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Famous Quotes about Liberty
 
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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		 
Pitiful is the one who, fearing failure, makes no beginning.
-- Hindu Saying		 
Idleness and lack of occupation tend -- nay are dragged -- towards evil.
-- Hippocrates		 
Men ought to know that from the brain and from the brain only arise our pleasures, joys, laughter, and jests as well as our sorrows, pains, griefs and tears. ... It is the same thing which makes us mad or delirious, inspires us with dread and fear, whether by night or by day, brings us sleeplessness, inopportune mistakes, aimless anxieties, absent-mindedness and acts that are contrary to habit...
-- Hippocrates		 
The crucial distinction between systems...was no longer ideological.  The main political difference was between those who did, and those who did not, believe that the citizen could -- or should -- be the property of the state.
-- Christopher Hitchens		 
There is a utilitarian case for free expression. It recognizes that the freedom to speak must also be insisted on for the person who thinks differently, because it is pointless to support only free speech for people who agree with you. It is not only unprincipled to want that, but also self-defeating. For your own sake, you need to know how other people think.
-- Christopher Hitchens		 
We are Socialists, we are enemies of the capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions.
-- Adolf Hitler (False)		 
Without law and order our nation cannot survive.
-- Adolf Hitler		 
We are socialists, we are enemies of today’s capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are determined to destroy this system under all conditions.
-- Adolf Hitler (False)		 
In relation to the political decontamination of our public life, the government will embark upon a systematic campaign to restore the nation’s moral and material health. The whole educational system, theater, film, literature, the press and broadcasting – all these will be used as a means to this end.
-- Adolf Hitler		 
Basically National Socialism and Marxism are the same.
-- Adolf Hitler		 
Society's needs come before the individual's needs.
-- Adolf Hitler		 
[I]n the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.
-- Adolf Hitler		 
A decision of the Fuhrer in the express form of a law or decree may not be scrutinized by a judge. In addition, the judge is bound by any other decision of the Fuhrer, provided that they are clearly intended to declare law.
-- Adolf Hitler		 
Terrorism is the best political weapon for nothing drives people harder than a fear of sudden death.
-- Adolf Hitler		 
The demand that defective people be prevented from propagating equally defective offspring is a demand of the clearest reason and if systematically executed represents the most humane act of mankind.
-- Adolf Hitler		 
Why nationalize industry when you can nationalize the people?
-- Adolf Hitler		 
Being daily better informed about their knowledge than my adversaries themselves, I argued till finally one day they applied the one means that wins the easiest victory over reason: terror and force.
-- Adolf Hitler		 
... we understand only the individual's capacity to make sacrifices for the community, for his fellow men.
-- Adolf Hitler		 
The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to permit the conquered Eastern peoples to have arms. History teaches that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by doing so. Indeed I would go so far as to say that the underdog is a sine qua non for the overthrow of any sovereignty. So let's not have any native militia or police. German troops alone will bear the sole responsibility for the maintenance of law and order.
-- Adolf Hitler		 
How fortunate for governments that people do not think. There is no thinking except in giving and executing commands. If it were otherwise human society could not exist.
-- Adolf Hitler		 
The size of the lie is a definite factor in causing it to be believed, for the vast masses of a nation are in the depths of their hearts more easily deceived than they are consciously and intentionally bad. The primitive simplicity of their minds renders them a more easy prey to a big lie than a small one, for they themselves often tell little lies, but would be ashamed to tell big lies.
-- Adolf Hitler		 
The National Government will regard it as its first and foremost duty to revive in the nation the spirit of unity and cooperation. It will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our nation has been built. It regards Christianity as the foundation of our national morality, and the family as the basis of national life.
-- Adolf Hitler		 
The party ... must not become a servant of the masses, but their master. ... The unity of a nation's spirit and will are worth far more than the freedom of the spirit and will of an individual; and that the higher interests involved in the life of the whole must here set the limits and lay down the duties of the interests of the individual.
-- Adolf Hitler		 
The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed the subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the supply of arms to the underdogs is a sine qua non for the overthrow of any sovereignty.
-- Adolf Hitler		 
In the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.
-- Adolf Hitler		 
The National Socialist Party will prevent in the future, by force if necessary, all meetings and lectures which are likely to exercise a depressing influence on the German state.
-- Adolf Hitler		 
Gold is not neccesary. I have no interest in gold. We will build a solid state, without an ounce of gold behind it. Anyone who sells above the set prices, let him be marched off to a concentration camp. That's the bastion of money.
-- Adolf Hitler		 
It is thus necessary that the individual should finally come to realize that his own ego is of no importance in comparison with the existence of the nation, that the position of the individual is conditioned solely by the interests of the nation as a whole.
-- Adolf Hitler		 
Believe me, National Socialism would not be worth anything if it were to be confined to Germany and did not secure the rule of the superior race over the whole world for at least one or two thousand years.
-- Adolf Hitler		 
The great masses of the people ... will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one.
-- Adolf Hitler		 
All propaganda must be so popular and on such an intellectual level, that even the most stupid of those toward whom it is directed will understand it... Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way around, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise.
-- Adolf Hitler		 
The unity of a nation's spirit and will are worth far more than the freedom of the spirit and will of an individual; and that the higher interests involved in the life of the whole must here set the limits and lay down the duties of the interests of the individual.
-- Adolf Hitler		 
The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. ... Here the state must act as the guardian of a millennial future in the face of which the wishes and the selfishness of the individual must appear as nothing and submit.
-- Adolf Hitler		 
What luck for the rulers that men do not think.
-- Adolf Hitler (Questionable)		 
This year will go down in history. For the first time, a civilised nation has full gun registration! Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future!
-- Adolf Hitler (False)		 
The victor will never be asked if he told the truth.
-- Adolf Hitler		 
The efficiency of the truly national leader consists primarily in preventing the division of the attention of a people, and always in concentrating it on a single enemy.
-- Adolf Hitler		 
National Socialism will use its own revolution for establishing a new world order.
-- Adolf Hitler		 
It is thus necessary that the individual should finally come to realize that his own pride is of no importance in comparison with the existence of his nation; that the position of the individual ego is conditioned solely by the interests of the nation as a whole; that pride and conceitedness, the feeling that the individual ... is superior, so far from being merely laughable, involve great dangers for the existence of the community that is a nation; that above all the unity of a nation’s spirit and will are worth far more than the freedom of the spirit and the will of an individual; and that the higher interests involved in the life of the whole must here set the limits and lay down the duties of interests of the individual. ... By this we understand only the individual's capacity to make sacrifices for the community, for his fellow men.
-- Adolf Hitler		 
National Socialism is what Marxism might have been if it could have broken its absurd and artificial ties with the democratic order.
-- Adolf Hitler		 
For the folk-community does not exist on the fictitious value of money but on the results of productive labour, which is what gives money its value.
-- Adolf Hitler		 
The government will make use of these powers only insofar as they are essential for carrying out vitally necessary measures.... The separate existence of the federal states will not be done away.... The number of cases in which an internal necessity exists for having recourse to such law is in itself a limited one.
-- Adolf Hitler		 


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