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Famous Quotes about Liberty
 
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We will all be better citizens when voting records of our Congressmen are followed as carefully as scores of pro-football games.
-- Lou Erickson		 
When somebody lies, somebody loses.
-- Stephanie Ericsson		 
The American feels too rich in his opportunities for free expression that he often no longer knows what he is free from. Neither does he know where he is not free; he does not recognize his native autocrats when he sees them.
-- Erik H. Erikson		 
When men can freely communicate their thoughts and their sufferings, real or imagined, their passions spend themselves in air, like gunpowder scattered upon the surface – but pent up by terrors, they work unseen, burst forth in a moment, and destroy everything in its course. Let reason be opposed to reason, and argument to argument, and every good government will be safe.
-- Thomas Erskine		 
The liberty of the press would be an empty sound, and no man would venture to write on any subject, however, pure his purpose, without an attorney at one elbow and a counsel at the other. From minds thus subdued by the fear of punishment, there could issue no works of genius to expand the empire of human reason.
-- Thomas Erskine		 
What is the fairest fruit of the English Tree of Liberty? The security of our rights and of the law, and that no man shall be brought to trial where there is a prejudice against him.
-- Thomas Erskine		 
A judicial activist is a judge who interprets the Constitution to mean what it would have said if he, instead of the Founding Fathers, had written it.
-- Senator Sam Ervin		 
... judicial verbicide is calculated to convert the Constitution into a worthless scrap of paper and to replace our government of laws with a judicial oligarchy.
-- Senator Sam Ervin		 
But this is slavery, not to speak one’s thought.
-- Euripides		 
Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.
-- Euripides		 
Once 'our people' get themselves into a position to make policy, they cease being 'our people'.
-- M. Stanton Evans		 
The civilized man has a moral obligation to be skeptical, to demand the credentials of all statements that claim to be facts.
-- Bergan Evans		 
Freedom of speech and freedom of action [is meaningless] without freedom to think. And there is no freedom of thought without doubt.
-- Bergan Evans		 
Propaganda is persuading people to make up their minds while withholding some of the facts from them.
-- Harold Evans		 
Freedom may come quickly in robes of peace, or after ages of conflict and war; but come it will, and abide it will, so long as the principles by which it was acquired are held sacred.
-- Edward Everett		 
Freedom may come quickly in robes of peace, or after ages of conflict and war; but come it will, and abide it will, so long as the principles by which it was acquired are held sacred.
-- Edward Everett		 
The man who stands upon his own soil, who feels, by the laws of the land in which he lives,--by the laws of civilized nations,--he is the rightful and exclusive owner of the land which he tills, is, by the constitution of our nature, under a wholesome influence, not easily imbibed from any other source.
-- Edward Everett		 
[P]ublic schooling often ends up to be little more than majoritarian domination of minority viewpoints.
-- Robert B. Everhart		 
I gave my life for freedom--This I know; For those who bade me fight had told me so.
-- William Norman Ewer		 
The government deficit is the difference between the amount of money the government spends and the amount it has the nerve to collect.
-- Sam Ewing		 
The information superhighway is a revolution that in years to come will transcend newspapers, radio, and television as an information source. Therefore, I think this is the time to put some restrictions on it.
-- Sen. James Exon		 
If you admit that to silence your opponent by force is to win an intellectual argument, then you admit the right to silence people by force.
-- Hans Eysenck		 
There is a great deal of self-will in the world, but very little genuine independence of character.
-- Frederick W. Faber		 
It would be equally reasonable to say that sheep are born carnivorous, and everywhere nibble grass.
-- Emile Faguet		 
An anarchist is an uncomprimising liberal.
-- Émile Faguet		 
When dealing with a legal matter - always remember that you are your own best advocate. No one will care as much about the case as you do. Use lawyers but remember - you must take primary responsibility for a successful outcome.
-- Grant D. Fairley		 
The existing order is breaking down at a very rapid rate, and the main uncertainty is whether mankind can exert a positive role in shaping a new world order or is doomed to await collapse in a passive posture. We believe a new order will be born no later than early in the next century and that the death throes of the old and the birth pangs of the new will be a testing time for the human species.
-- Richard A. Falk		 
Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn't fit in with the core belief.
-- Frantz Fanon		 
If you suppose that good intentions justify intruding on the lives and properties of your fellow citizens: Do you appreciate being the target of somebody else's good intentions, or haven't you had that particular dubious pleasure yet?
-- Cat Farmer		 
Besides, to lay and collect internal taxes in this extensive country must require a great number of congressional ordinances, immediately operation upon the body of the people; these must continually interfere with the state laws and thereby produce disorder and general dissatisfaction till the one system of laws or the other, operating upon the same subjects, shall be abolished.
-- Federal Farmer		 
The secret of all power is - save your force. If you want high pressure you must choke off waste.
-- Joseph Farrell		 
Putting free speech behind bars simply because it concerns prisoners sets a dangerous precedent. The court's decision makes clear that Arizona may not jail the Internet.
-- David Fathi		 
Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.
-- William Faulkner		 
What's wrong with this world is, it's not finished yet. It is not completed to the point where man can put his final signature to the job and say, "It is finished. We made it and it works.
-- William Faulkner		 
We cannot choose freedom established on a hierarchy of degrees of freedom, on a caste system of equality like military rank. We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.
-- William Faulkner		 
What is a left-wing socialist but a Marxist without a gun?
-- Don Feder		 
The actual process of money creation takes place in commercial banks. As noted earlier, demand liabilities of commercial banks are money.
-- Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago		 
Because of 'fractional' reserve system, banks, as a whole, can expand our money supply several times, by making loans and investments.
-- Federal Reserve Bank of New York		 
Commercial banks create checkbook money whenever they grant a loan, simply by adding new deposit dollars in accounts on their books in exchange for a borrower's IOU.
-- Federal Reserve Bank of New York		 
Without the confidence factor, many believe a paper money system is liable to collapse eventually.
-- Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia		 
The decrease in purchasing power incurred by holders of money due to inflation imparts gains to the issuers of money...
-- Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis		 
'Racism’ has been redefined to mean anyone opposing big government dependency welfare programs.
-- Bill Federer		 
Man is deeply vulnerable when faced with overwhelming evil. Instead of consolidating his energy to fight it, he wastes valuable time and effort puzzling over it, insisting it is not, cannot possibly be, what it seems.
-- Konnilyn G. Feig		 
Banning guns addresses a fundamental right of all Americans to feel safe.
-- Dianne Feinstein		 
I know the sense of helplessness that people feel. I know the urge to arm yourself because that's what I did. I was trained in firearms. I walked to the hospital when my husband was sick. I carried a concealed weapon and I made the determination if somebody was going to try and take me out, I was going to take them with me.
-- Dianne Feinstein		 
Censorship is advertising paid by the government.
-- Federico Fellini		 
To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research.
-- Felson		 
Legislators like pork because it helps them get reelected. They are interested in administrative details because long tenure promotes narrow specialization. The constituent service racket allows lawmakers to ignore big problems by fixing small ones. In becoming ombudsman -- glorified errand boys, -- incumbents build up enough good will for most to survive even a watershed year like 1992. By ending congressional careerism, term limits will encourage attention to larger legislative issues. By changing the understanding of the legislator's role, term limits are probably the most effective single reform that can be imposed on Congress. And imposed it will have to be: While great majorities of the American people support term limits, lawmakers oppose them in even larger proportions. With a career Congress, voters face a dilemma: They do not like paying taxes to Washington and hoping to get them back in the form of pork and entitlements, but as long as the system is rigged, it makes sense to vote for the incumbent to maximize your own take. Congressmen face a similar dilemma: Take the easy road to reelection or face the often difficult choices of balancing local and national interests. Take away the career mindset and both representatives and voters can make choices based on the merits of each case. ... In fact, one of the biggest benefits of non-professional legislators is that they would be unlikely to join with the bureaucrats and special interests in blowing smoke at the voters.
-- Eric Felton		 
Censorship is a dangerous tool that is primarily used to suppress from those who would challenge oppression by the society and that state, and particularly victimizes minorities. [It] can never eliminate evil ideas, and so the best answer to bad speech is more speech.
-- Feminists Against Censorship		 
We are not liberated until we liberate others. So long as we need to control other people, however benign our motives, we are captive to that need. In giving them freedom, we free ourselves.
-- Marilyn Ferguson		 
Ultimately we know deeply that the other side of every fear is a freedom.
-- Marilyn Ferguson		 
While outlining a not-yet-titled book about the emerging social alternatives, I thought again about the peculiar form of this movement; its atypical leadership, the patient intensity of its adherents, their unlikely successes. It suddenly struck me that in their sharing of strategies, their linkage, and their recognition of each other by subtle signals, the participants were not merely cooperating with one another. They were in collusion. It -- this movement -- is a conspiracy! … There are legions of conspirators. They are in corporations, universities, and hospitals, on the faculties of public schools, in factories and doctors’ offices, in state and federal agencies, on city councils, and the White House staff, in state legislatures, in volunteer organizations, in virtually all arenas of policy making in the country.
-- Marilyn Ferguson		 
Complete and accurate surveillance as a means of control is probably a practical impossibility. What is much more likely is a loss of privacy and constant inconvenience as the wrong people gain access to information, as one wastes time convincing the inquisitors that one is in fact innocent, or as one struggles to untangle the errors of the errant machine.
-- Victor Ferkiss		 
Governments have ever been known to hold a high hand over the education of the people. They know, better than anyone else, that their power is based almost entirely on the school. Hence, they monopolize it more and more.
-- Francisco Ferrer		 
We also need to encourage Americans to become more fiscally responsible themselves. We can do this by redesigning our tax system into an expenditure tax with a single flat rate. ... We have to substantially reduce the size and scope of the federal government, fundamentally increase the role of the states in choosing their own practices, and bring decision-making closer to the people, not to unelected administrators. These steps are crucial to getting our nation on a path of fiscal, political and constitutional responsibility.
-- Edwin Feulner		 
The best way to put more money in people's wallets is to leave it there in the first place.
-- Edwin Feulner		 
For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.
-- Richard Feynman		 
There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers.
-- Richard Feynman		 
Our imagination is stretched to the utmost, not as in fiction, to imagine things which are not really there, but just to comprehend those things which are there.
-- Richard Feynman		 
Most people know more about their congressmen via smear campaigns than they know about their own neighbor via conversations, and a lot of people know more about Britney Spears via tabloids than they know about their own congressmen via voting booklets. Does anyone else see the problem here?
-- Brock Fiant		 
Education should aim at destroying free will so that after pupils are thus schooled they will be incapable throughout the rest of their lives of thinking or acting otherwise than as their school masters would have wished ... The social psychologist of the future will have a number of classes of school children on whom they will try different methods of producing an unshakable conviction that snow is black. When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for more than one generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen.
-- Johann Gottlieb Fichte		 
You thus have no rights at all over our freedom of thought, you princes; no jurisdiction over that which is true or false; no right to determine the objects of our inquiry or to set limits to it; no right to hinder us from communicating the results, whether they be true or false, to whomever or however we wish.
-- Johann Gottlieb Fichte		 
Judges are but men, and are swayed like other men by vehement prejudices.  This is corruption in reality, give it whatever other name you please.
-- David Dudley Field, II		 
Freedom of the press and also of speech, assembly, and worship can persist as social forms and legal guarantees, while at the same time their functional realities can be gradually slipping away.
-- Marshall Field		 
If a blending of individualism and of cooperative participation is a prerequisite to a democratic solution of the problems of a society of free men, it must also be noted that an atmosphere of freedom is required if these problems are to be met constructively and as they arise.
-- Marshall Field		 
Here I close my opinion. I could not say less in view of questions of such gravity that go down to the very foundations of the government. If the provisions of the Constitution can be set aside by an Act of Congress, where is the course of usurpation to end? The present assault upon capital is but the beginning. It will be but the stepping-stone to others, larger and more sweeping, till our political contests will become a war of the poor against the rich; a war growing in intensity and bitterness.
-- Justice Stephen J. Field		 
When I'm not thanked at all, I'm thanked enough; I've done my duty, and I've done no more.
-- Henry Fielding		 
There is no zeal blinder than that which is inspired with a love of justice against offenders.
-- Henry Fielding		 
Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people.
-- W. C. Fields		 
Let us remember that revolutions do not always establish freedom. Our own free institutions were not the offspring of our revolution. They existed before.
-- Millard Fillmore		 
Paradoxical as it may seem, men and women who are free to pursue individualism and material wealth turn out to be the most compassionate of all.
-- Financial Times		 
A criminal trial is not a search for truth. It is much too circumscribed for that. Rather, a trial is a formalized contest for the hearts and minds of a panel of twelve. It is a quest for a verdict in which information is selected and screened (we can almost say “processed”) before it is allowed to reach jurors.
-- Phillip Finch		 
...the notion of a neutral, non-partisan mainstream press was, to me at least, worth holding onto. Now it's pretty much dead, at least as the public sees things.
-- Howard Fineman		 
I tell you everything that is really nothing, and nothing of what is everything, do not be fooled by what I am saying. Please listen carefully and try to hear what I am not saying.
-- Charles C. Finn		 
The world is so dreadfully managed, one hardly knows to whom to complain.
-- Ronald Firbank		 


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