absurdity that peoples our forests with assassins. [Fr., Rendre l'homme infame, et le laisser libre, est une absurdite qui peuple nos forets d'assassins.]
-- Denis Diderot		 
Freedom includes the right to say what others may object to and resent…The essence of citizenship is to be tolerant of strong and provocative words.
-- John G. Diefenbaker		 
I am a Canadian, free to speak without fear, free to worship in my own way, free to stand for what I think right, free to oppose what I believe wrong, or free to choose those who shall govern my country. This heritage of freedom I pledge to uphold for myself and all mankind.
-- John G. Diefenbaker		 
Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right to do wrong.
-- John G. Diefenbaker		 
Banks do not have an obligation to promote the public good.
-- Alexander Dielius		 
If you say to people that they, as a matter of fact, can’t protect their conversations, in particular their political conversations, I think you take a long step toward making a transition from a free society to a totalitarian society.
-- Whitfield Diffie		 
It is no coincidence that some of America’s most lethargic industries—steel, footwear, rubber, textiles—are also among the most heavily protected.
-- Thomas DiLorenzo		 
The theory of natural monopoly is an economic fiction. No such thing as a 'natural' monopoly has ever existed. The history of the so-called public utility concept is that the late 19th and early 20th-century 'utilities' competed vigorously, and like all other industries, they did not like competition. They first secured government-sanctioned monopolies, and then, with the help of a few influential economists, they constructed an ex post facto rationalization for their monopoly power. ... The theory of natural monopoly is a 19th-century economic fiction that defends 19th-century (or 18th-century, in the case of the U.S. Postal Service) monopolistic privileges and has no useful place in the 21st-century American economy.
-- Thomas J. DiLorenzo		 
On February 27, black-uniformed men of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms wearing “coal scuttle” helmets and carrying German-made machine pistols attacked the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. Fifty years earlier, in January 1943, blackuniformed SS men wearing “coal scuttle” helmets and carrying German-made machine pistols attacked the Jewish compound in Warsaw, Poland. The BATF men were searching for illegal weapons reported by a paid informant to be in the Branch Davidian Compound. The SS men were searching for illegal weapons reported by a paid informant to be in the Warsaw ghetto. Reports from Texas indicate the Branch Davidians kept to themselves and harmed no one outside their compound prior to the BATF assault. History tells us the Jews kept to themselves and harmed no one outside the Warsaw ghetto prior to the SS assault. The U.S. broadcast news media tell us that the Branch Davidians practice contemptible sexual rituals involving young children, so they are an evil religious cult. Nazi news media told the German populace that the Jews practiced contemptible sexual rituals involving children, so they were an evil religion. The BATF invited the U.S. news media to document the BATF assault to show the American public how dangerous the Branch Davidians are. The SS had propagandists documents its assault to show the German public how dangerous the Jews were. Four BATF men were killed and 16 wounded in the initial assault on the Branch Davidian compound. Eleven SS men were killed and an unrecorded number wounded in the initial assault on the Warsaw ghetto. After the initial assault, the BATF men magnanimously arranged a truce so children could be evacuated from the Branch Davidian Compound (and they could tend to their casualties). After their initial assault, the SS men magnanimously arranged a truce so children could be evacuated from the Warsaw ghetto compound (and they could tend to their casualties). The BATF called up military units with armored vehicles to finish off the Branch Davidian compound after encountering fierce resistance against the initial assault. The SS called up military units with armored vehicles to finish off the Warsaw ghetto after encountering fierce resistance against the initial assault. Fifty years have passed, but little has changed.
-- John D. Dingell, III		 


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