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Famous Quotes about Liberty
 
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Liberty is no negation. It is a substantive, tangible reality.
-- James A. Garfield		 
Be fit for more than the thing you are now doing. Let every one know that you have a reserve in yourself; that you have more power than you are now using. If you are not too large for the place you occupy, you are too small for it.
-- James A. Garfield		 
I love agitation and investigation and glory in defending unpopular truth against popular error.
-- James A. Garfield		 
The chief duty of the National Government in connection with the currency of the country is to coin money and declare its value. Grave doubts have been entertained whether Congress is authorized by the Constitution to make any form of paper money legal tender. The present issue of United States notes has been sustained by the necessities of war; but such paper should depend for its value and currency upon its convenience in use and its prompt redemption in coin at the will of the holder, and not upon its compulsory circulation. These notes are not money, but promises to pay money. If the holders demand it, the promise should be kept.
-- James A. Garfield		 
The refunding of the national debt at a lower rate of interest should be accomplished without compelling the withdrawal of the national-bank notes, and thus disturbing the business of the country.
-- James A. Garfield		 
Next in importance to freedom and justice is popular education, without which neither freedom nor justice can be permanently maintained.
-- James A. Garfield		 
Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce.
-- James A. Garfield		 
By the experience of commercial nations in all ages it has been found that gold and silver afford the only safe foundation for a monetary system. Confusion has recently been created by variations in the relative value of the two metals, but I confidently believe that arrangements can be made between the leading commercial nations which will secure the general use of both metals. Congress should provide that the compulsory coinage of silver now required by law may not disturb our monetary system by driving either metal out of circulation. If possible, such an adjustment should be made that the purchasing power of every coined dollar will be exactly equal to its debt-paying power in all the markets of the world.
-- James A. Garfield		 
If the aborigine drafted an IQ test, all of Western civilization would presumably flunk it.
-- Stanley Garn		 
[W]hat suffers in the atmosphere of immediacy is analysis. What suffers in this search for speed is depth. The media in the wealthy world are becoming increasingly simplistic, superficial, and celebrity-focused.
-- Laurie Garrett		 
Are right and wrong convertible terms, dependant upon popular opinion?
-- William Lloyd Garrison		 
Enslave the liberty of but one human being and the liberties of the world are put in peril.
-- William Lloyd Garrison		 
Are right and wrong convertible terms, dependant upon popular opinion?
-- William Lloyd Garrison		 
No man shall rule over me with my consent. I will rule over no man.
-- William Lloyd Garrison		 
Little boldness is needed to assail the opinions and practices of notoriously wicked men; but to rebuke great and good men for their conduct, and to impeach their discernment, is the highest effort of moral courage.
-- William Lloyd Garrison		 
There is no reason for anyone in this country, anyone except a police officer or a military person, to buy, to own, to have, to use a handgun. I used to think handguns could be controlled by laws about registration, by laws requiring waiting periods for purchasers, by laws making sellers check out the past of buyers. I now think the only way to control handgun use in this country is to prohibit the guns. And the only way to do that is to change the Constitution.
-- Michael Gartner		 
Consider also the willy-nilly growth of the Social Security number. When the numbers were created in 1935, they were supposed to be used for one thing only, to record individual workers’ payments into the Social Security system. Eight years later, Franklin Roosevelt decided all new federal record-keeping would be based on the numbers. In 1962, the IRS adopted them as taxpayer identification numbers. And after Congress permitted states to use the numbers for welfare payments and driver’s licenses in 1976, they mushroomed: food stamps, school lunches, federal loans, even blood donations required Social Security numbers. These days it’s almost impossible to open a bank account or hook up your telephone without one.
-- Glenn Garvin		 
Like an ability or a muscle, hearing your inner wisdom is strengthened by doing it.
-- Robbie Gass		 
We're in a war. People who blast some pot on a casual basis are guilty of treason.
-- Daryl Gates		 
The shocking possibility that dumb people don’t exist in sufficient numbers to warrant the millions of careers devoted to tending them will seem incredible to you. Yet that is my central proposition: the mass dumbness which justifies official schooling first had to be dreamed of; it isn’t real.
-- John Taylor Gatto		 
School is the first impression children get of organized society. Like most first impressions it is the lasting one. Life is dull and stupid, only Coke provides relief. And other products, too, of course.
-- John Taylor Gatto		 
Government schooling is the most radical adventure in history. It kills the family by monopolizing the best times of childhood and by teaching disrespect for home and parents....
-- John Taylor Gatto		 
Growth and mastery come only to those who vigorously self-direct. Initiating, creating, doing, reflecting, freely associating, enjoying privacy—these are precisely what the structures of schooling are set up to prevent, on one pretext or another.
-- John Taylor Gatto		 
Who besides a degraded rabble would voluntarily present itself to be graded and classified like meat? No wonder school is compulsory.
-- John Taylor Gatto		 
If others would but reflect on mathematical truths as deeply and as continuously as I have, they would make my discoveries.
-- Carl Friedrich Gauss		 
Describing an action or an event as the "consequence" of speech presupposes that there is some causal connection between them. A central issue in any debate about the limits of free speech is the nature and the imminence of the causal connection between speech and its alleged consequences…. In actual social situations it is impossible to isolate factors and determine their contribution to effects. Such control is extremely complicated even in a scientific laboratory.
-- Ruth Gavison		 
My dear sir, let me tell you that every citizen has full legal right to arrest anyone whom he sees committing any criminal offense, big or little. The law of England and of this country has been very careful to confer no more right in that respect upon policemen and constables than it confers on every citizen. You have the same right to make an arrest for an offense committed in your presence that any policeman has. But we cannot all be bothering with making arrests, so we employ a certain number of our fellow citizens for that purpose and put blue clothes and brass buttons on them. But their clothes and their buttons add nothing whatever to their right to make arrests without warrant. They still have only the same right which the law gives to all of us. Be so good as to look at section 183 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, and be convinced of your powers, and then sail right in as hard and as fast as you want to, being careful, however, only to arrest guilty persons, for otherwise your victims will turn around and sue you for damages for false arrest. Policemen have to face the same risk.
-- William Jay Gaynor		 
The right of the people to keep and bear arms has been recognized by the General Government; but the best security of that right after all is, the military spirit, that taste for martial exercises, which has always distinguished the free citizens of these States... Such men form the best barrier to the liberties of America.
-- Gazette of the United States		 
Since the federal constitution has removed all danger of our having a paper tender, our trade is advanced fifty percent. Our monied people can trust their cash abroad, and have brought their coin into circulation.
-- The Pennsylvania Gazette		 
The most efficacious method of dealing with deviancy is to ignore, to the furthest point of our tolerance, those items which we find offensive.
-- Ilbert Geis		 
Power may be at the end of a gun, but sometimes it's also at the end of the shadow or the image of a gun.
-- Jean Genet		 
Tax limits, or fiscal constraints generally, can be expected to curb government's appetites to the extent that the utility function of governmental decision makers contains arguments for privately enjoyable 'creature comforts,' for final end items of consumption. Such constraints become much less effective, and may well be evaded, if the motive force behind governmental action is 'do-goodism.' The licentious sinners we can control; the saintly ascetics may destroy us.
-- Geoffrey Brennan and James M. Buchanan		 
Knavery seems to be so much the striking feature of its [America's] inhabitants that it may not in the end be an evil that they will become aliens to the kingdom.
-- King George III		 
O freedom, what liberties are taken in thy name!
-- Daniel George		 
Liberty is not merely a privilege to be conferred; it is a habit to be acquired.
-- David Lloyd George		 
Who ordained that a few should have the land of Britain as a perquisite; who made ten thousand people owners of the soil and the rest of us trespassers in the land of our birth?
-- David Lloyd George		 
Capital is a result of labor, and is used by labor to assist it in further production. Labor is the active and initial force, and labor is therefore the employer of capital.
-- Henry George		 
Private ownership of land is the nether mill-stone. Material progress is the upper mill-stone. Between them, with an increasing pressure, the working classes are being ground.
-- Henry George		 
It is not the business of government to make men virtuous or religious, or to preserve the fool from the consequences of his own folly. Government should be repressive no further than is necessary to secure liberty by protecting the equal rights of each from aggression on the part of others, and the moment governmental prohibitions extend beyond this line they are in danger of defeating the very ends they are intended to serve.
-- Henry George		 
If I have worked harder and built myself a good house while you have been content to live in a hovel, the tax gatherer now comes annually to make me pay a penalty for my energy and industry by taxing me more than you. If I have saved while you wasted, I am [taxed] while you are exempt. If a man built a ship, we make him pay for his temerity as though he had done injury to the state; if a railroad be opened, down comes the tax collector upon it as though were a public nuisance.... We punish with a tax the man who covers barren fields with ripening grain; we fine him who puts up machinery and him who drains a swamp. To abolish these taxes would be to lift the whole enormous weight of taxation from productive industry.... The state would say to the producer, “Be as industrious, as thrifty, as enterprising as you choose. You shall have your full reward!”
-- Henry George		 
So long as all the increased wealth which modern progress brings goes but to build up great fortunes, to increase luxury and make sharper the contrast between the House of Have and the House of Want, progress is not real and cannot be permanent.
-- Henry George		 
He who sees the truth, let him proclaim it, without asking who is for it or who is against it.
-- Henry George		 
He who sees the truth, let him proclaim it, without asking who is for it or who is against it.
-- Henry George		 
Wars teach us not to love our enemies, but to hate our allies.
-- W. L. George		 
[T]he jury shall be the judges of the law and the facts in the trial of all criminal cases and shall give a general verdict of “guilty,” or “not guilty.”
-- Georgia Code		 
[That] the Jury may determine the law and the fact of the case, has been supported by every English judge, except Chief Justice Jeffries .... And to their credit be it spoken that the Juries have always been right on fundamental questions of liberty and popular right.
-- Georgia Supreme Court		 
[T]he Jury have not only the power, but the right, to pass upon the law as well as the facts...
-- Georgia Supreme Court		 
The jury in all criminal cases, shall be the judges of the law and the facts.
-- Georgia, Declaration of Rights		 
We can see beyond the present shadow of war in the Middle East to a new world order where the strong work together to deter and stop aggression. This was precisely Franklin Roosevelt's and Winston Churchill's vision for peace in the post-war period.
-- Richard Gephardt		 
Historically, the United States has been a hard money country. Only [since 1913] has the United States operated on a fiat money system. During this period, paper money has depreciated over 87%. During the preceding 140 year period, the hard currency of the United States had actually maintained its value. Wholesale prices in 1913... were the same as in 1787.
-- Kenneth Gerbino		 
It is the paper money created out of thin air that creates the unfair distribution of wealth that is making the middle class fall more behind and the poor more poor. Newly created money and credit in a paper money system benefits those that can access the money first and buy capital goods and real property at one price before the new money circulates and makes all prices go up. Wages also do not keep up with inflation and that creates another squeeze on the middle class.
-- Kenneth Gerbino		 
Search for the truth is the noblest occupation of man; its publication is a duty.
-- Anne Louise Germaine de Stael		 
One does evil enough when one does nothing good.
-- German Proverb		 
All violations of essential privacy are brutalizing.
-- Katherine Fullerton Gerould		 
The evils we experience flow from the excess of democracy. The people do not want virtue, but are the dupes of pretended patriots.
-- Elbridge Gerry		 
Mr. Gerry contended that (the power of the Federal government to purchase lands within states) might be made use of to enslave any particular State by buying up its territory, and that the strongholds proposed would be a means of awing the State into an undue obedience to the Genl. Government...thus after the word ‘purchased’ the words ‘by the consent of the Legislature of the State’ (was added to the Enclave Clause).
-- Elbridge Gerry		 
What, Sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty. ...Whenever Governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins.
-- Elbridge Gerry		 
After a generation of marijuana arrests, nearly 19 million and counting since 1981, the results are that marijuana remains widely used, not perceived as risky by a majority of the population, and widely available. The tremendous variance in use and arrests at the state level demonstrate why marijuana prohibition has failed and is not a viable national policy.
-- Jon Gettman		 
The meek shall inherit the earth, but not its mineral rights.
-- J. Paul Getty		 
An idea is growing in foreign policy circles in Washington … that there is no turning back. We are stuck in Iraq and Afghanistan for 25 to 40 years, we are embedded in our prideful unilateralism, and nothing can return us to more traditional American values and principles of action. The hubristic creators of this “inevitability” planned it this way. … Their failures in Iraq have not stopped the fanatic, power-hungry neoconservatives. … The hard-liners who dominate this administration … have led us to eternal conflict with Muslims.
-- Georgie Anne Geyer		 
Freedom is an intellectual achievement which requires disavowal of collectivism and embrace of individualism.
-- Onkar Ghate		 
Far better to think historically, to remember the lessons of the past. Thus, far better to conceive of power as consisting in part of the knowledge of when not to use all the power you have. Far better to be one who knows that if you reserve the power not to use all your power, you will lead others far more successfully and well.
-- A. Bartlett Giamatti		 
The principles of a free constitution are irrevocably lost when the legislative power is dominated by the executive.
-- Edward Gibbon		 
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way to the common feelings of mankind.
-- Edward Gibbon		 
In the end, more than freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all - security, comfort, and freedom. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again.
-- Edward Gibbon		 
A martial nobility and stubborn commons, possessed of arms, tenacious of property, and collected into constitutional assemblies form the only balance capable of preserving a free constitution against the enterprise of an aspiring prince.
-- Edward Gibbon		 
The winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.
-- Edward Gibbon		 
In the end, more than freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all - security, comfort, and freedom. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again.
-- Edward Gibbon		 
History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind.
-- Edward Gibbon		 
Revenge is profitable, gratitude is expensive.
-- Edward Gibbon		 
The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful.
-- Edward Gibbon		 
Like all valuable commodities, truth is often counterfeited.
-- James Cardinal Gibbons		 
The smallest act of kindness is worth more than the greatest intention.
-- Khalil Gibran		 
Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother.
-- Khalil Gibran		 
Do not be merciful, but be just, for mercy is bestowed upon the guilty criminal, while Justice is all that the innocent man requires.
-- Khalil Gibran		 


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