Famous Quotations / Quotes
Famous Quotes about Liberty
 
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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		 
A democracy is a government in the hands of men of low birth, no property, and vulgar employments.
-- Aristotle		 
Education is the best provision for old age.
-- Aristotle		 
Democracy arose from men thinking that if they are equal in any respect they are equal in all respects.
-- Aristotle		 
The three aims of the tyrant are, one, the humiliation of his subjects; he knows that a mean-spirited man will not conspire against anybody; two, the creation of mistrust among them; for a tyrant is not to be overthrown until men begin to have confidence in one another -- and this is the reason why tyrants are at war with the good; they are under the idea that their power is endangered by them, not only because they will not be ruled despotically, but also because they are too loyal to one another and to other men, and do not inform against one another or against other men -- three, the tyrant desires that all his subjects shall be incapable of action, for no one attempts what is impossible and they will not attempt to overthrow a tyranny if they are powerless.
-- Aristotle		 
The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.
-- Aristotle		 
It is the greatest inequality to try to make unequal things equal.
-- Aristotle		 
For man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but, when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all; since armed injustice is the more dangerous, and he is equipped at birth with the arms of intelligence and with moral qualities which he may use for the worst ends.
-- Aristotle		 
Men regard it as their right to return evil for evil -- and if they cannot, feel they have lost their liberty.
-- Aristotle		 
To the size of the state there is a limit, as there is to plants, animals and implements, for none of these retain their facility when they are too large.
-- Aristotle		 
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act but a habit
-- Aristotle (False)		 
Both Oligarch and Tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of arms.
-- Aristotle		 
Dignity consists not in possessing honors, but in the consciousness that we deserve them.
-- Aristotle		 
What is common to many is least taken care of, for all men have greater regard for what is their own than what they possess in common with others.
-- Aristotle		 
The end of labor is to gain leisure.
-- Aristotle		 
The basis of a democratic state is liberty.
-- Aristotle		 
Man is by nature a political animal.
-- Aristotle		 
The trade of the petty usurer is hated with most reason: it makes a profit from currency itself, instead of making it from the process which currency was meant to serve. Their common characteristic is obviously their sordid avarice.
-- Aristotle		 
It makes no difference whether a good man has defrauded a bad man, or a bad man defrauded a good man, or whether a good or bad man has committed adultery: the law can look only to the amount of damage done.
-- Aristotle		 
A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious.
-- Aristotle		 
The high-minded man must care more for the truth than for what people think.
-- Aristotle		 
It is the mark of an educated man to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
-- Aristotle		 
Dignity does not come in possessing honors, but in deserving them.
-- Aristotle		 
What then, is he protected in the right to keep and thus use? Not every thing that may be useful for offense or defense, but what may properly be included or understood under the title of “arms,” taken in connection with the fact that the citizen is to keep them, as a citizen. Such, then as are found to make up the usual arms of the citizen of the country, and the use of which will properly train and render him efficient in defense of his own liberties, as well as of the State. Under this head, with a knowledge of the habits of our people, and of the arms in the use of which a soldier should be trained, we hold that the rifle, of all descriptions, the shot gun, the musket and repeater, are such arms, and that, under the Constitution, the right to keep such arms cannot be infringed or forbidden by the legislature.
-- Arkansas Supreme Court		 
The people themselves, not their government, should be trusted with spending their own money and making their own decisions.
-- Richard Armey		 
Three groups spend other people's money: children, thieves, politicians. All three need supervision.
-- Richard Armey		 
[T]he tax code has been piling up, year after year, a symbol of everything gone wrong in America, of arrogant rulers and lost freedom, just waiting for us to pick the whole thing up and heave it away. It has to happen. Free people can put up with such laws only for so long.
-- Richard Armey		 
Government is saying to the average citizen every January 1: 'For the next five months you’ll be working for us, for goals we shall determine. Is that clear? After May 5 you may look after your own needs and ambitions, but report back to us next January. Now move along.' ... If nearly half of what you make is spent by someone else, that means that half your work time is spent working for someone else. Call me a radical, but I think that comes dangerously close to being a form of indentured servitude.
-- Richard Armey		 
...[W]e insist on the principle that no danger or crisis, foreign or domestic, will be solved by Americans surrendering more of their constitutional liberties, in the foolish hope that a bigger government will provide greater security.
-- Larry P. Arnn		 
Hillsdale [College] forgoes government money in order to spare our students, faculty and administrators the bureaucratic interference that is the price of accepting federal financial support.
-- Larry P. Arnn		 
The freethinking of one age is the common sense of the next.
-- Matthew Arnold		 
Believe me, it is not failing to speak out with promptitude and energy that is the matter with you; it is having nothing consistent or valuable to say.
-- Matthew Arnold		 
But each day brings its petty dust Our soon-chok'd souls to fill, And we forget because we must, And not because we will.
-- Matthew Arnold		 
It is a part of the function of “law” to give recognition to ideas representing the exact opposite of established conduct. Most of the complications arise from the necessity of pretending to do one thing, while actually doing another.
-- Thurman Arnold		 


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