Famous Quotations / Quotes
Famous Quotes about Liberty
 
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Our life is what our thoughts make it. A man will find that as he alters his thoughts toward things and other people, things and others will alter towards him.
-- James Allen		 
The burning of an author’s books, imprisonment for opinion’s sake, has always been the tribute that an ignorant age pays to the genius of its time.
-- Joseph Allen		 
Congress is continually appointing fact-finding committees, when what we really need are some fact-facing committees.
-- Roger Allen		 
If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name at a Swiss Bank.
-- Woody Allen		 
I call the mind free which jealously guards its intellectual rights and powers, which calls no man master [and] receives new truth as an angel from Heaven.
-- Woody Allen		 
We stand today at a crossroads: One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other leads to total extinction. Let us hope we have the wisdom to make the right choice.
-- Woody Allen		 
The lion and the calf shall lie down together, but the calf won't get much sleep.
-- Woody Allen		 
The artist, viewing his fellows through his personal vision, has through the ages attempted to portray what he sees and to present his understanding of it. Censorship in his case has perpetrated heavy and sometimes reprehensible blunders.
-- Hollis Alpert		 
History is replete with examples of empires mounting impressive military campaigns on the cusp of their impending economic collapse.
-- Eric Alterman		 
Freedom of thought and freedom of speech in our great institutions are absolutely necessary for the preservation of our country. The moment either is restricted, liberty begins to wither and die...
-- John Peter Altgeld		 
I’ve always felt that a person’s intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting points of view he can entertain simultaneously on the same topic.
-- Lisa Alther		 
The ultimate right to keep and bear arms belongs to “the people,” not the “states.” As the language of the Tenth Amendment shows, these two are of course not identical and when the Constitution means “states” it says so. Thus, ... “the people” at the core of the Second Amendment are the same “people” at the heart of the Preamble and the First Amendment, namely Citizens.... Nowadays, it is quite common to speak loosely of the National Guard as “the state militia,” but ... the “militia” is identical to “the people” in the core sense described above.
-- Akhil Reed Amar		 
It is the duty of the officials to prevent or suppress the threatened disorder with a firm hand instead of timidly yielding to threats…. Surely a speaker ought not to be suppressed because his opponents propose to use violence. It is they who should suffer from their lawlessness, not he.
-- American Bar Association		 
I shall not counsel or maintain any suit or proceeding which shall appear to me to be unjust, nor any defense except such as I believe to be honestly debatable under the law of the land.
-- American Bar Association		 
Liberty is always unfinished business.
-- American Civil Liberties Union		 
There are many Americans who fear for their lives. They know that at some point, they will have to protect themselves, their own families, and their own property. Should these people be disarmed? No, we don’t need to disarm our loyal citizens, our friends, and our neighbors.
-- American Federation of Police		 
The International government of the United Nations, stripped of its legal trimming, then, is really the International Government of the United States and the Soviet Union acting in unison.
-- American Jewish Committee’s Magazine		 
Daniel Webster, James Otis, and Sir Edward Coke all pointed out that the mere fact of enactment does not and cannot raise mere statutes to the standing of law. Not everything can be considered the Law of the Land.
-- American Jurisprudence (Second)		 
No one is bound to obey an unconstitutional law, and no courts are bound to enforce it.
-- American Jurisprudence, 2nd Edition		 
We believe that free communication is essential to the preservation of a free society and a creative culture.
-- American Library Association		 
Intellectual freedom is the right of every individual to both seek and receive information from all points of view without restriction. It provides for free access of all expressions of ideas through which any and all sides of a question, cause or movement may be explored.
-- American Library Association		 
The freedom to read is essential to our democracy. It is continuously under attack… These actions apparently arise from a view that our national tradition of free expression is no longer valid; that censorship and suppression are needed to avoid the subversion of politics and the corruption of morals.
-- American Library Association		 
Why is Intellectual Freedom Important? Intellectual freedom is the basis of our democratic system. We expect our people to be self-governors. But to do so responsibly, our citizenry must be well informed. Libraries provide the ideas and information, in a variety of formats, to allow people to inform themselves.
-- American Library Association		 
We trust Americans to recognize propaganda and misinformation, and to make their own decisions about what they read and believe.
-- American Library Association		 
The invisible Money Power is working to control and enslave mankind. It financed Communism, Fascism, Marxism, Zionism and Socialism. All of these are directed to making the United States a member of World Government.
-- American Mercury Magazine		 
Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich, by promising to protect each from the other.
-- Oscar Ameringer		 
We are, heart and soul, friends to the freedom of the press. It is however, the prostituted companion of liberty, and somehow or other, we know not how, its efficient auxiliary. It follows the substance like its shade; but while a man walks erect, he may observe that his shadow is almost always in the dirt. It corrupts, it deceives, it inflames. It strips virtue of her honors, and lends to faction its wildfire and its poisoned arms, and in the end is its own enemy and the usurper's ally, It would be easy to enlarge on its evils. They are in England, they are here, they are everywhere. It is a precious pest, and a necessary mischief, and there would be no liberty without it.
-- Fisher Ames		 
Liberty has never lasted long in a democracy, nor has it ever ended in anything better than despotism.
-- Fisher Ames		 
Mr. Madison has introduced his long expected amendments... The rights of conscience, of bearing arms, of changing the government, are declared to be inherent in the people.
-- Fisher Ames		 
I am commonly opposed to those who modestly assume the rank of champions of liberty, and make a very patriotic noise about the people. It is the stale artifice which has duped the world a thousand times, and yet, though detected, it is still successful. I love liberty as well as anybody. I am proud of it, as the true title of our people to distinction above others; but ... I would guard it by making the laws strong enough to protect it.
-- Fisher Ames		 
The happiness of a people, and the good order and preservation of civil government, essentially depend on piety, religion, and morality.
-- Fisher Ames		 
We are not to consider ourselves, while here, as at church or school, to listen to the harangues of speculative piety; we are here to talk of the political interests committed to our charge.
-- Fisher Ames		 
[O]ur sages in the great [constitutional] convention... intended our government should be a republic which differs more widely from a democracy than a democracy from a despotism. The rigours of a despotism often... oppress only a few, but it is the very essence and nature of a democracy, for a faction claiming to oppress a minority, and that minority the chief owners of the property and truest lovers of their country.
-- Fisher Ames		 
Liberty is not to be enjoyed, indeed it cannot exist, without the habits of just subordination; it consists, not so much in removing all restraint from the orderly, as in imposing it on the violent.
-- Fisher Ames		 
The known propensity of a democracy is to licentiousness which the ambitious call, and ignorant believe to be liberty.
-- Fisher Ames		 
The test of every religious, political, or educational system is the man that it forms.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel		 
Liberty, equality -- bad principles! The only true principle for humanity is justice; and justice to the feeble is protection and kindness.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel		 
Philosophy means the complete liberty of the mind, and therefore independence of all social, political or religious prejudice... It loves one thing only... truth.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel		 
Conquering any difficulty always gives one a secret joy, for it means to push back a boundary-line and adding to one's liberty.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel		 
The test of every religious, political, or educational system, is the man which it forms. If a system injures the intelligence it is bad. If it injures the character it is vicious. If it injures the conscience it is criminal.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel		 
The USA was founded in the name of democracy, equality and individual freedom, but is failing to deliver the fundamental promise of protecting rights for all.
-- Amnesty International		 
If the legislature clearly misinterprets a constitutional provision, the frequent repetition of the wrong will not create a right.
-- Amos v. Mosley		 
If the legislature clearly misinterprets a Constitutional provision, the frequent repetition of the wrong will not create a right.
-- Amos v. Mosley		 
Early in 1979, I and several other young nurses from my ward were summoned to a mass meeting. All sixty-odd of us were young married women who had not yet been sterilized. Secretary Wang arrived and took up a position in front of the assembly. His round little face, normally the picture of conviviality, was set in an expression of the utmost gravity. 'Today we have a matter of extreme urgency,' he began, 'a toudeng dashi, to discuss. It concerns the population of the motherland. The People's Republic of China has within its borders nearly a billion people, or one-fifth of the world's population. This is a big burden for the people's government. ... Having children is not a question that we can afford to let each family, each household, decide for itself. ... It is a question that should be decided at the national level. China is a socialist country. This means that the interests of the individual must be subordinated to the interests of the state. Where there is conflict between the interests of the state in reducing population and the interests of the individual in having children, it must be resolved in favor of the state.'
-- Chi An		 
These decrees of yours are no different from spiders' webs. They'll restrain anyone weak and insignificant who gets caught in them, but they'll be torn to shreds by people with power and wealth.
-- Anacharsis		 
The forum [is] an established place for men to cheat one another, and behave covetously.
-- Anacharsis		 

-- xRecording Police and Public Officials		 
Indeed, the U.N. is the main Soviet espionage center in this country.
-- Jack Anderson		 
I'm not apologising, I'm saying I'm sorry, which is quite different.
-- Jessica Anderson		 
Paradise is just like where you are right now, only much better.
-- Laurie Anderson		 
When a government takes over a people’s economic life it becomes absolute, and when it has become absolute it destroys the arts, the minds, the liberties and the meaning of the people it governs.
-- Maxwell Anderson		 
The Original Sin which brought us to the brink of bankruptcy and dictatorship was the Federal Income Tax Amendment and its illegitimate child, Federal Aid.
-- Tom Anderson		 
Our lives improve only when we take chances -- and the first and most difficult risk we can take is to be honest with ourselves.
-- Walter Truett Anderson		 
The intellectually stifling results of censorship -- while deplorable in any setting -- would be all the more abominable if allowed to exist within the college environment.
-- William M. Anderson, Jr.		 
I don't like the income tax. Every time we talk about these taxes we get around to the idea of 'from each according to his capacity and to each according to his needs'. That's socialism. It's written into the Communist Manifesto. Maybe we ought to see that every person who gets a tax return receives a copy of the Communist Manifesto with it so he can see what's happening to him.
-- T. Coleman Andrews		 
The modern banking system manufactures “money” out of nothing; and the process is, perhaps, the most, astounding piece of “sleight of hand” that was ever invented. In fact, it was not invented. It merely “grew”. ... Banks in fact are able to create (and cancel) modern “deposit money”, just as much as they were originally able to create, or call in, their own original forms of private notes. They can, in fact, inflate and deflate, i.e., mint, and un-mint the modern “ledger-entry” currency.
-- Major L. L. B. Angas		 
The one who throws the stone forgets; the one who is hit remembers forever.
-- Angolan Proverb		 
The most difficult struggle of all is the one within ourselves. Let us not get accustomed and adjusted to these conditions. The one who adjusts ceases to discriminate between good and evil. He becomes a slave in body and soul. Whatever may happen to you, remember always: Don’t adjust! Revolt against the reality!
-- Mordechai Anielewicz		 
All and everybody, this is my claim, fifty feet on the gulch, cordin to Clear Creek District Law, backed up by shotgun amendments.
-- Anonymous Gold Miner		 
Reefer makes darkies think they're as good as white men.
-- Harry J. Anslinger		 
There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing, result from marijuana usage. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others.
-- Harry J. Anslinger		 
You smoke a joint and you're likely to kill your brother.
-- Harry J. Anslinger		 
...the primary reason to outlaw marijuana is its effect on the degenerate races.
-- Harry J. Anslinger		 
Most marijuana smokers are Negroes, Hispanics, jazz musicians, and entertainers. Their satanic music is driven by marijuana, and marijuana smoking by white women makes them want to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers, and others. It is a drug that causes insanity, criminality, and death -- the most violence-causing drug in the history of mankind.
-- Harry J. Anslinger		 
Marihuana leads to pacifism and communist brainwashing.
-- Harry J. Anslinger		 
Marijuana is an addictive drug which produces in its users insanity, criminality, and death.
-- Harry J. Anslinger		 
Marijuana is the most violence-causing drug in the history of mankind.
-- Harry J. Anslinger		 
I declare to you that woman must not depend upon the protection of man, but must be taught to protect herself, and there I take my stand.
-- Susan B. Anthony		 
Men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing less.
-- Susan B. Anthony		 
It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union.
-- Susan B. Anthony		 
Change your thoughts and you change your world.
-- Marcus Aurelius Antoninus		 
Men exist for the sake of one another. Teach them then or bear with them.
-- Marcus Aurelius Antoninus		 
The best way of avenging thyself is not to become like the wrong-doer.
-- Marcus Aurelius Antoninus		 
A man should be upright, not be kept upright.
-- Marcus Aurelius Antoninus		 
Never esteem anything as of advantage to you that will make you break your word or lose your self-respect.
-- Marcus Aurelius Antoninus		 
Three things are necessary for the salvation of man: to know what he ought to believe; to know what he ought to desire; and to know what he ought to do.
-- Saint Thomas Aquinas		 
Because of the diverse conditions of humans, it happens that some acts are virtuous to some people, as appropriate and suitable to them, while the same acts are immoral for others, as inappropriate to them.
-- Saint Thomas Aquinas		 
The highest manifestation of life consists in this: that a being governs its own actions. A thing which is always subject to the direction of another is somewhat of a dead thing.
-- Saint Thomas Aquinas		 
In order for a war to be just, three things are necessary. First, the authority of the sovereign.... Secondly, a just cause.... Thirdly ... a rightful intention.
-- Saint Thomas Aquinas		 
If the highest aim of a captain were to preserve his ship he would keep it in port forever.
-- Thomas Aquinas		 
Choose your friends carefully. Your enemies will choose you.
-- Yassir Arafat		 
We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams, we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization.
-- Gaius Petronius Arbiter (False)		 
The first step to truly living a good and fearless life, is accepting responsibility for your actions. Accepting what part you had in any situation. Difficult, to say the least, but liberating.
-- Jann Arden		 
In politics, love is a stranger, and when it intrudes upon it nothing is being achieved except hypocrisy. All the characteristics you stress in the Negro people: their beauty, their capacity for joy, their warmth, and their humanity, are well-known characteristics of all oppressed people. They grow out of suffering and they are the proudest possession of all pariahs. Unfortunately, they have never survived the hour of liberation by even five minutes. Hatred and love belong together, and they are both destructive; you can afford them only in private and, as a people, only so long as you are not free.
-- Hannah Arendt		 
No cause is left but the most ancient of all, the one, in fact, that from the beginning of our history has determined the very existence of politics, the cause of freedom versus tyranny.
-- Hannah Arendt		 
The law of progress holds that everything now must be better than what was there before. Don’t you see if you want something better, and better, and better, you lose the good. The good is no longer even being measured.
-- Hannah Arendt		 
The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.
-- Hannah Arendt		 
The moment we no longer have a free press, anything can happen. What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed; how can you have an opinion if you are not informed? If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. This is because lies, by their very nature, have to be changed, and a lying government has constantly to rewrite its own history. On the receiving end you get not only one lie -- a lie which you could go on for the rest of your days -- but you get a great number of lies, depending on how the political wind blows. And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please.
-- Hannah Arendt		 
What makes it so plausible to assume that hypocrisy is the vice of vices is that integrity can indeed exist under the cover of all other vices except this one. Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core.
-- Hannah Arendt		 
The main characteristic of any event is that it has not been foreseen. We don’t know the future but everybody acts into the future. Nobody knows what he is doing because the future is being done, action is being done by a “we” and not an “I.” Only if I were the only one acting could I foretell the consequences of what I’m doing. What actually happens is entirely contingent, and contingency is indeed one of the biggest factors in all history. Nobody knows what is going to happen because so much depends on an enormous number of variables, on simple hazard. On the other hand if you look at history retrospectively, then, even though it was contingent, you can tell a story that makes sense…. Jewish history, for example, in fact had its ups and downs, its, enmities and its friendships, as every history of all people has. The notion that there is one unilinear history is of course false. But if you look at it after the experience of Auschwitz it looks as though all of history -- or at least history since the Middle Ages -- had no other aim than Auschwitz…. This, is the real problem of every philosophy of history how is it possible that in retrospect it always looks as though it couldn’t have happened otherwise?
-- Hannah Arendt		 
Totalitarianism begins in contempt for what you have. The second step is the notion: “Things must change—no matter how, Anything is better than what we have.” Totalitarian rulers organize this kind of mass sentiment, and by organizing it articulate it, and by articulating it make the people somehow love it. They were told before, thou shalt not kill; and they didn’t kill. Now they are told, thou shalt kill; and although they think it’s very difficult to kill, they do it because it’s now part of the code of behavior. They learn whom to kill and how to kill and how to do it together. This is the much talked about Gleichschaltung—the coordination process. You are coordinated not with the powers that be, but with your neighbor—coordinated with the majority. But instead of communicating with the other you are now glued to him. And you feel of course marvelous. Totalitarianism appeals to the very dangerous emotional needs of people who live in complete isolation and in fear of one another.
-- Hannah Arendt		 
Thus far of the leadership of the National Council of Churches of Christ in America, we have found over 100 persons in leadership capacity with either communist-front records or records of service to communist causes. The aggregate affiliations of the leadership, instead of being in the hundreds as first indicated, is now, according to the latest count, into the thousands, and we have yet to complete our check, which would certainly suggest, on the basis of authoritative sources of this committee, that the statement that there is infiltration of fellow travelers in churches and educational institutions is a complete understatement.
-- Richard Arens		 
I am, indeed, a king, because I know how to rule myself.
-- Pietro Aretino		 
You have all the characteristics of a popular politician: a horrible voice, bad breeding, and a vulgar manner.
-- Aristophanes		 
Under every stone lurks a politician.
-- Aristophanes		 
The wise learn many things from their enemies.
-- Aristophanes		 
The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.
-- Aristotle		 
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.
-- Aristotle		 
If liberty and equality, as is thought by some are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost.
-- Aristotle		 
He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.
-- Aristotle		 


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