Famous Quotes / Quotations about Liberty

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Famous Quotes about Liberty

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Goodness without wisdom always accomplished evil. -- Robert A. Heinlein

Sin lies only in hurting other people unnecessarily. All other "sins" are invented nonsense. (Hurting yourself is not a sin - just stupid.) -- Robert A. Heinlein

Political tags -- such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth -- are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. -- Robert A. Heinlein

When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, "This you may not read, this you may not see, this you are forbidden to know," the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything -- you can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him. -- Robert A. Heinlein

The police of a state should never be stronger or better armed than the citizenry. An armed citizenry, willing to fight, is the foundation of civil freedom. -- Robert A. Heinlein

Love your country, but never trust its government. -- Robert A. Heinlein

Limiting the freedom of news ‘just a little bit’ is in the same category within the classic example ‘a little bit pregnant.’ -- Robert A. Heinlein

The two highest achievements of the human mind are the twin concepts of "loyalty" and "duty". Whenever these twin concepts fall into disrepute, get out of there fast! You may possibly save yourself, but it is too late to save that society. It is doomed. -- Robert A. Heinlein

Taxes are not levied for the benefit of the taxed. -- Robert A. Heinlein

...[A] fool cannot be protected from his folly. If you attempt to do so, you will not only arouse his animosity but also you will be attempting to deprive him of whatever benefit he is capable of deriving from experience. Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig. -- Robert A. Heinlein

There are things that are so serious that you can only joke about them. -- Heisenberg

Since when do you have to agree with people to defend them from injustice? -- Lillian Hellman

A careful examination of what is happening behind the scenes reveals that all of these interests are working in concert with the masters of the Kremlin in order to create what some refer to as a “New World Order.” Private organizations such as the Council on Foreign Relations, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, the Trilateral Commission, the Dartmouth Conference, the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies, the Atlantic Institute, and the Bilderberg Group serve to disseminate and to coordinate the plans for this so-called new world order in powerful business, financial, academic, and official circles. -- Jesse Helms

We are now considering legislation based on statistics that include name-calling at public rallies as crimes. Are we going on to the school yards of this country and when two kids get angry with each other and call each other names -- what are we going to do, cart them over to the reformatory or add them to the list of 'hate crimes' perpetrators? This is ridiculous. -- Jesse Helms

To limit the press is to insult a nation; to prohibit reading of certain books is to declare the inhabitants to be either fools or knaves. -- Claude-Adrien Helvetius

Everyone has his own conscience, and there should be no rules about how a conscience should function. -- Ernest Hemingway

It is a sad reminder that many in the media are not interested in journalism but progressive advocacy. -- Mollie Hemingway

Someone has to borrow every dollar we have in circulation, cash or credit. -- Robert Hemphill

If all the bank loans were paid, no one could have a bank deposit, and there would not be a dollar of coin or currency in circulation. This is a staggering thought. We are completely dependent on the commercial Banks. Someone has to borrow every dollar we have in circulation, cash or credit. If the Banks create ample synthetic money we are prosperous; if not, we starve. We are absolutely without a permanent money system. When one gets a complete grasp of the picture, the tragic absurdity of our hopeless position is almost incredible, but there it is. It is the most important subject intelligent persons can investigate and reflect upon. It is so important that our present civilization may collapse unless it becomes widely understood and the defects remedied very soon. -- Robert Hemphill

The problem is, of course, that not only is economics bankrupt but it has always been nothing more than politics in disguise ... economics is a form of brain damage. -- Hazel Henderson

Satire dramatizes better than any other use of it, the inherent contradiction of free speech – that it functions best when what is being said is at its most outrageous. -- Tony Hendra

Oh, judge, your damn laws: the good people don't need them and the bad people don't follow them so what good are they? -- Ammon Hennacy

An anarchist is anyone who doesn't need a cop to tell him what to do. -- Ammon Hennacy

Force is the weapon of the weak. -- Ammon Hennacy

...The purpose of the 2nd Amendment is to guarantee the existence of state military forces that can serve as a counterweight to a standing federal army. Thus, it seems fair to say, the scope of any rights enjoyed by the states under the 2nd Amendment would be determined by the goal of preserving an independent military force not under direct federal control. -- Dennis Hennigan

I thank Thee first because I was never robbed before; second, because although they took my purse they did not take my life; third, because although they took my all, it was not much; and fourth because it was I who was robbed, and not I who robbed. -- Matthew Henry

There is no well-defined boundary between honesty and dishonesty. The frontiers of one blend with the outside limits of the other, and he who attempts to tread this dangerous ground may be sometimes in one domain and sometimes in the other. -- O. Henry

...Virtue, morality, and religion. This is the armor, my friend, and this alone that renders us invincible. These are the tactics we should study. If we lose these, we are conquered, fallen indeed...so long as our manners and principles remain sound, there is no danger. -- Patrick Henry

Bad men cannot make good citizens. It is impossible that a nation of infidels or idolaters should be a nation of freemen. It is when a people forget God that tyrants forge their chains. A vitiated state of morals, a corrupted public conscience, is incompatible with freedom. No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue; and by a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles. -- Patrick Henry

It is only in this way that we can hope to arrive at truth, and fulfill the great responsibility which we hold to God and our country. Should I keep back my opinions at such a time, through fear of giving offense, I should consider myself as guilty of treason towards my country, and of an act of disloyalty toward the Majesty of Heaven, which I revere above all earthly kings. ... Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and, having ears, hear not, the things, which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it. Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves. ... Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death! -- Patrick Henry

Are we at last brought to such an humiliating and debasing degradation that we cannot be trusted with arms for our own defense? Where is the difference between having our arms under our own possession and under our own direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands? -- Patrick Henry

I have the highest veneration of those Gentleman, -- but, Sir, give me leave to demand, what right had they to say, We, the People? My political curiosity, exclusive of my anxious solicitude for the public welfare, leads me to ask who authorized them to speak the language of, We, the People, instead of We, the States? States are the characteristics, and the soul of the confederation. If the States be not the agents of this compact, it must be one of great consolidated National Government of the people of all the States. -- Patrick Henry

It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ! For this very reason peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship here. -- Patrick Henry (False)

Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined. -- Patrick Henry

The great object is that every man be armed. Everyone who is able may have a gun. -- Patrick Henry

We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth... For my part, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst; and to provide for it. -- Patrick Henry

Why do we love this trial by jury? Because it prevents the hand of oppression from cutting you off ... This gives me comfort—that, as long as I have existence, my neighbors will protect me. -- Patrick Henry

Let Mr. Madison tell me when did liberty ever exist when the sword and the purse were given up from the people? Unless a miracle shall interpose, no nation ever did, nor ever can retain its liberty after the loss of the sword and the purse. -- Patrick Henry

It is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren, till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst and provide for it. -- Patrick Henry

The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them. -- Patrick Henry

Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined.... O sir, we should have fine times, indeed, if to punish tyrants, it were only sufficient to assemble the people! -- Patrick Henry

Are we at last brought to such a humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our own defence? Where is the difference between having our arms in our own possession and under our own direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defence be the_real_object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands? -- Patrick Henry

Have we the means of resisting disciplined armies, when our only defence, the militia, is put in the hands of Congress? -- Patrick Henry

If we would be free, if we mean to hold inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have so long contended, if we mean not basely to abandon the noble cause for which we have so long endured, and to which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon, until the glorious object of our contest should be obtained, then we must fight! I repeat Sir, we must fight! A call to arms and an appeal to the God of hosts is all that we have left. -- Patrick Henry

I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging the future but by the past. -- Patrick Henry

We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth... For my part, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst; and to provide for it. -- Patrick Henry

Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death! -- Patrick Henry

It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace -- but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death! -- Patrick Henry

The great object is, that every man be armed. -- Patrick Henry

No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue; and by a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles. -- Patrick Henry

Those who created this country chose freedom. With all of its dangers. And do you know the riskiest part of that choice they made? They actually believed that we could be trusted to make up our own minds in the whirl of differing ideas. That we could be trusted to remain free, even when there were very, very seductive voices – taking advantage of our freedom of speech – who were trying to turn this country into the kind of place where the government could tell you what you can and cannot do. -- Nat Hentoff

Whosoever wishes to know about the world must learn about it in its particular details. Knowledge is not intelligence. In searching for the truth be ready for the unexpected. Change alone is unchanging. The same road goes both up and down. The beginning of a circle is also its end. Not I, but the world says it: all is one. And yet everything comes in season. -- Heraclitus

Nothing endures but change. -- Heraclitus

The people must fight for their laws as for their walls. -- Heraclitus

Man's character is his fate. -- Heraclitus

Socialism is but Catholicism addressing itself not to the soul but to the sense of men... [Both implore you to] accept authority, accept the force which it employs, resign yourself to all-powerful managers, give up the free choice and the free act... They both seek to sacrifice man. -- Auberon Herbert

If government half a century ago had provided us with all our dinners and breakfasts, it would be the practice of our orators today to assume the impossibility of our providing for ourselves. -- Auberon Herbert

The career of a politician mainly consists in making one part of the nation do what it does not want to do, in order to please and satisfy the other part of the nation. It is the prolonged sacrifice of the rights of some persons at the bidding and for the satisfaction of other persons. The ruling idea of the politician - stated rather bluntly - is that those who are opposed to him exist for the purpose of being made to serve his ends, if he can get power enough in his hands to force these ends upon them. -- Auberon Herbert

It is not laissez-faire that has failed. That would be an ill day for men. What has failed is the courage to see what is true and speak it to the people, to point to the true remedies. -- Auberon Herbert

Politics must be the battle of the principles... the principle of liberty against the principle of force. -- Auberon Herbert

... every tax or rate, forcibly taken from an unwilling person, is immoral and oppressive. -- Auberon Herbert

True liberty cannot exist apart from the full rights of property, for property is the only crystallized form of free faculties...The whole meaning of socialism is a systematic glorification of force... No literary phrases about social organisms are potent enough to evaporate the individual, who is the prime, indispensable, irreducible element. -- Auberon Herbert

If we cannot learn, if the only effect upon us of the presence of the dynamiter in our midst is to make us multiply punishments, invent restrictions, increase the number of our official spies, forbid public meetings, interfere with the press, put up gratings -- as in one country they propose to do -- in our House of Commons, scrutinize visitors under official microscopes, request them, as at Vienna, and I think now at Paris also, to be good enough to leave their greatcoats in the vestibules ... I venture to prophesy that there lies before us a bitter and an evil time. -- Auberon Herbert

[Socialism] is a creed even more denigrating than Catholicism, but it offers more tangible bribes for its acceptance. -- Auberon Herbert

How should it happen that the individual should be without rights, but the combination of individuals should possess unlimited rights? -- Auberon Herbert

And what sort of philosophical doctrine is this -- that numbers confer unlimited rights, that they take from some persons all rights over themselves, and vest these rights in others. ... How, then, can the rights of three men exceed the rights of two men? In what possible way can the rights of three men absorb the rights of two men, and make them as if they had never existed. ... It is not possible to suppose, without absurdity, that a man should have no rights over his own body and mind, and yet have a 1/10,000,000th share in unlimited rights over all other bodies and minds? -- Auberon Herbert

We hold that what one man cannot morally do, a million men cannot morally do, and government, representing many millions of men, cannot do. -- Auberon Herbert

Force and reason -- which last is the essence of the moral act -- are at the two opposite poles. The one who compels his neighbor... treats him, not as a being with reason, but as an animal in whom reason is not. -- Auberon Herbert

Laws to suppress tend to strengthen what they would prohibit. This is the fine point on which all legal professions of history have based their job security. -- Frank Herbert

If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual. -- Frank Herbert

The convoluted wording of legalisms grew up around the necessity to hide from ourselves the violence we intend toward each other. Between depriving a man of one hour from his life and depriving him of his life there exists only a difference of degree. You have done violence to him, consumed his energy. -- Frank Herbert

Radicals are only to be feared when you try to suppress them. You must demonstrate that you will use the best of what they offer. -- Frank Herbert

Dare to be true. Nothing can need a lie: A fault, which needs it most, grows two thereby. -- George Herbert

One sword keeps another in the sheath. -- George Herbert

[Communist Goals for America:]\\ - Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of “separation of church and state.”\\ - Control schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda.\\ - Soften curriculum. Get control of teachers’ associations. Put party line in textbooks. Control student newspapers.\\ - Infiltrate churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion (i.e. “social justice,” “liberation theology”).\\ - Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a “religious crutch.”\\ - Discredit American culture.\\ - Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and divorce.\\ - Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural, healthy.\\ -- Albert S. Herlong, Jr.

There is a system of terroristic states—the real terror network—that has spread throughout Latin America and elsewhere over the past several decades, and which is deeply rooted in the corporate interest and sustaining political-military-financial propaganda mechanisms of the United States and its allies in the Free World. -- Edward Herman

Make sure what you risk is yours to lose. -- L. M. Heroux

No man has ever ruled other men for their own good. -- George D. Herron

The possession of power over others is inherently destructive both to the possessor of the power and to those over whom it is exercised. -- George D. Herron

The liberty of the individual is the greatest thing of all, it is on this and this alone that the true will of the people can develop. -- Alexander Ivanovich Herzen

Big business in America today and for some years has been openly at war with competition and, thus, at war with laissez-faire capitalism. ... The left's attack on corporate capitalism is, when examined, an attack on economic forms possible only in collusion between authoritarian government and bureaucratized, nonentrepreneurial business. It is unfortunate that many New Leftists are so uncritical as to accept this premise as indicating that all forms of capitalism are bad ... -- Karl Hess

Any attempt to replace a personal conscience by a collective conscience does violence to the individual and is the first step toward totalitarianism. -- Herman Hesse

Wisdom is not communicable. The wisdom which a wise man tries to communicate always sounds foolish. -- Herman Hesse

As I have stood in the crosshairs of those who target Second Amendment freedoms, I've realized that firearms are not the only issue. No, it's much, much bigger than that. I've come to understand that a cultural war is raging across our land, in which, with Orwellian fervor, certain acceptable thoughts and speech are mandated. -- Charlton Heston

Here's my credo. There are no good guns, There are no bad guns. A gun in the hands of a bad man is a bad thing. Any gun in the hands of a good man is no threat to anyone, except bad people. -- Charlton Heston

Political correctness is simply tyranny with manners. -- Charlton Heston

A censor is a man who knows more than he thinks you ought to. -- Granville Hicks

The sooner we all learn to make a decision between disapproval and censorship, the better off society will be... Censorship cannot get at the real evil, and it is an evil in itself. -- Granville Hicks

The people of the various provinces are strictly forbidden to have in their possession any swords, bows, spears, firearms, or other types of arms. The possession of these elements makes difficult the collection of taxes and dues, and tends to permit uprising. Therefore, the heads of provinces, official agents, and deputies are ordered to collect all the weapons mentioned above and turn them over to the government. -- Toyotomi Hideyoshi

Democrats and Republicans alike support the "War on Drugs." Federal, state, and local police make more than a million drug arrests yearly. Drug cases clog the courts. More than 60% of federal prison cells and about 30% of state prison cells hold drug offenders. No-knock drug raiders nullify the Fourth Amendment every day. Yet illicit drugs continue to pour onto the market, and they are readily available throughout the land. Looks like another failed policy. But politicians say more money will win the war. For fiscal 1996, President Clinton has requested a record $14.6 billion for this exercise in futility. State and local government will also spend huge sums. Who benefits? Posturing politicians and puritanical zealots, of course, but also the Drug Enforcement Administration, Customs Service, Coast Guard, FBI, and the rest of the drug warriors. Police love the drug war, because the forfeiture laws it inspired allow them to seize and keep private property with impunity. Corrupt cops get fabulous bribes, and corruption therefore runs rampant. -- Robert Higgs

It would take little more than $50 billion to raise every poor person above the official poverty line, yet the percentage of the population classified as poor hardly budges, while annual welfare spending amounts to four times that much. Where's the money going? -- Robert Higgs

But politicians who talk about failed policies are just blowing smoke. Government policies succeed in doing exactly what they are supposed to do: channeling resources bilked from the general public to politically organized and influential interests groups. -- Robert Higgs

The mistakes made by Congress wouldn't be so bad if the next Congress didn't keep trying to correct them. -- Cullen Hightower

Talk is cheap -- except when Congress does it. -- Cullen Hightower

Communism is not a creation of the masses to overthrow the Banking establishment, but rather a creation of the Banking establishment to overthrow and enslave the people. -- Anthony J. Hilder

I have said I do not dread industrial corporations as instruments of power to destroy this country, because there are a thousand agencies which can regulate, restrain and control them; but there is a corporation we may all dread. That corporation is the federal government. From the aggressions of this corporation, there can be no safety, if it is allowed to go beyond the well defined limits of its powers. I dread nothing so much as the exercise of ungranted and doubtful powers by the government. It is, in my opinion, the danger of dangers to the future of this country. Let us be sure to keep it always within its limits. If this great, ambitious, ever growing corporation becomes oppressive, who shall check it? If it becomes too wayward who shall control it? If it becomes unjust, who shall trust it? As sentinels of the country’s watchtower, Senators, I beseech you to watch and guard with sleepless dread, that corporation which can make all property and rights, all states and people, all liberty and hope its plaything in an hour, and its victims forever. -- Benjamin H. Hill

The threat of people acting in their own enlightened and rational self-interest strikes bureaucrats, politicians and social workers as ominous and dangerous. -- W. G. Hill

If liberty with law is fire on the hearth, liberty without law is fire on the floor. -- George Stillman Hillard

What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow; that is the whole Law: all the rest is interpretation. -- Hillel

There is no substitute under the heavens for productive labor. It is the process by which dreams become realities. It is the process by which idle visions become dynamic achievements. -- Gordon B. Hinckley

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