Famous Quotations / Quotes
Famous Quotes about Liberty
 
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The right to revolt has sources deep in our history.
-- William O. Douglas		 
But our society -- unlike most in the world -- presupposes that freedom and liberty are in a frame of reference that makes the individual, not government, the keeper of his tastes, beliefs, and ideas; that is the philosophy of the First Amendment; and it is this article of faith that sets us apart from most nations in the world.
-- William O. Douglas		 
Heresy trials are foreign to our Constitution. Men may believe what they cannot prove. They may not be put to the proof of their religious doctrines or beliefs. Religious experiences which are as real as life to some may be incomprehensible to others.
-- William O. Douglas		 
The great and invigorating influences in American life have been the unorthodox: the people who challenge an existing institution or way of life, or say and do things that make people think.
-- William O. Douglas		 
Among the liberties of citizens that are guaranteed are ... the right to believe what one chooses, the right to differ from his neighbor, the right to pick and choose the political philosophy he likes best, the right to associate with whomever he chooses, the right to join groups he prefers ...
-- William O. Douglas		 
I think that the influence towards suppression of minority views – towards orthodoxy in thinking about public issues – has been more subconscious than unconscious, stemming to a very great extent from the tendency of Americans to conform…not to deviate or depart from an orthodox point of view.
-- William O. Douglas		 
Where suspicion fills the air and holds scholars in line for fear of their jobs, there can be no exercise of the free intellect. Supineness and dogmatism take the place of inquiry. A problem can no longer be pursued to its edges. Fear stalks the classroom. The teacher is no longer a stimulant to adventurous thinking; she becomes instead a pipe line for safe and sound information. A deadening dogma takes the place of free inquiry. Instruction tends to become sterile; pursuit of knowledge is discouraged; discussion often leaves off where it should begin.
-- William O. Douglas		 
Since when have we Americans been expected to bow submissively to authority and speak with awe and reverence to those who represent us?
-- William O. Douglas		 
The First and Fourteenth Amendments say that Congress and the States shall make “no law” which abridges freedom of speech or of the press. In order to sanction a system of censorship I would have to say that “no law” does not mean what it says, that “no law” is qualified to mean “some” laws. I cannot take this step.
-- William O. Douglas		 
A people who extend civil liberties only to preferred groups start down the path either to dictatorship of the right or the left.
-- William O. Douglas		 
The great and invigorating influences in American life have been the unorthodox: the people who challenge an existing institution or way of life, or say and do things that make people think.
-- William O. Douglas		 
Ideas are indeed the most dangerous weapons in the world. Our ideas of freedom are the most powerful political weapons man has ever forged.
-- William O. Douglas		 
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will. Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue till they have resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they suppress.
-- Frederick Douglass		 
To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.
-- Frederick Douglass		 
Find out just what the people will submit to and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.
-- Frederick Douglass		 
Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand; it never has and it never will.
-- Frederick Douglass		 
The non-producers now receive the larger share of what those who labor produce. The result is natural. Discontent culminates in exactly the same ratio that intelligence sustains aspiration.
-- Frederick Douglass		 
No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.
-- Frederick Douglass		 
Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want rain without thunder and lightning.
-- Frederick Douglass		 
I have no sympathy for the narrow, selfish notion of economy which assumes that every crumb of bread which goes into the mouth of one class is so much taken from the mouths of another class.
-- Frederick Douglass		 
Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one’s thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down.
-- Frederick Douglass		 
He who would be free must strike the first blow.
-- Frederick Douglass		 
What shall be done with the four million slaves if they are emancipated? ... Primarily, it is a question less for man than for God -- less for human intellect than for the laws of nature to solve. It assumes that nature has erred; that the law of liberty is a mistake; that freedom, though a natural want of the human soul, can only be enjoyed at the expense of human welfare, and that men are better off in slavery than they would or could be in freedom; that slavery is the natural order of human relations, and that liberty is an experiment. What shall be done with them? Our answer is, do nothing with them; mind your business, and let them mind theirs. Your doing with them is their greatest misfortune. They have been undone by your doings, and all they now ask, and really have need of at your hands, is just to let them alone. They suffer by every interference, and succeed best by being let alone.
-- Frederick Douglass		 
The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.
-- Frederick Douglass		 
To educate a man is to unfit him to be a slave.
-- Frederick Douglass		 
I know no class of my fellowmen, however just, enlightened, and humane, which can be wisely and safely trusted absolutely with the liberties of any other class.
-- Frederick Douglass		 
We may explain success mainly by one word and that word is WORK! WORK!! WORK!!! WORK!!!! Not transient and fitful effort, but patient, enduring, honest, unremitting, and indefatigable work, into which the whole heart is put.
-- Frederick Douglass		 
Any one having a white face, and being so disposed, could stop us, and subject us to examination. ... When I get there [in Pennsylvania], I shall not be required to have a pass; I can travel without being disturbed.
-- Frederick Douglass		 
The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.
-- Frederick Douglass		 
... and in thinking of my life, I almost forgot my liberty.
-- Frederick Douglass		 
What is possible for me is possible for you.
-- Frederick Douglass		 
The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.
-- Frederick Douglass		 
Let us render the tyrant no aid; let us not hold the light by which he can trace the footprints of our flying brother.
-- Frederick Douglass		 
The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.
-- Frederick Douglass		 
Interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the constitution is a Glorious Liberty Document!
-- Frederick Douglass		 
We must protect the freedoms of even those who hate us, and that we may find objectionable. If we fail in this task, we become victims of the precedents we create.
-- Judge Robert Doumar		 
History teaches us the unfortunate lesson that cultural values supplant constitutional rights whenever the cultural elite consider a right too burdensome to suit the needs of the moment. The outlandish pronouncement in Dred Scott "that the Negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit," the shameful court-approved internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, and the separate but equal doctrine that officially existed until 1954 are all examples of the evils that result when cultural values are given more weight than constitutional rights.
-- Robert Dowlut		 
Judicial minds have systematically rejected arguments that clashed with their ideologies. Consequently, the forum of last resort has not checked the excesses of the executive and legislative branches.
-- Robert Dowlut		 
Because this right [of self-defense] cannot be effectively exercised with bare hands, the right to keep and bear arms is the only efficient way to secure the fundamental right of self-defense.
-- Robert Dowlut		 
[R]estricting arms to the military and police eviscerates the principle that power should flow from the people to government, and turns the government into a master rather than a servant.
-- Robert Dowlut		 
Gun control stems from racist roots, and ... it undermines feminism by send[ing] women the message that they should not use force to defend themselves.
-- Robert Dowlut		 
[W]e continue to evolve a cute little concept of a changing legal accommodation named the “Living Constitution Theory” which is only a perversion stating, “To heck with what our Constitution says; we in power will twist it to suit our ideas anytime and every time we so choose.”
-- Dr. Jack Down		 
The federal government has turned policing into policing for profit.
-- Stephen Downing		 
I think it might be important to point out that this country is a one-party country. Half of that party is called Republican and half is called Democrat. It doesn’t make any difference. All the really good ideas belong to the Libertarians.
-- Hugh Downs		 
You will ruin no more lives as you ruined mine. You will wring no more hearts as you wrung mine. I will free the world of a poisonous thing. Take that, you hound, and that! -- and that! -- and that! -- and that!
-- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle		 
When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
-- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle		 
When books are challenged, restricted, removed, or banned, an atmosphere of suppression exists…. The fear of the consequences of censorship is as damaging as, or perhaps more damaging than, the actual censorship attempt. After all, when a published work is banned, it can usually be found elsewhere. Unexpressed ideas, unpublished works, unpurchased books are lost forever.
-- Robert P. Doyle		 
Some methodological atheists formulate the principle by saying that the burden of proof is always on any person making an existence claim, since, from a logical point of view, existence claims are only capable of proof, not disproof. No one has ever proven the nonexistence of Santa Claus, or elves, or unicorns, or anything else, simply because the very logic of an unrestricted existential proposition prohibits its disproof. It is impossible to go all over the universe and show that, for example, there are no elves anywhere. For this reason, rational methodology calls for us to deny the existence of all those things which have never been shown to exist. That is why we all regard it rational to deny the existence of Santa Claus, elves, unicorns, etc. And since God is in that same category, having never been shown to exist, it follows that rational methodology calls for us to deny the existence of God.
-- Theodore M. Drange		 
If Congress can determine what constitutes the general welfare and can appropriate money for its advancement, where is the limitation to carrying into execution whatever can be effected by money?
-- William Drayton		 
Nothing is less productive than to make more efficient what should not be done at all.
-- Peter Drucker		 
The most may err as grossly as the few.
-- John Dryden		 
We find few historians who have been diligent enough in their search for truth; it is their common method to take on trust what they help distribute to the public; by which means a falsehood once received from a famed writer becomes traditional to posterity.
-- John Dryden		 
I am as free as nature first made man, Ere the base laws of servitude began, When wild in woods the noble savage ran.
-- John Dryden		 
Of all the tyrannies on human kind / the worst is that which persecutes the mind.
-- John Dryden		 
War is the trade of Kings.
-- John Dryden		 
Ill habits gather by unseen degrees -- As brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas.
-- John Dryden		 
Better shun the bait than struggle in the snare.
-- John Dryden		 
The love of liberty with life is given, And life itself the inferior gift of Heaven.
-- John Dryden		 
O freedom, first delight of human kind!
-- John Dryden		 
It is the growing custom to narrow control, concentrate power, disregard and disfranchise the public; and assuming that certain powers by divine right of money-raising or by sheer assumption, have the power to do as they think best without consulting the wisdom of mankind.
-- W. E. B. Du Bois		 
The cost of liberty is less than the cost of repression.
-- W. E. B. Du Bois		 
The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.
-- W. E. B. Du Bois		 
Gun control has not worked in D.C. The only people who have guns are criminals. We have the strictest gun laws in the nation and one of the highest murder rates. It's quicker to pull your Smith and Wesson than to dial 911 if you're being robbed.
-- Lt. Lowell Duckett		 
There can be no peace on earth as long as there is war in love.
-- Dieter Duhm		 
Somehow we find it hard to sell our values, namely that the rich should plunder the poor.
-- John Foster Dulles		 
Of all the tasks of government, the most basic is to protect its citizens from violence.
-- John Foster Dulles		 
Rogues are preferable to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
-- Alexandre Dumas		 
The fact that most people think that being selfish means harming one's fellow man, that pursuing one's own self-interest equates to behaving brutally or irrationally, is, as Ms. Rand noted, a "psychological confession" on their part. In fact it is against one's own long-term self-interest to behave irrationally or trample others. Such actions are the exact opposite of selfish -- they're self-destructive.
-- Wayne Dunn		 
There was a time when Christians took faith as seriously as Mid-Eastern Muslims currently do: the Medieval Era.
-- Wayne Dunn		 
The fact that most people think that being selfish means harming one's fellow man, that pursuing one's own self-interest equates to behaving brutally or irrationally, is, as Ms. Rand noted, a 'psychological confession' on their part.  In fact it is against one's own long-term self-interest to behave irrationally or trample others. Such actions are the exact opposite of selfish -- they're self-destructive.
-- Wayne Dunn		 
An appeal is when you ask one court to show its contempt for another court.
-- Finley Peter Dunne		 
There exist in the world only two great parties; that of those who prefer to live from the produce of their labor or of their property, and that of those who prefer to live on the labor or the property of others.
-- Charles Dunoyer		 
The concept of a Supreme Being who childishly demands to be constantly placated by prayers and sacrifice and dispenses justice like some corrupt petty judge whose decisions may be swayed by a bit of well-timed flattery should be relegated to the trash bin of history, along with the belief in a flat earth and the notion that diseases are caused by demonic possession. Ironically, the case for the involuntary retirement of God may have been best stated by one Saul or Paul of Tarsus, a first-century tentmaker and Pharisee of the tribe of Benjamin, who wrote, 'When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things' (I Corinthians 13:11). Those words are no less relevant today than they were two thousand years ago.
-- John J. Dunphy		 
How wonderful the world might be if only we gave to each other all the love we claim to give to God, a thought which has been expressed time and time again, yet it still manages to resound with a poignance that is almost painful. Such a world can be ours, sisters and brothers. Let us work together to achieve it.
-- John J. Dunphy		 
I am convinced that the battle for humankind's future must be waged and won in the public school classroom by teachers that correctly perceive their role as proselytizers of a new faith: a religion of humanity that recognizes and respects the spark of what theologians call divinity in every human being... The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and new -- the rotting corpse of Christianity, together with all its adjacent evils and misery, and the new faith of humanism, resplendent with the promise of a world in which the never-realized Christian ideal of 'love thy neighbor' will finally be achieved.
-- John J. Dunphy		 
I steadfastly maintain that only with the complete, irrevocable rejection of God and the supernatural will humankind truly begin to live. Rather than producing a feeling of despair, the decision to embrace atheism should result in an exhilarating, almost intoxicating sense of freedom, something akin to the experience of those American slaves who rejoiced upon hearing news of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. Only the atheist is truly free.
-- John J. Dunphy		 
The history of Christianity has been largely written in blood, the blood of those whom it has sought to proselytize as well as that of those Christians who did not share the theology or ambitions of the male clerical oligarchy that has always wielded power in Christendom. This ignoble distinction is not nor has it ever been the exclusive prerogative of any particular denomination or sect; it is a living legacy of horror that is tragically common to the Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Eastern Orthodox bodies of Christian churches.
-- John J. Dunphy		 
If the previous paragraphs [of 'A Religion For A New Age'] prove anything, it is that the Bible is not merely another book, an outmoded and archaic book, or even an extremely influential book; it has been and remains an incredibly dangerous book. It and the various Christian churches which are parasitic upon it have been directly responsible for most of the wars, persecutions and outrages which humankind has perpetrated upon itself over the past two thousand years.
-- John J. Dunphy		 
A liberal's like to be lax\\When recommending a tax.\\With a glut in his heart\\And his brain low a quart,\\He will give you\\the shirts off our backs.
-- F. R. Duplantier		 
If our economy of freedom fails to distribute wealth as ably as it has created it, the road to dictatorship will be open to any man who can persuasively promise security to all.
-- Will Durant		 
In my youth, I stressed freedom, and in my old age I stress order. I have made the great discovery that liberty is a product of order.
-- Will Durant		 
To speak ill of others is a dishonest way of praising ourselves.
-- Will Durant		 
Forced to choose, the poor, like the rich, love money more than political liberty; and the only political freedom capable of enduring is one that is so pruned as to keep the rich from denuding the poor by ability or subtlety and the poor from robbing the rich by violence or votes.
-- Will Durant		 
[H]istory assures us that civilizations decay quite leisurely.
-- Will Durant		 
Philosophy begins when one learns to doubt -- particularly to doubt one’s cherished beliefs, one’s dogmas and one’s axioms.
-- Will Durant		 
Excellence is an art won by training and habituation: we do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have these because we have acted rightly; 'these virtues are formed in man by his doing the actions'; we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit: 'the good of man is a working of the soul in the way of excellence in a complete life... for as it is not one swallow or one fine day that makes a spring, so it is not one day or a short time that makes a man blessed and happy.
-- Will Durant		 
Nature smiles at the union of freedom and equality in our utopias. For freedom and equality are sworn and everlasting enemies, and when one prevails the other dies. Leave men free, and their natural inequalities will multiply almost geometrically, as in England and America in the nineteenth century under laissez-faire. To check the growth of inequality, liberty must be sacrificed, as in Russia after 1917. Even when repressed, inequality grows; only the man who is below the average in economic ability desires equality; those who are conscious of superior ability desire freedom, and in the end superior ability has its way.
-- Will Durant		 
Why doesn't everybody leave everybody else the hell alone?
-- Jimmy Durante		 
The freedom of each individual can only be the freedom of all.
-- Friedrich Durrenmatt		 
Criminal lawyer. Or is that redundant?
-- Will Durst		 
I did not use paint, I made myself up morally.
-- Eleanora Duse		 
Unless a crime is specifically named in the constitution, treason and bribery, impeachments like indictments can only be instituted for crimes committed against the statutory law of the United States.
-- Theodore William Dwight		 
Hamilton's whole monetary policy is based on unconstitutional grounds and unsound reasoning, and fraudulent statements. His policies were fought through the whole public career of Franklin, Jefferson, Madison, Randolph and many another truly great lovers of Republican Government. His policies have proved to be more destructive of our independent and democratic form of government than the old subjugation of the Colonies by Great Britain. The deliberations in Congress over Hamilton's Bank Bill, and the opinions of members of The Cabinet show the intensity of feeling between the private money interests and those supporting the Constitution. History records that the “money changers” have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling the money and its issuance.
-- Olive Cushing Dwinell		 
‘Balanced’ is a code for ‘denied’: a right to free speech that must be ‘balanced’ against so exhaustive a list of other supposed values means a right that can be exercised only when those in power judge that the speech in question is innocuous to them.
-- Ronald Dworkin		 
O liberty, Parent of happiness, celestial born When the first man became a living soul; His sacred genius thou.
-- Sir Edward Dyer		 
I am appalled at the extensive evidence indicating that there is today in the UN among the American employees there, the greatest concentration of communists that this Committee has ever encountered. … These people occupy high positions. They have very high salaries and almost all of these people have, in the past, been employees in the U.S. government in high and sensitive positions.
-- James O. Eastland		 
The real guarantee of freedom is an equilibrium of social forces in conflict, not the triumph of any one force.
-- Max Eastman		 
At Waco, was there really an urgency to get those people out of the compound at that particular time? Was the press going to make it look heroic for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms? At Ruby Ridge, there was one guy in a cabin at the top of the mountain. Was it necessary for federal agents to go up there and shoot a 14-year-old in the back and shoot a woman with a child in her arms? What kind of mentality does that?
-- Clint Eastwood		 
Abuse of power isn't limited to bad guys in other nations. It happens in our own country if we’re not vigilant.
-- Clint Eastwood		 
A statesman who keeps his ear permanently glued to the ground will have neither elegance of posture nor flexibility of movement.
-- Abba Eban		 


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