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Famous Quotes about Liberty
 
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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		 
When an opponent declares, ‘I will not come over to your side,’ I calmly say, ‘Your child belongs to us already. … What are you? You will pass on. Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time they will know nothing else but this new community.'
-- Adolf Hitler		 
We have set before ourselves the task of inoculating our youth … at a very early age. … This new Reich will give its youth to no one, but will itself take youth and give to youth its own education and its own upbringing.
-- Adolf Hitler		 
Fundamental, Bible believing people do not have the right to indoctrinate their children in their religious beliefs because we, the state, are preparing them for the year 2000, when America will be part of a one-world global society and their children will not fit in.
-- Peter Hoagland		 
In their great wisdom, our Founding Fathers, gathered in Philadelphia to draft the new U.S. Constitution, gave the sole authority to declare war to the U.S. Congress. ... our Founders understood that it was essential, to secure a representative form of republican self-government, that the power to declare war must be in the hands of Congress, and not in the Executive Branch. ... Nothing has transpired in the intervening centuries to justify any alteration in their wise decision. Under our Federal Constitution, only the Congress has the power to declare war, and that must remain a cardinal principle. In recent decades, we have seen an erosion of that Constitutional principle, and I fully concur that this erosion must be halted and reverse.
-- Gen. Joseph P. Hoar		 
Common sense would dictate that increased federal regulations help preserve the interests of established business by raising the market entry price of newer competitors.
-- William P. Hoar		 
A study by Michael Tanner, Stephen Moore, and David Hartman of the Cato Institute has revealed that in 40 states, it pays more for one to be on welfare than to accept a job at $8.00 per hour; in 17 states, welfare pays more than work at $10.00 per hour; and in six states plus the District of Columbia, welfare totals more than working for $12.00 hourly. The study also showed that in 29 states, welfare benefits are worth more than the average secretary's pay; in nine states, such benefits are equal to more than the average starting salary for a teacher; and in six states, welfare pays more than an entry-level position for a computer programmer. When the entire package is computed, welfare amounts to the (pretax) equivalent of a $30,500 wage in Massachusetts, $32,200 in Alaska, and $36,400 in Hawaii.
-- William P. Hoar		 
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is so careful about the accountability of others that it ducks its own accountability altogether -- meaning that it takes six years longer to pass on its approval than it does for the same drug or medical device to be approved in other developed nations. That comes at a price: Two-thirds of the cost of a new drug is for it to meet the requirements of the FDA.
-- William P. Hoar		 
Statists relish "crises" because they can be used to force more controls into our lives.
-- William P. Hoar		 
If ... our bureaucratic masters are becoming more akin to Soviet-style or Eastern European counterparts, it was rarely seen as a plus that those central schemers had wonderful intentions with their five-year plans. Such goals as "job safety," "equality," and freedom from "discrimination," depending on their definitions, may be good things for society, but they were never intended to be the business of the federal government.
-- William P. Hoar		 
They that approve a private opinion, call it an opinion; but they that mislike it, heresy: and yet heresy signifies no more than private opinion.
-- Thomas Hobbes		 
Life in the state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
-- Thomas Hobbes		 
A covenant not to defend myself from force by force is always void. For ... no man can transfer or lay down his Right to save himself. For the right men have by Nature to protect themselves, when none else can protect them, can by no Covenant be relinquished. ... [The right] to defend ourselves [is the] summe of the Right of Nature.
-- Thomas Hobbes		 
A free man is he that, in those things which by his strength and wit he is able to do, is not hindered to do what he has a will to.
-- Thomas Hobbes		 
Unnecessary laws are not good laws, but traps for money.
-- Thomas Hobbes		 
When we strip teachers of their professional judgment, we forfeit the educational vitality we prize. When we quell controversy for the sake of congeniality, we deprive democracy of its mentors.
-- Justice Gregory Hobbs Jr.		 
The tendency of all strong governments has always been to suppress liberty, partly in order to ease the processes of rule, partly from sheer disbelief in innovation.
-- John A. Hobson		 
Where men cannot freely convey their thoughts to one another, no other liberty is secure.
-- William Earnest Hocking		 
It is easier to find a score of men wise enough to discover the truth than to find one intrepid enough, in the face of opposition, to stand up for it.
-- A. A. Hodge		 


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