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Famous Quotes about Liberty
 
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Force without wisdom falls of its own weight.
-- Horace		 
And when all the world is overcharged with inhabitants, then the last remedy is Warre; which provideth for every man, by Victory, or Death.
-- Horace		 
Carpe Diem. (Seize the day.)
-- Horace		 
Suffering is but another name for the teaching of experience, which is the parent of instruction and the schoolmaster of life.
-- Horace		 
“Painters and poets,” you say, “have always had an equal license in bold invention.” We know; we claim the liberty for ourselves and in turn we give it to others.
-- Horace		 
In the hands of the state, compulsory public education becomes a tool for political control and manipulation -- a prime instrument for the thought police of the society. And precisely because every child passes through the same indoctrination process—learning the same “official history,” the same “civic virtues,” the same lessons of obedience and loyalty to the state -- it becomes extremely difficult for the individual soul to free himself from the straightjacket of the ideology and values the political officials wish to imprint upon the population under its jurisdiction. For the communists, it was the class struggle and obedience to the Party and Comrade Stalin; for the fascists, it was the worship of the nation-state and obedience to the duce; for the Nazis, it was race purity and obedience to the Fuhrer. The content has varied, but the form has remained the same. Through the institution of compulsory state education, the child is to be molded like wax into the shape desired by the state and its educational elite.
-- Jacob G. Hornberger		 
Every day, IRS agents levy liens on homes, bank accounts, and businesses; they confiscate cars, furniture, boats, and other personal property without the constitutional protections of due notice, hearing, and due process. If a person forcibly resists, government agents kill him for “resisting arrest.”
-- Jacob G. Hornberger		 
Every single American can exclaim, 'Nothing justifies what they did in New York and Washington,' not even the bombs that our government has dropped on them for ten years or the embargo that has caused the deaths of so many children. That's of course true…The issue is simply an acceptance of reality and a fundamental fact of life: When governments do bad things to people, people sometimes retaliate.
-- Jacob G. Hornberger		 
Another major reason why crime is increasing is that crime pays, and in our tax-ridden, regulation crushed economy, many people cannot economically survive through low-end jobs. ... 'The income that offenders can earn in the world of crime, as compared with the world of work, all too often makes crime appear to be the better choice.' In Washington, D.C., it costs $7,000 in city fees to open a pushcart. In California, up to eighty federal and state licenses are required to open a small business. In New York, a medallion to operate a taxicab costs $150,000. More than 700 occupations in the United States require a government license. Throughout the country, church soup kitchens are being closed by departments of health. No wonder so many people turn to crime and violence to survive.
-- Jacob G. Hornberger		 
There is no difference in principle, ... between the economic philosophy of Nazism, socialism, communism, and fascism and that of the American welfare state and regulated economy.
-- Jacob G. Hornberger		 
The cult of the omnipotent state has millions of followers in the United States. Americans of today view their government in the same way as Christians view their God; they worship and adore the state and they render their lives and fortunes to it. Statists believe that their lives -- their very being -- are a privilege that the state has given to them. They believe that everything they do is -- and should be -- dependent on the consent of the government. Thus, statists support such devices as income taxation, licensing laws, regulations, passports, trade restrictions, and the like.
-- Jacob G. Hornberger		 
[T]ake the war on drugs. The average American says, “The war on drugs has been beneficial.” The rest of us see reality. This war has destroyed thousands of Americans. It is also a pretext for government agents to rob innocent people in airports and on the highways -- they seize and confiscate large amounts of cash and say to their victims: “Sue us if you don’t like it.” And more and more judges, politicians, intelligence agents, and law-enforcement officers are on the take -- as dependent on the drug-war largess as the drug lords themselves.
-- Jacob G. Hornberger		 
The core issue facing the American people is this: Have the guardians become the terrorists?
-- Jacob G. Hornberger		 
Of course, the proponents of political tyranny are usually well-motivated. Those who enacted the gun-registration law in California point to criminals who have used semiautomatic weapons to commit horrible, murderous acts. But the illusion -- the pipe dream -- is that bad acts can be prevented by the deprivation of liberty. They cannot be! Life is always insecure. The only choice is between liberty and insecurity, on the one hand, and insecurity and enslavement on the other. The true patriot scrutinizes the actions of his own government with unceasing vigilance. And when his government violates the morality and rightness associated with principles of individual freedom and private property, he immediately rises in opposition to his government. This is why the gun owners of California might ultimately go down in history as among the greatest and most courageous patriots of our time.
-- Jacob G. Hornberger		 
We should not believe that because ours is a freer, more democratic society, the same imprinting procedure has not occurred even here, in America. Every generation of school-age children has imprinted upon it a politically correct ideology concerning America's past and the sanctity of the role of the state in society. Practically every child in the public school system learns that the "robber barons" of the 19th century exploited the common working man; that unregulated capitalism needed to be harnessed by enlightened government regulation beginning in the Progressive era at the turn of the century; that Wild Wall Street speculation was a primary cause of the Great Depression; that only Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal saved America from catastrophe; and that American intervention in foreign wars has been necessary and inevitable, with the United States government required to be a global leader and an occasional world policeman.
-- Jacob G. Hornberger		 
The lesson that Americans today have forgotten or never learned -- the lesson which our ancestors tried so hard to teach -- is that the greatest threat to our lives, liberty, property, and security is not some foreign government, as our rulers so often tell us. The greatest threat to our freedom and well-being lies with our own government!.
-- Jacob G. Hornberger		 
The true patriot scrutinizes the actions of his own government with unceasing vigilance. And when his government violates the morality and rightness associated with principles of individual freedom and private property, he immediately rises in opposition to his government.
-- Jacob G. Hornberger		 
The biggest threat to the American people today lies with the United States government. ... [T]he long-term solution is to dismantle, not reform, the iron fist of the welfare state and the controlled economy. This includes the end (not the reform) of the IRS, the DEA, the BATF, the SEC, the FDA, HUD, the departments of HHS, Labor, Agriculture, and energy, and every other agency that takes money from some and gives it to others or interferes with peaceful behavior.
-- Jacob G. Hornberger		 
Contrary to everything our rulers tell us, and everything that our schoolteachers are teaching the children of this nation, the biggest threat to the lives and well-being of the American people lies not with some foreign government. The biggest threat to the American people today lies with the United States government. And while gun ownership stands as a barrier to potential, Nazi-like behavior, the long-term solution is to dismantle, not reform, the iron fist of the welfare state and the controlled economy. This includes the end (not the reform) of the IRS, the DEA, the BATF, the SEC, the FDA, HUD, the departments of HHS, Labor, Agriculture, and Energy, and every other agency that takes money from some and gives it to others or interferes with peaceful behavior. It entails the repeal of all laws that permit such conduct. And it means the privatization of most of the bureaucrats who work for the U.S. government.
-- Jacob G. Hornberger		 
[D]ecade after decade, through taxes and regulations, governments at all levels took ever-increasing control over people’s lives, wealth, and property. The control grew exponentially, decade after decade. The rationale was that the control was necessary -- for society, for the poor, for the nation, even for freedom itself. Americans continued living their life of the lie: they continued believing that the more control government exercised over their lives and property, the freer they became.
-- Jacob G. Hornberger		 
In the lifetime of one person, we went from figuring out where we came from to figuring out how to get rid of ourselves.
-- Jack Horner		 
We may feel genuinely concerned about world conditions, though such a concern should drive us into action and not into a depression.
-- Karen Horney		 
In Washington, of course, evading responsibility is an art form, so it is not always easy to tell who's responsible for which mess.
-- David Horowitz		 
The building that housed Germany's leading industrial organization prior to World War II, and for all practical purposes the Third Reich during the war, became CIA European headquarters immediately following the war. The marble decorated I.G. Farben building was intentionally spared from allied bombing runs. It was largely built by the 'Bayer Pharmaceutical' consortium that included the distributors of aspirin and heroin to U.S. markets by the 'Farbenfabriken of Elberfeld Co., 40 Stone Street, New York' according to a 1906 Medical Observer advertisement.
-- Dr. Leonard Horowitz		 
So long as people, being ill governed, suffer from hunger, criminals will never disappear. It is extremely unkind to punish those who, being suffers from hunger, are compelled to violate laws.
-- Kenkó Hoshi		 
An economy cannot long remain prosperous by government's taxing and spending more, now absorbing national output at a rate equal to the entire income of every American living west of the Mississippi. If this trend continues, America will gradually sink into the status of a Third World nation -- more unemployment, more shackles on production, more poverty.
-- John Hospers		 
By far the most numerous and most flagrant violations of personal liberty and individual rights are performed by governments. The major crimes throughout history, the ones executed on the largest scale, have been committed not by individuals or bands of individuals but by governments, as a deliberate policy of those governments, that is, by the official representatives of governments, acting in their official capacity.
-- John Hospers		 
Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), That it is the sense of Congress that it should be a fundamental objective of the foreign policy of the United States to support and strengthen the United Nations and to seek its development into a world federation ...with defined and limited powers adequate to preserve peace and prevent aggression through the enactment, interpretation, and enforcement of world law...
-- House Concurrent Resolution 64		 
Things may be cheaper over the hill, but there is a cost to the community in buying over there, instead of here.
-- Margaret House		 
The house of delusions is cheap to build but drafty to live in, and ready at any instant to fall.
-- A. E. Housman		 
We do nothing controversial. We're not in the investigative business. Our only concern is giving editorial support for our ad projects.
-- Houston Chronicle		 
Nobody should claim that the war [in Iraq] is over. But certainly it can be said that the regime is finished.
-- John Howard		 
Coercion by government, the main fear of our founding fathers, is now its most common attribute.
-- Philip K. Howard		 
The liberty of the press is most generally approved when it takes liberties with the other fellow, and leaves us alone.
-- Edgar Watson Howe		 
The freedom of the press is one of the great bulwarks of liberty, and can never be restrained but by despotic government.
-- Edgar Watson Howe		 
I express many absurd opinions. But I am not the first man to do it; American freedom consists largely in talking nonsense.
-- Edgar Watson Howe		 
These are the rules of big business... Get a monopoly; let society work for you; and remember that the best of all business is politics...
-- Frederick C. Howe		 
Men are not punished for their sins, but by them.
-- Elbert Hubbard		 
The man who craves disciples and wants followers is always more or less of a charlatan. The man of genuine worth and insight wants to be himself; and he wants others to be themselves, also.
-- Elbert Hubbard		 
There is no freedom on earth or in any star for those who deny freedom to others.
-- Elbert Hubbard		 
Parties who want milk should not seat themselves on a stool in the middle of a field in hope that the cow will back up to them.
-- Elbert Hubbard		 
Every man is a damn fool for at least five minutes every day; wisdom consists in not exceeding the limit.
-- Elbert Hubbard		 
Truth, in its struggles for recognition, passes through four distinct stages. First, we say it is damnable, dangerous, disorderly, and will surely disrupt society. Second, we declare it is heretical, infidelic and contrary to the Bible. Third, we say it is really a matter of no importance either one way or the other. Fourth, we aver that we have always upheld it and believed it.
-- Elbert Hubbard		 
Honesty pays, but it don't seem to pay enough to suit some people.
-- Frank McKinney Hubbard		 
Now and then an innocent man is sent to the legislature.
-- Frank McKinney Hubbard		 
Now and then an innocent man is sent to the legislature.
-- Kin Hubbard		 
Why doesn't the fellow who says "I'm no speechmaker" let it go at that instead of giving a demonstration?
-- Kin Hubbard		 
l'd like to start a religion. That's where the money is.
-- L. Ron Hubbard		 
I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution, but I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living god. And that's what we need to do -- to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards so it lines up with some contemporary view of how we treat each other and how we treat the family.
-- Mike Huckabee		 
That is reserved expressly to the States and is not granted to the Federal Government by our national charter. The Federal Government has nothing to do under the Constitution with the preservation of public order. To pass this bill is to pass a bill for an unconstitutional purpose, under the guise of regulating interstate commerce.
-- George Huddleston		 
Historically, much of the motivation for public schooling has been to stifle variety and institute social control.
-- Jack Hugh		 
Historically, much of the motivation for public schooling has been to stifle variety and institute social control.
-- Jack Hugh		 
Our institutions were not devised to bring about uniformity of opinion; if they had we might well abandon hope. It is important to remember, as has well been said, 'the essential characteristic of true liberty is that under its shelter many different types of life and character and opinion and belief can develop unmolested and unobstructed.'
-- Justice Charles Evans Hughes		 
A man has to live with himself, and he should see to it that he always has good company.
-- Charles Evans Hughes		 
While democracy must have its organizations and controls, its vital breath is individual liberty.
-- Justice Charles Evans Hughes		 
When we lose the right to be different, we lose the privilege to be free.
-- Justice Charles Evans Hughes		 
It is the essence of the institutions of liberty that it be recognized that guilt is personal and cannot be attributed to the holding of opinions or to mere intent in the absence of overt acts.
-- Justice Charles Evans Hughes		 
Emergency does not create power. Emergency does not increase granted power or remove or diminish the restrictions imposed upon power granted or reserved. The Constitution was adopted in a period of grave emergency. Its grants of power to the federal government and its limitations of the power of the States were determined in the light of emergency, and they are not altered by emergency.
-- Justice Charles Evans Hughes		 
When we lose the right to be different, we lose the privilege to be free.
-- Justice Charles Evans Hughes		 
The Constitution is what the judges say it is.
-- Justice Charles Evans Hughes		 
A man has to live with himself, and he should see to it that he always has good company.
-- Justice Charles Evans Hughes		 
The liberty of the press is not confined to newspapers and periodicals. It necessarily embraces pamphlets and leaflets. These indeed have been historic weapons in the defense of liberty, as the pamphlets of Thomas Paine and others in our history abundantly attest.
-- Justice Charles Evans Hughes		 
The greater the importance to safeguarding the community from incitements to the overthrow of our institutions by force and violence, the more imperative is the need to preserve the constitutional rights of free speech, free press and free assembly in order to maintain the opportunity for free political discussion.
-- Justice Charles Evans Hughes		 
The right to comment freely and criticize the action, opinions, and judgment of courts is of primary importance to the public generally. Not only is it good for the public; but it has a salutary effect on courts and judges as well.
-- James P. Hughes		 
We have entered a period of intolerance which combines, as it sometimes does in America, with a sugary taste for euphemism.
-- Robert Hughes		 
Freedom in art, freedom in society, this is the double goal towards which all consistent and logical minds must strive.
-- Victor Hugo		 
Have no fear of robbers or murderers.  They are external dangers, petty dangers.  We should fear ourselves.  Prejudices are the real robbers; vices the real murders.  The great dangers are within us.  Why worry about what threatens our heads or purses?  Let us think instead of what threatens our souls.
-- Victor Hugo		 
Liberation is not deliverance.
-- Victor Hugo		 
[G]overnment theft of private money and redistribution by a government elite is communism not democracy. ... Communism has already been tried for over 70 years, and it doesn't work because people work to support themselves, not their neighbors. When the rewards are confiscated and redistributed to others, people produce less or stop producing altogether. The quantity of "goods in common" declines until the system finally collapses and everybody is hungry, not just "the poor." Then totalitarianism steps in to force people to produce (ask the Russians, the Poles, the Estonians).
-- Don Hull		 
Fiat-money systems tend to make people insatiable in their quest for ever higher monetary returns on their investments,
-- Jorg Guido Hulsmann		 
You can imagine, then, how this inflation and debt-based system, over time, will begin to change the culture of a society and its behavior. We become more materialistic than under a natural monetary system. We can’t just sit on our savings anymore, and we have to watch our investments constantly, and think about revenue constantly, because if it is not earning enough, we are actively getting poorer.
-- Jorg Guido Hulsmann		 
In a fiat money society you are more likely to increase your returns by remaining in debt and continuing to chase monetary revenue indefinitely by leveraging more and more funds.
-- Jorg Guido Hulsmann		 
It's OK to lie. It's OK to steal. It's OK to have premarital sex. It's OK to cheat or to kill if these things are part of your value system, and you clarified these values for yourself. The important thing is not what values you choose, but that you have chosen them for yourself and without coercion of parents, spouse, priest, friends, ministers or social pressure of any kind.
-- Humanist Curriculum		 
We have reached a turning point in human history where the best option is to transcend the limits of national sovereignty and to move towards the building of a world community...
-- Humanist Manifesto (Article 12)		 
We deplore the division of humankind on nationalistic grounds. We have reached a turning point in human history where the best option is to transcend the limits of national sovereignty and to move towards the building of a world community. We look toward the development of a system of world law, world order, based upon transnational government.
-- Humanist Manifesto, Article 12		 
Nothing appears more surprising to those who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the ease with which the many are governed by the few.
-- David Hume		 
Everything in the world is purchased by labor.
-- David Hume		 
It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once.
-- David Hume		 
Southerners did not stop with an open defense of slavery. They went on to attack northern society for its 'wage slavery' and 'exploitation of workers,' using arguments repeated by socialist critics of capitalism. The southern writer who developed these arguments most extensively was George Fitzhugh, a Virginia planter and lawyer. His two books were provocatively entitled Sociology for the South: Or the Failure of the Free Society and Cannibals All! Or Slaves Without Masters. In them, Fitzhugh defended slavery as a practical form of socialism that provided contented slaves with paternalistic masters, thereby eliminating harsh conflicts between employers and allegedly free workers. 'A Southern farm is the beau ideal of Communism; it is a joint concern, in which the slave ... is far happier, because ... he is always sure of support.' ... 'The best governed countries, and which have prospered the most, have always been distinguished for the number and stringency of their laws,' he wrote; 'liberty is an evil which government is intended to correct.'
-- Jeffrey Rogers Hummel		 
Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of citizens to keep and bear arms. This is not to say that firearms should not be very carefully used and that definite safety rules of precaution should not be taught and enforced. But the right of citizens to bear arms is just one more guarantee against arbitrary government, and one more safeguard against tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible.
-- Hubert H. Humphrey		 
The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.
-- Hubert H. Humphrey		 
Freedom is the most contagious virus known to man.
-- Hubert H. Humphrey		 
There are incalculable resources in the human spirit, once it has been set free.
-- Hubert H. Humphrey		 
If [anyone] can find in Title VII ... any language which provides that an employer will have to hire on the basis of percentage or quota related to color, race, religion, or national origin, I will start eating the pages one after another, because it is not in there.
-- Hubert H. Humphrey		 
Freedom is hammered out on the anvil of discussion, dissent and debate.
-- Hubert H. Humphrey		 
The ugliness of bigotry stands in direct contradiction to the very meaning of America.
-- Hubert H. Humphrey		 
There are not enough jails, not enough policemen, not enough courts to enforce a law not supported by the people.
-- Hubert H. Humphrey		 
None of us would trade freedom of expression for the narrowness of the public censor. America is a free market for people who have something to say, and need not fear to say it.
-- Hubert H. Humphrey		 
All children behave as well as they are treated.
-- Jan Hunt		 
Gun control is part and parcel of the ongoing collectivist effort to eviscerate individual sovereignty and replace it with dependence upon and allegiance to the state.
-- Lawrence Hunter		 
Some of the problems of governance in the United States today stem from an excess of democracy ... The effective operation of a democratic political system usually requires some measure of apathy and non-involvement on the part of some individuals and groups.
-- Samuel Huntington		 
How a politician stands on the Second Amendment tells you how he or she views you as an individual… as a trustworthy and productive citizen, or as part of an unruly crowd that needs to be lorded over, controlled, supervised, and taken care of.
-- Suzanna Gratia Hupp		 
Of course drugs were fun. And that's what's so stupid about anti-drug campaigns: they don't admit that. I can't say I feel particularly scarred or lessened by my experimentation with drugs. They've gotten a very bad name.
-- Anjelica Huston		 
A civilization in which there is not a continuous controversy about important issues…is on the way to totalitarianism and death.
-- Robert M. Hutchins		 
The policy of the repression of ideas cannot work and never has worked. The alternative to it is the long difficult road of education. To this the American people have committed.
-- Robert M. Hutchins		 
Education is a kind of continuing dialogue, and a dialogue assumes different points of view.
-- Robert M. Hutchins		 
The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.
-- Robert M. Hutchins		 
Education is not to reform students or amuse them or to make them expert technicians. It is to unsettle their minds, widen their horizons, inflame their intellects, teach them to think straight, if possible.
-- Robert M. Hutchins		 
Morality is always the product of terror; its chains and strait-waistcoats are fashioned by those who dare not trust others, because they dare not trust themselves, to walk in liberty.
-- Aldous Huxley		 
A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude. To make them love it is the task assigned, in present-day totalitarian states, to ministries of propaganda, newspaper editors and schoolteachers.... The greatest triumphs of propaganda have been accomplished, not by doing something, but by refraining from doing. Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth.
-- Aldous Huxley		 


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