Famous Quotations / Quotes
Famous Quotes about Liberty
 
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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		 
Men had better be without education than be educated by their rulers; for their education is but the mere breaking in of the steer to the yoke; the mere discipline of the hunting dog, which, by dint of severity, is made to forego the strongest impulse of his nature, and instead of devouring his prey, to hasten with it to the feet of his master.
-- Thomas Hodgskin		 
Some things have to be believed to be seen.
-- Ralph Hodgson		 
What has always made the state a hell on earth has been precisely that man has tried to make it his heaven.
-- Friedrich Hoelderlin		 
Do we desire to be cradled, and then carried throughout life to our graves by this partisan propelled bureaucratic monstrosity? ...as individuals of sovereign dignity, are we now so terrified, bewildered, and impotent that our main purpose is to seek asylum from the potential hazards of freedom? Have we no faith in our natural strengths and abilities?
-- Sergei Hoff		 
I can tell you this on a stack of Bibles: prisons are archaic, brutal, unregenerative, overcrowded hell holes where the inmates are treated like animals with absolutely not one humane thought given to what they are going to do once they are released. You're an animal in a cage and you're treated like one.
-- Jimmy Hoffa		 
Don't let any man into your cab, your home, or your heart, unless he's a friend of labor.
-- Jimmy Hoffa		 
I doubt if the oppressed ever fight for freedom. They fight for pride and for power -- power to oppress others. The oppressed want above all to imitate their oppressors; they want to retaliate.
-- Eric Hoffer		 
The remarkable thing is that we really love our neighbor as ourselves: we do unto others as we do unto ourselves. We hate others when we hate ourselves. We are tolerant toward others when we tolerate ourselves. We forgive others when we forgive ourselves. We are prone to sacrifice others when we are ready to sacrifice ourselves.
-- Eric Hoffer		 
Those who see their lives as spoiled and wasted crave equality and fraternity more than they do freedom. If they clamor for freedom, it is but freedom to establish equality and uniformity.
-- Eric Hoffer		 
Those who lack the capacity to achieve much in an atmosphere of freedom will clamor for power.
-- Eric Hoffer		 
One realizes that one of the chief differences between an adult and a juvenile is that the adult knows when he is an ass while the juvenile never does.
-- Eric Hoffer		 
The real "haves" are they who can acquire freedom, self-confidence, and even riches without depriving others of them. They acquire all of these by developing and applying their potentialities. On the other hand, the real "have nots" are they who cannot have aught except by depriving others of it. They can feel free only by diminishing the freedom of others, self-confident by spreading fear and dependence among others, and rich by making others poor.
-- Eric Hoffer		 
Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.
-- Eric Hoffer		 
To most of us nothing is so invisible as an unpleasant truth. Though it is held before our eyes, pushed under our noses, rammed down our throats -- we know it not.
-- Eric Hoffer		 
A ruling intelligentsia, whether in Europe, Asia or Africa, treats the masses as raw material to be experimented on, processed, and wasted at will.
-- Eric Hoffer		 
You can never get enough of what you don't really need.
-- Eric Hoffer		 
The central task of education is to implant a will and facility for learning; it should produce not learned but learning people. The truly human society is a learning society, where grandparents, parents, and children are students together.
-- Eric Hoffer		 
In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.
-- Eric Hoffer		 
It is maintained that a society is free only when dissenting minorities have room to throw their weight around. As a matter of fact, a dissenting minority feels free only when it can impose its will on the majority: what it abominates most is the dissent of the majority.
-- Eric Hoffer		 
To the frustrated, freedom from responsibility is more attractive than freedom from restraint. They are eager to barter their independence for relief from the burdens of willing, deciding and being responsible for inevitable failure. They willingly abdicate the directing of their lives to those who want to plan, command and shoulder all responsibility.
-- Eric Hoffer		 
The basic test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in what we are free not to do.
-- Eric Hoffer		 
The intellectuals and the young, booted and spurred, feel themselves born to ride us.
-- Eric Hoffer		 
Freedom released the energies of the masses not by exhilarating but by unbalancing, irritating, and goading.
-- Eric Hoffer		 
Where freedom is real, equality is the passion of the masses. Where equality is real, freedom is the passion of a small minority.
-- Eric Hoffer		 
The basic test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in what we are free not to do.
-- Eric Hoffer		 
When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.
-- Eric Hoffer		 
Absolute power corrupts even when exercised for humane purposes. The benevolent despot who sees himself as a shepherd of the people still demands from others the submissiveness of sheep. The taint inherent in absolute power is not its inhumanity but its anti-humanity.
-- Eric Hoffer		 
We clamour for equality chiefly in areas where we cannot ourselves hope to obtain excellence.
-- Eric Hoffer		 
The aspiration toward freedom is the most essentially human of all human manifestations.
-- Eric Hoffer		 
People unfit for freedom - who cannot do much with it - are hungry for power. The desire for freedom is an attribute of a "have" type of self. It says: leave me alone and I shall grow, learn, and realize my capacities. The desire for power is basically an attribute of a "have not" type of self.
-- Eric Hoffer		 
Those who see their lives as spoiled and wasted crave equality and fraternity more than they do freedom. If they clamor for freedom, it is but freedom to establish equality and uniformity. The passion for equality is partly a passion for anonymity: to be one thread of the many which make up a tunic; one thread not distinguishable from the others. No one can then point us out, measure us against others and expose our inferiority.
-- Eric Hoffer		 
There can be no freedom without freedom to fail.
-- Eric Hoffer		 
The fact is that up to now a free society has not been good for the intellectual. It has neither accorded him a superior status to sustain his confidence nor made it easy for him to acquire an unquestioned sense of social usefulness. For he derives his sense of usefulness mainly from directing, instructing, and planning- from minding other people's business- and is bound to feel superfluous and neglected where people believe themselves competent to manage individual and communal affairs, and are impatient of supervision and regulation. A free society is as much a threat to the intellectual's sense of worth as an automated economy is to the workingman's sense of worth. Any social order that can function with a minimum of leadership will be anathema to the intellectual.
-- Eric Hoffer		 
Unless a man has talents to make something of himself, freedom is an irksome burden. Of what avail is freedom to choose if the self be ineffectual? We join a mass movement to escape individual responsibility, or, in the words of the ardent young Nazi, "to be free from freedom.
-- Eric Hoffer		 
It is doubtful if the oppressed ever fight for freedom. They fight for pride and power -- power to oppress others. The oppressed want above all to imitate their oppressors; they want to retaliate.
-- Eric Hoffer		 
Absolute power turns its possessors not into a God but an anti-God. For God turned clay into men, while the absolute despot turns men into clay.
-- Eric Hoffer		 
Every device employed to bolster individual freedom must have as its chief purpose the impairment of the absoluteness of power. The indications are that such an impairment is brought about not by strengthening the individual and pitting him against the possessors of power, but by distributing and diversifying power and pitting one category or unit of power against the other. Where power is one, the defeated individual, however strong and resourceful, can have no refuge and no recourse.
-- Eric Hoffer		 
To some, freedom means the opportunity to do what they want to do; to most it means not to do what they do not want to do. It is perhaps true that those who can grow will feel free under any condition.
-- Eric Hoffer		 
Totalitarianism spells simplification: an enormous reduction in the variety of aims, motives, interests, human types, and, above all, in the categories and units of power.
-- Eric Hoffer		 


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