Famous Quotations / Quotes
Famous Quotes about Liberty
 
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I developed a practice which, so far as I know, I have never violated. The practice is to avoid public mention of any name unless it can be done with favorable intent and connotation; reserve all criticism for the private conference; speak only good in public.
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower		 
The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without.
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower		 
If all that Americans want is security, they can go to prison. They'll have enough to eat, a bed and a roof over their heads. But if an American wants to preserve his dignity and his equality as a human being, he must not bow his neck to any dictatorial government
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower		 
It is often easier for our children to obtain a gun than it is to find a good school.
-- Joycelyn Elders		 
There is a mercy which is weakness, and even treason against the common good.
-- George Eliot		 
Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact.
-- George Eliot		 
Blessed is the person who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact.
-- George Eliot		 
The Civil War is not ended: I question whether any serious civil war ever does end.
-- T. S. Eliot		 
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
-- T. S. Eliot		 
The sea, as well as the air, is a free and common thing to all; and a particular nation cannot pretend to have the right to the exclusion of all others, without violating the rights of nature and public usage.
-- Elizabeth I		 
I say legalize drugs because I want to see less drug abuse, not more. And I say legalize drugs because I want to see the criminals put out of business.
-- Edward Ellison		 
Everything is backwards;\\ everything is upside down.\\ Doctors destroy health,\\ lawyers destroy justice,\\ universities destroy knowledge,\\ governments destroy freedom,\\ the major media destroy information,\\ and religions destroy spirituality.
-- Michael Ellner		 
The Thirteen States are Thirteen Sovereign bodies.
-- Oliver Ellsworth		 
Pity the poor, wretched, timid soul, too faint hearted to resist his oppressors. He sings the songs of the damned, 'I cannot resist, I have too much to lose, they might take my property or confiscate my earnings, what would my family do, how would they survive?' He hides behind pretended family responsibility, failing to see that the most glorious legacy that we can bequeath to our posterity is liberty!
-- W. Vaughn Ellsworth		 
Wherever there’s a disagreement among Republicans, I’m for one of those disagreements. I’m all for it. The president’s with Russia? I’m with John McCain and Lindsey Graham, I’m for NATO! Why? [It’s a] wedge. Wedges have to be schisms, schisms have to be divides.
-- Rahm Emanuel		 
You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.
-- Rahm Emanuel		 
Democracy is morose, and runs to anarchy.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson		 
Man exists for his own sake and not to add a laborer to the State.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson		 
Wherever a man comes, there comes revolution. The old is for slaves.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson		 
We grant no dukedoms to the few,\\ We hold like rights and shall;\\ Equal on Sunday in the pew,\\ On Monday in the mall.\\ For what avail the plough or sail,\\ Or land, or life, if freedom fail?
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson		 
America is another name for opportunity. Our whole history appears like a last effort of divine Providence in behalf of the human race.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson		 
The less government we have the better - the fewer laws and the less confided power. The antidote to this abuse of formal government is the influence of private character, the growth of the individual.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson		 
Who shall forbid a wise skepticism, seeing that there is no practical question on which anything more than an approximate solution can be had?
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson		 
The highest compact we can make with our fellow is - "Let there be truth between us two forevermore."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson		 
Liberty is a slow fruit.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson		 
Character is higher than intellect... A great soul will be strong to live as well as think.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson		 
We are students of words; we are shut up in schools, and colleges, and recitation rooms, for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bag of wind, a memory of words, and do not know a thing.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson		 
Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson		 
What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson		 
Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson		 
Money, which represents the prose of life, and which is hardly spoken of in parlors without an apology, is, in its effects and laws, as beautiful as roses.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson		 
That which we call sin in others is experiment for us.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson		 
Every actual state is corrupt. Good men must not obey laws too well.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson		 
In dealing with the State, we ought to remember that its institutions are not aboriginal, though they existed before we were born; that they are not superior to the citizen; that every one of them was once the act of a single man; every law and usage was a man's expedient to meet a particular case; that they all are imitable, all alterable; we may make as good; we may make better.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson		 
For what avail the plough or sail, Or land or life, if freedom fail?
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson		 
We seldom see anybody who is not uneasy or afraid to live.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson		 
The history of persecution is a history of endeavors to cheat nature, to make water run up hill, to twist a rope of sand.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson		 
Good men must not obey the laws too well.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson		 
Fame is proof that the people are gullible.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson		 
Persecution readily knits friendship between its victims.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson		 
Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson		 
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson		 
People only see what they are prepared to see.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson		 
Don't say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson		 
When you strike at a king, you must kill him.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson		 
The world makes way for the man who knows where he is going.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson		 
The function of the censor is to censor. He has a professional interest in finding things to suppress.
-- Thomas I. Emerson		 
It is frequently said that speech that is intentionally provocative and therefore invites physical retaliation can be punished or suppressed. Yet, plainly no such general proposition can be sustained. Quite the contrary…. The provocative nature of the communication does not make it any the less expression. Indeed, the whole theory of free expression contemplates that expression will in many circumstances be provocative and arouse hostility. The audience, just as the speaker, has an obligation to maintain physical restraint.
-- Thomas I. Emerson		 
The right to freedom of expression is justified first of all as the right of an individual purely in his capacity as an individual. It derives from the widely accepted premise of Western thought that the proper end of man is the realization of his character and potentialities as a human being.
-- Thomas I. Emerson		 
The Right of all members of society to form their own beliefs and communicate them freely to others must be regarded as an essential principle of a democratically organized society.
-- Thomas I. Emerson		 
Suppression of expression conceals the real problems confronting a society and diverts public attention from the critical issues. It is likely to result in neglect of the grievances which are the actual basis of the unrest, and this prevent their correction.
-- Thomas I. Emerson		 
Every man – in the development of his own personality – has the right to form his own beliefs and opinions. Hence, suppression of belief, opinion and expression is an affront to the dignity of man, a negation of man’s essential nature.
-- Thomas I. Emerson		 
We're bending the law as far as we can to ban an entirely new class of guns.
-- Rahm Emmanuel		 
You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.
-- Rahm Emmanuel		 
The task of government in this enlightened time does not extend to actually dealing with problems. Solving problems might put bureaucrats out of work. No, the task of government is to make it look as though problems have been solved, while continuing to keep the maximum number of consultants and bureaucrats employed dealing with them.
-- Bob Emmers		 
That is true liberty, which bears a pure and firm breast.
-- Quintus Ennius		 
To open his lips is crime in a plain citizen.
-- Quintus Ennius		 
He hath freedom whoso beareth a clean and constant heart within.
-- Quintus Ennius		 
What occurs to me in reading their book is that the new American approach to social control is so much more sophisticated and pervasive that it really deserves a new name.  It isn't just propaganda any more, it's 'prop-agenda'.  It's not so much the control of what we think, but the control of what we think about.  When our governments want to sell us a course of action, they do it by making sure it's the only thing on the agenda, the only thing everyone's talking about.  And they pre-load the ensuing discussion with highly selected images, devious and prejudicial language, dubious linkages, weak or false 'intelligence' and selected 'leaks'. 
-- Brian Eno		 
Only the educated are free.
-- Epictetus		 
We must not believe the many, who say that only free people ought to be educated, but we should rather believe the philosophers who say that only the educated are free.
-- Epictetus		 
Is freedom anything else than the right to live as we wish? Nothing else.
-- Epictetus		 
Freedom and slavery, the one is the name of virtue, and the other of vice, and both are acts of the will.
-- Epictetus		 
He is free who lives as he wishes to live; who is neither subject to compulsion nor to hindrance, nor to force; whose movements to action are not impeded, whose desires attain their purpose, and who does not fall into that which he would avoid.
-- Epictetus		 
The beginning of philosophy is the recognition of the conflict between opinions.
-- Epictetus		 
A free life cannot acquire many possessions, because this is not easy to do without servility to mobs or monarchs.
-- Epicurus		 
Freedom is the greatest fruit of self-sufficiency.
-- Epicurus		 
The term “Internationalism” has been popularized in recent years to cover an interlocking financial, political, and economic world force for the purpose of establishing a World Government. Today Internationalism is heralded from pulpit and platform as a “League of Nations” or a “Federated Union” to which the United States must surrender a definite part of its National Sovereignty. The World Government plan is being advocated under such alluring names as the “New International Order,” “The New World Order,” “World Union Now,” “World Commonwealth of Nations,” “World Community,” etc. All the terms have the same objective; however, the line of approach may be religious or political according to the taste or training of the individual.
-- Episcopal Church General Convention		 
America was founded on the principle of inalienable rights, not dictated duties. The Declaration of Independence states that every human being has a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It does not state that he is born a slave to the needs of others.
-- Alex Epstein		 
While it would be silly and ungracious to insist that intelligent deliberation on public issues is nowhere found in modern communities, it would be naive to imagine that wise deliberation can survive the constant pounding from self-interested political behavior. Benevolence in public institutions has a short half-life no matter how noble its original intentions." and "Once [a] program is in place, its day-to-day administration falls into the hands of a professional cadre besieged by powerful interest groups whose influence grows as public interest wanes. . . . A slow process of disintegration and reconfiguration sets in, transforming and expanding a program from within.
-- Richard A. Epstein		 
The New Deal is inconsistent with the principles of limited government and with the constitutional provisions designed to secure that end.
-- Richard A. Epstein		 
It shall be unlawful for any public secondary school which receives Federal financial assistance and which has a limited open forum, to deny equal access or a fair opportunity to, or discriminate against, any students who wish to conduct a meeting within that limited open forum on the basis of the religious, political, philosophical, or other content of the speech at such meeting.
-- Equal Access Act		 
In the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king.
-- Desiderius Erasmus		 
War is sweet to those who haven't tasted it.
-- Desiderius Erasmus		 
We will all be better citizens when voting records of our Congressmen are followed as carefully as scores of pro-football games.
-- Lou Erickson		 


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