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Famous Quotes about Liberty
 
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The world is so dreadfully managed, one hardly knows to whom to complain.
-- Ronald Firbank		 
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or the press, or the right of the people to peaceably assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
-- First Amendment in the Bill of Rights		 
A man may be born a jackass; but it is his business if he makes himself a double one.
-- Martin H. Fischer		 
The public is hedged about by so many goddam bookkeepers that no time is left in which to produce. More time is spent in carrying out garbage than in carrying in food.
-- Martin H. Fischer		 
A machine has value only as it produces more than it consumes — so check your value to the community.
-- Martin H. Fischer		 
Social reform aims to improve the condition of the poor by worsening the condition of the rich.
-- Martin H. Fischer		 
Knowledge is a process of piling up facts; wisdom lies in their simplification.
-- Martin H. Fischer		 
A good teacher must know the rules; a good pupil, the exceptions.
-- Martin H. Fischer		 
Despite the apparent absoluteness of the First Amendment, there are any number of ways of getting around it, ways that are known to any student of law. In general, the strategy is to manipulate the distinction between speech and action which is at bottom a distinction between inconsequential and consequential behavior.
-- Stanley Fish		 
In a civilized society, all crimes are likely to be sins, but most sins are not and ought not to be treated as crimes.
-- Geoffrey Fisher		 
I believe [that William Graham Sumner] was one of the greatest professors we ever had at Yale, but I have drawn far away from his point of view, that of the old laissez faire doctrine. I remember he said in his classroom: 'Gentlemen, the time is coming when there will be two great classes, Socialists, and Anarchists. The Anarchists want the government to be nothing, and the Socialists want government to be everything. There can be no greater contrast. Well, the time will come when there will be only these two great parties, the Anarchists representing the laissez faire doctrine and the Socialists representing the extreme view on the other side, and when that time comes I am an Anarchist.' That amused his class very much, for he was as far from a revolutionary as you could expect. But I would like to say that if that time comes when there are two great parties, Anarchists and Socialists, then I am a Socialist.
-- Irving Fisher		 
Thus, our national circulating medium is now at the mercy of loan transactions of banks, which lend, not money, but promises to supply money they do not possess.
-- Irving Fisher		 
The essence of war is violence. Moderation in war is imbecility.
-- John A. Fisher		 
The persecuting spirit has its origin morally in the disposition of man to domineer over his fellow creatures; intellectually, in the assumption that one's own opinions are infallibly correct.
-- John Fiske		 
The idea of neutrality in the speech context not only requires that the state refrain from choosing among viewpoints, but also that it not structure public debate in such a way as to favor one viewpoint over another. The state must act as a high-minded parliamentarian, making certain that all viewpoints are fully and fairly heard.
-- Owen Fiss		 
Either you think – or else others have to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald		 
The mission of the Gestapo expanded steadily as, from 1933 onward, “political criminality” was given a much broader definition than ever before and most forms of dissent and criticism were gradually criminalized. The result was that more “laws” or lawlike measures were put on the books than ever.
-- Shelia Fitzpatrick		 
Socialism is the idea that violent force is an appropriate response to peaceful, voluntary exchange.
-- Frank J. Fleming		 
Let me write the songs of a nation - I don't care who writes its laws.
-- Andrew Fletcher		 
And I cannot see, why arms should be denied to any man who is not a slave, since they are the only true badges of liberty.
-- Andrew Fletcher		 
Censorship in any form, represents a lack of trust in the judgment of the individual. The passage of time provides the best perspective for sorting the wheat from the chaff.
-- Bruce E. Fleury		 
We must not overlook the role that extremists play. They are the gadflies that keep society from being too complacent.
-- Abraham Flexner		 
There are some weapons that are just so dangerous that society has a right and the obligation even to take those weapons out of circulation.
-- Jim Florio		 
Fate is an open road, and all you can do is put your foot on the gas and Drive, Baby Drive.
-- Padraig Flynn		 
If the human body's obscene, complain to the manufacturer, not me.
-- Larry Flynt		 
The man who has won millions at the cost of his conscience is a failure.
-- B. C. Forbes		 
Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.
-- Malcolm S. Forbes		 
The Declaration of Independence, the words that launched our nation -- 1,300 words. The Bible, the word of God -- 773,000 words. The Tax Code, the words of politicians -- 7,000,000 words -- and growing!
-- Steve Forbes		 
It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.
-- Henry Ford		 
To do for the world more than the world does for you -- that is success.
-- Henry Ford		 
We are willing enough to praise freedom when she is safely tucked away in the past and cannot be a nuisance. In the present, amidst dangers whose outcome we cannot foresee, we get nervous about her, and admit censorship.
-- E. M. Forster		 
Two cheers for democracy; one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism.
-- E. M. Forster		 
Procedure is the bone structure of a democratic society. Our scheme of law affords great latitude for dissent and opposition. It compels wide tolerance not only for their expression but also for the organization of people and forces to bring about the acceptance of the dissenter’s claim….We have alternatives to violence.
-- Abe Fortas		 
Government…may not be hostile to any religion or to the advocacy of no-religion; and it may not aid, foster, or promote one religion or religious theory against another… The First Amendment mandates governmental neutrality…
-- Abe Fortas		 
Dissent and dissenters have no monopoly on freedom. They must tolerate opposition. They must accept dissent from their dissent. And they must give it the respect and the latitude which they claim for themselves.
-- Abe Fortas		 
I should, indeed, prefer twenty men to escape death through mercy, than one innocent to be condemned unjustly.
-- Sir John Fortescue		 
Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have.
-- Harry Emerson Fosdick		 
Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting.
-- Alan Dean Foster		 
Bankers have no right to establish a customary law among themselves, at the expence of other men.
-- Sir Michael Foster		 
No human government has a right to enquire into private opinions, to presume that it knows them, or to act on that presumption. Men are the best judges of the consequences of their own opinions, and how far they are likely to influence their actions; and it is most unnatural and tyrannical to say, “as you think, so must you act. I will collect the evidence of your future conduct from what I know to be your opinions.”
-- Charles James Fox		 
Opinions become dangerous to a state only when persecution makes it necessary for the people to communicate their ideas under the bond of secrecy.
-- Charles James Fox		 
Every attempt to gag the free expression of thought is an unsocial act against society. That is why judges and juries who try to enforce such laws make themselves ridiculous.
-- Jay Fox		 
“For your own good” is a persuasive argument that will eventually make a man agree to his own destruction.
-- Janet Frame		 
If a million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.
-- Anatole France		 
The Law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich, as well as the poor, to sleep under the bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.
-- Anatole France		 
The world wishes to be deceived.
-- Sebastian Franck		 
How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.
-- Anne Frank		 
To vest a few fallible men – prosecutors, judges, jurors – with vast powers of literary or artistic censorship, to convert them into what J. S. Mill has called the “Moral Police,” it is to make them despotic arbiters of literary products.
-- Jerome D. Frank		 
To vest a few fallible men -- prosecutors, judges, jurors -- with vast powers of literary or artistic censorship, to convert them into what J.S. Mill called the "moral police" is to make them despotic arbiters of literary products... If one day they ban mediocre books as obscene, another day they may do otherwise to a work of a genius. Originality, not too plentiful, should be cherished, not stifled. An author's imagination may be cramped if he must write with an eye on prosecutors or juries…
-- Jerome D. Frank		 
Increasingly constructive doubt is the sign of advancing civilization.
-- Jerome D. Frank		 
Choice has always been a privilege of those who could afford to pay for it.
-- Ellen Frankfort		 
The history of liberty has largely been the history of the observance of procedural safeguards.
-- Felix Frankfurter		 
The requirement of “due process” is not a fairweather or timid assurance. It must be respected in periods of calm and in times of trouble; it protects aliens as well as citizens.
-- Felix Frankfurter		 
Ours is an accusatorial and not an inquisitorial system – a system in which the state must establish guilt by evidence independently and freely secured and may not by coercion prove its charge against an accused out of his own mouth.
-- Felix Frankfurter		 
The mark of a truly civilized man is confidence in the strength and security derived from the inquiring mind.
-- Felix Frankfurter		 
It is easy to make light of insistence on scrupulous regard for the safeguards of civil liberties when invoked on behalf of the unworthy. History bears testimony that by such disregard are the rights of liberty extinguished, heedlessly at first, then stealthily, and brazenly in the end.
-- Felix Frankfurter		 
Freedom of expression is the well-spring of our civilization... The history of civilization is in considerable measure the displacement of error which once held sway as official truth by beliefs which in turn have yielded to other truths. Therefore the liberty of man to search for truth ought not to be fettered, no matter what orthodoxies he may challenge.
-- Felix Frankfurter		 
Liberty of thought soon shrivels without freedom of expression. Nor can truth be pursued in an atmosphere hostile to the endeavor or under dangers which are hazarded only by heroes.
-- Felix Frankfurter		 
A court which yields to the popular will thereby licenses itself to practice despotism, for there can be no assurance that it will not on another occasion indulge its own will.
-- Felix Frankfurter		 
The real rulers in Washington are invisible and exercise power from behind the scenes
-- Justice Felix Frankfurter		 
Being tolerant does not mean that I share another one’s belief. But it does mean that I acknowledge another one’s right to believe, and obey, his own conscience.
-- Viktor Frankl		 
Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms – to chose one’s attitudes in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.
-- Viktor Frankl		 
We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.
-- Viktor Frankl		 
The last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.
-- Viktor Frankl		 
A statute intended to prevent unwarranted intrusions into a citizen’s privacy cannot be used as a shield for public officials who cannot assert a comparable right of privacy in their public duties. Such action impedes the free flow of information concerning public officials and violates the First Amendment right to gather such information. ... The [Illinois Eavesdropping Statute] includes conduct that is unrelated to the statute’s purpose and is not rationally related to the evil the legislation sought to prohibit. For example, a defendant recording his case in a courtroom has nothing to do with an intrusion into a citizen’s privacy but with distraction. ... The court finds the Illinois Eavesdropping Statute is unconstitutional on its face and as applied to the defendant as the statute is violative of substantive due process.
-- Judge David Frankland		 
In those wretched countries where a man cannot call his tongue his own, he can scarce call anything his own. Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.
-- Benjamin Franklin		 
The sun of liberty is set; you must light up the candle of industry and economy.
-- Benjamin Franklin		 
Moderation in all things -- including moderation.
-- Benjamin Franklin		 
That is simple. In the Colonies we issue our own money. It is called Colonial Scrip. We issue it in proper proportion to the demands of trade and industry to make the products pass easily from the producers to the consumers. In this manner, creating for ourselves our own paper money, we control its purchasing power, and we have no interest to pay no one.
-- Benjamin Franklin		 
But what madness must it be to run in debt for these superfluities! We are offered, by the terms of this vendue, six months' credit; and that perhaps has induced some of us to attend it, because we cannot spare the ready money, and hope now to be fine without it. But, ah, think what you do when you run in debt; you give to another power over your liberty. If you cannot pay at the time, you will be ashamed to see your creditor; you will be in fear when you speak to him, you will make poor pitiful sneaking excuses, and by degrees come to lose you veracity, and sink into base downright lying; for, as Poor Richard says, the second vice is lying, the first is running in debt. And again to the same purpose, lying rides upon debt's back.
-- Benjamin Franklin		 
When you run in debt; you give to another power over your liberty.
-- Benjamin Franklin		 
... as all history informs us, there has been in every State & Kingdom a constant kind of warfare between the governing & governed: the one striving to obtain more for its support, and the other to pay less. And this has alone occasioned great convulsions, actual civil wars, ending either in dethroning of the Princes, or enslaving of the people. Generally indeed the ruling power carries its point, the revenues of princes constantly increasing, and we see that they are never satisfied, but always in want of more. The more the people are discontented with the oppression of taxes; the greater need the prince has of money to distribute among his partisans and pay the troops that are to suppress all resistance, and enable him to plunder at pleasure. There is scarce a king in a hundred who would not, if he could, follow the example of Pharaoh, get first all the peoples money, then all their lands, and then make them and their children servants for ever ...
-- Benjamin Franklin		 
It is a common observation here that our cause is the cause of all mankind, and that we are fighting for their liberty in defending our own.
-- Benjamin Franklin		 
History affords us many instances of the ruin of states, by the prosecution of measures ill suited to the temper and genius of their people. The ordaining of laws in favor of one part of the nation, to the prejudice and oppression of another, is certainly the most erroneous and mistaken policy. An equal dispensation of protection, rights, privileges, and advantages, is what every part is entitled to, and ought to enjoy… These measures never fail to create great and violent jealousies and animosities between the people favored and the people oppressed; whence a total separation of affections, interests, political obligations, and all manner of connections, by which the whole state is weakened.
-- Benjamin Franklin		 
Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor Liberty to purchase power.
-- Benjamin Franklin		 


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