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Famous Quotes about Liberty
 
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The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.
-- Dr. Samuel Johnson		 
Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.
-- Dr. Samuel Johnson		 
All theory is against freedom of the will; all experience for it.
-- Dr. Samuel Johnson		 
In questions of law or of fact conscience is very often confounded with opinion. No man’s conscience can tell him the rights of another man; they must be known by rational investigation or historical inquiry.
-- Dr. Samuel Johnson		 
Knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.
-- Dr. Samuel Johnson		 
Be not too hasty to trust or admire the teachers of morality; they discourse like angels but they live like men.
-- Dr. Samuel Johnson		 
There is no crime more infamous than the violation of truth. It is apparent that men can be social beings no longer than they believe each other. When speech is employed only as the vehicle of falsehood, every man must disunite himself from others, inhabit his own cave and seek prey only for himself.
-- Dr. Samuel Johnson		 
Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intelligence.
-- Dr. Samuel Johnson		 
To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labor tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.
-- Samuel Johnson		 
Few enterprises of great labor or hazard would be undertaken if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages we expect from them.
-- Samuel Johnson		 
The people are not to be disarmed of their weapons. They are left in full possession of them.
-- Zachariah Johnson		 
The issue isn't gun control but state control -- obtuse and arbitrary state control, state control run amok. ... Forget guns. If Dr. Hudson, Mr. Turnbull, Dr. Gingrich and others end up in jail it won't be for their guns but our liberties.
-- George Jonas		 
[Censors are] people with secret attractions to various temptations... They are defending themselves under the pretext of defending others, because at heart they fear their own weaknesses.
-- Ernest Jones		 
Persecution is the first law of society because it is always easier to suppress criticism than to meet it.
-- Howard Mumford Jones		 
An honorable Peace is and always was my first wish! I can take no delight in the effusion of human Blood; but, if this War should continue, I wish to have the most active part in it.
-- John Paul Jones		 
Wisdom is knowing what to do next; virtue is doing it.
-- David Starr Jordan		 
There seemed to be no lengths to which some American officials would not go in aiding Russia to master the secret of nuclear fission.
-- Major George Racey Jordan		 
Let me be a free man, free to travel, free to stop, free to work, free to trade where I choose, free to choose my own teachers, free to follow the religion of my fathers, free to talk, think and act for myself -- and I will obey every law or submit to the penalty.
-- Chief Joseph		 
I believe much trouble and blood would be saved if we opened our hearts more. I will tell you in my way how the Indian sees things. The white man has more words to tell you how they look to him, but it does not require many words to speak the truth. If the white man wants to live in peace with the Indian... we can live in peace. There need be no trouble. Treat all men alike.... give them all the same law. Give them all an even chance to live and grow. You might as well expect the rivers to run backward as that any man who is born a free man should be contented when penned up and denied liberty to go where he pleases. We only ask an even chance to live as other men live. We ask to be recognized as men. Let me be a free man...free to travel... free to stop...free to work...free to choose my own teachers...free to follow the religion of my Fathers...free to think and talk and act for myself.
-- Chief Joseph		 
It does not require many words to speak the truth.
-- Chief Joseph		 
There are some acts of justice which corrupt those who perform them.
-- Joseph Joubert		 
People often say that, in a democracy, decisions are made by a majority of the people. Of course, that is not true. Decisions are made by a majority of those who make themselves heard and who vote -- a very different thing.
-- Walter H. Judd		 
One should be suspicious of “love” as a political slogan. A government which purports to “love” its citizens invariably desires all the prerogatives of a lover: to share the loved one’s thoughts and keep him in bondage.
-- Eric Julber		 
Rational argument can be conducted with some prospect of success only so long as the emotionality of a given situation does not exceed a certain critical degree. If the affective temperature rises above this level, the possibility of reason’s having any effect ceases and its place is taken by slogans and chimerical wish fantasies. That is to say, a sort of collective possession results which rapidly develops into a psychic epidemic.
-- Carl Jung		 
Sentimentality is a superstructure covering brutality.
-- Carl Gustav Jung		 
A shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases.
-- Carl Gustav Jung		 
Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism.
-- Carl Gustav Jung		 
Whenever justice is uncertain and police spying and terror are at work, human beings fall into isolation, which, of course, is the aim and purpose of the dictator state, since it is based on the greatest possible accumulation of depotentiated social units.
-- Carl Gustav Jung		 
Resistance to the organized mass can be effected only by the man who is as well organized in his individuality as the mass itself.
-- Carl Gustav Jung		 
The Liberty of the press is the Palladium of all the civil, political and religious rights of an Englishman.
-- Junius		 
It is not the disease, but the physician; it is the pernicious hand of government alone which can reduce a whole people to despair.
-- Junius		 
Now that no one buys our votes, the public has long since cast off its cares; for the people that once bestowed commands, consulships, legions, and all else, now meddles no more and longs eagerly for just two things -- bread and circuses.
-- Juvenal		 
Count it the greatest sin to prefer life to honor, and for the sake of living to lose what makes life worth having.
-- Juvenal		 
Quis costodiet ipsos custodies? (Who will watch the watchers?)
-- Juvenal		 
Who will stand guard to the guards themselves?
-- Juvenal		 
It seems as if the Department [of Justice] sees the value of the Bill of Rights as no more than obstacles to be overcome.
-- Prof. Sanford H. Kadish		 
I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us.
-- Franz Kafka		 
You are free and that is why you are lost.
-- Franz Kafka		 
It's often safer to be in chains than to be free.
-- Franz Kafka		 
For a list of all the ways technology has failed to improve the quality of life, please press 3.
-- Alice Kahn		 
The multiple human needs and desires that demand privacy among two or more people in the midst of social life must inevitably lead to cryptology wherever men thrive and wherever they write.
-- David Kahn		 
As so often before, liberty has been wounded in the house of its friends. Liberty in the wild and freakish hands of fanatics has once more, as frequently in the past, proved the effective helpmate of autocracy and the twin-brother of tyranny.
-- Otto Hermann Kahn		 
The deadliest foe of democracy is not autocracy but liberty frenzied. Liberty is not foolproof. For its beneficent working it demands self-restraint, a sane and clear recognition of the practical and attainable, and of the fact that there are laws of nature which are beyond our power to change.
-- Otto Hermann Kahn		 
The deadliest foe of democracy is not autocracy but liberty frenzied.
-- Otto Hermann Kahn		 
Persecution, whenever it occurs, establishes only the power and cunning of the persecutor, not the truth and worth of his belief.
-- H. M. Kallen		 
It is a paradox of modern life that speech, although highly prized, enjoys its great protection in part because it is so often of no concern to anyone. To an alarming degree, tolerance depends not on principle, but on indifference.
-- Harry Kalven, Jr.		 
Seditious libel is the doctrine that flourished in England during and after the Star Chamber. It is the hallmark of closed societies throughout the world. Under it criticism of government is viewed as defamation and punished as a crime.
-- Harry Kalven, Jr.		 
The bad thing of war is, that it makes more evil people than it can take away.
-- Immanuel Kant		 
Freedom is independence of the compulsory will of another, and in so far as it tends to exist with the freedom of all according to a universal law, it is the one sole original inborn right belonging to every man in virtue of his humanity.
-- Immanuel Kant		 
Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.
-- Immanuel Kant		 
War itself requires no special motive but appears to be engrafted on human nature; it passes even for something noble, to which the love of glory impels men quite apart from any selfish urges. Thus among the American savages, just as much as among those of Europe during the age of chivalry, military valor is held to be of great worth in itself, not only during war (which is natural) but in order that there should be war. Often war is waged only in order to show valor; thus an inner dignity is ascribed to war itself, and even some philosophers have praised it as an ennoblement of humanity, forgetting the pronouncement of the Greek who said, "War is an evil inasmuch as it produces more wicked men than it takes away." So much for the measures nature takes to lead the human race, considered as a class of animals, to her own end.
-- Immanuel Kant		 
The human heart refuses to believe in a universe without purpose.
-- Immanuel Kant		 
The greatest problem for the human species, the solution of which nature compels him to seek, is that of attaining a civil society which can administer justice universally.
-- Immanuel Kant		 
The function of the true state is to impose the minimum restrictions and safeguard the maximum liberties of the people, and it never regards the person as a thing.
-- Immanuel Kant		 
Freedom is alone the unoriginated birthright of man; it belongs to him by force of his humanity, and is in dependence on the will and coaction of every other, in so far as this consists with every other person's freedom.
-- Immanuel Kant		 
The enjoyment of power inevitably corrupts the judgment of reason, and perverts its liberty.
-- Immanuel Kant		 
It is not necessary that whilst I live I live happily; but it is necessary that so long as I live I should live honourably.
-- Immanuel Kant		 
Everyone may seek his own happiness in the way that seems good to himself, provided that he infringe not such freedom of others to strive after a similar end as is consistent with the freedom of all according to a possible general law.
-- Immanuel Kant		 
GATT represents the New World Order in trade.
-- Mickey Kantor		 
Give a small boy a hammer and he will find that everything he encounters needs pounding.
-- Abraham Kaplan		 
Drug offenses ... may be regarded as the prototypes of non-victim crimes today. The private nature of the sale and use of these drugs has led the police to resort to methods of detection and surveillance that intrude upon our privacy, including illegal search, eavesdropping, and entrapment. Indeed, the successful prosecution of such cases often requires police infringement of the constitutional protections that safeguard the privacy of individuals.
-- John Kaplan		 
We simply do not catch a high enough percentage of users to make the law a real threat, although we do catch enough to seriously overburden our legal system.
-- John Kaplan		 
It is, therefore, a fact of law and of practical necessity that individuals are responsible for their own personal safety, and that of their loved ones. Police protection must be recognized for what it is: only an auxiliary general deterrent.
-- Peter Alan Kasler		 
Ironically, the only gun control in 19th century England was the policy forbidding police to have arms while on duty.
-- Don B. Kates, Jr.		 
Americans have an extraordinary love-hate relationship with the rich culture they’ve created. They buy, watch and read it even as they ban, block and condemn it.
-- Jon Katz		 
Simply according artistic works the same protection as nonartistic works may not be sufficient to protect creativity. After all, the very essence of artistic expression is invention and artists necessarily draw on their own experience. But if the rules of liability are unclear, artists will not be able to know how much disguise is sufficient to protect their claims from the claims of those who may see themselves in the portrayals.
-- Irving Kaufman		 
Professionalism implies knowledge based in evidence, not in authority. Such lines are blurred in the era of identity politics and the normalization of pseudo-disciplines such as Gender Studies, Black Studies, Queer Studies, Fat Studies, Disability Studies, Chicano Studies and White Studies and Indigenous Studies, all of which are taught based on the “authority” of Marxism, and all of whose primary purpose is to demonize “oppressors” – the “patriarchy,” white “colonialists” and the U.S. in general – and to recruit activists for organized perpetuation of the identity grievance industry.
-- Barbara Kay		 
Monetary policy today is guided by little more than government fiat -- by the calculations, often mistaken economic theories, and whims of central bankers or, even worse, politicians. Under such a regime, inflation of three or four percent annually has come to be viewed as a stellar monetary performance. However, under a more sound monetary system -- i.e., a gold standard -- such increases in the general price level would be seen as wildly inflationary.
-- Raymond J. Keating		 
Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced -- even a proverb is no proverb to you till your life has illustrated it.
-- John Keats		 
In the long vista of the years to roll,\\ Let me not see my country's honor fade;\\ Oh! let me see our land retain its soul!\\ Her pride in Freedom, and not Freedom's shade.
-- John Keats		 
Beauty is truth, truth beauty," That is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
-- John Keats		 
Any philosophy worth considering must attempt to account for the existence of evil in the world.
-- Elie Kedourie		 
My ancestors were Puritans from England. They arrived here in 1648 in the hope of finding greater restrictions than were permissible under English law at that time.
-- Garrison Keillor		 
You taught me to be nice, so nice that now I am so full of niceness, I have no sense of right and wrong, no outrage, no passion.
-- Garrison Keillor		 
As long as man remains an inquiring animal, there can never be a complete unanimity in our fundamental beliefs. The more diverse our paths, the greater is likely to be the divergence of beliefs.
-- Sir Arthur Keith		 


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