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Famous Quotes about Liberty
 
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At the heart of western freedom and democracy is the belief that the individual man... is the touchstone of value, and all society, groups, the state, exist for his benefit. Therefore the enlargement of liberty for individual human beings must be the supreme goal and abiding practice of any western society.
-- Robert F. Kennedy		 
If our constitution had followed the style of Saint Paul, the First Amendment might have concluded: “But the greatest of these is speech.” In the darkness of tyranny, this is the key to the sunlight. If it is granted, all doors open. If it is withheld, none.
-- Robert F. Kennedy		 
The problem of power is how to achieve its responsible use rather than its irresponsible and indulgent use -- of how to get men of power to live for the public rather than off the public.
-- Robert F. Kennedy		 
The intolerant man will not rely on persuasion, or on the worth of the idea. He would deny to others the very freedom of opinion or of dissent which he so stridently demands for himself. He cannot trust democracy.
-- Robert F. Kennedy		 
All of us will ultimately be judged on the effort we have contributed to building a new world order.
-- Robert F. Kennedy		 
What is objectionable, what is dangerous about extremists is not that they are extreme, but that they are intolerant. The evil is not what they say about their cause, but what they say about their opponents.
-- Robert F. Kennedy		 
Absolute, arbitrary power over the lives, liberty and property of freemen exists nowhere in a republic, not even in the largest majority.
-- Kentucky Declaration of Rights - Art. I, Sec. 2		 
The Governor is hereby authorized to enlist, organize, maintain, equip, discipline and pay when called into active field service a volunteer state defense force other than the National Guard...
-- Kentucky Revised Statutes		 
But to be in conflict with the constitution, it is not essential that the act should contain a prohibition against bearing arms in every possible form—it is the right to bear arms in defence of the citizens and the state, that is secured by the constitution, and whatever restrains the full and complete exercise of that right, though not an entire destruction of it, is forbidden by the explicit language of the constitution. If, therefore, the act in question imposes any restraint on the right, immaterial what appellation may be given to the act, whether it be an act regulating the manner of bearing arms or any other, the consequence, in reference to the constitution, is precisely the same, and its collision with that instrument equally obvious. ... The right existed at the adoption of the constitution; it had then no limits short of the moral power of the citizens to exercise it, and it in fact consisted in nothing else but in the liberty of the citizens to bear arms. Diminish that liberty, therefore, and you necessarily restrain the right; ... For, in principle, there is no difference between a law prohibiting the wearing [of] concealed arms, and a law forbidding the wearing such as are exposed; and if the former is unconstitutional, the latter must be so likewise.
-- Kentucky Supreme Court		 
That this House considers that the continued issue of all the means of exchange -- be they coin, bank-notes or credit, largely passed on by cheques -- by private firms as an interest-bearing debt against the public should cease forthwith; that the Sovereign power and duty of issuing money in all forms should be returned to the Crown, then to be put into circulation free of all debt and interest obligations...
-- Captain Henry Kerby		 
The Founding Fathers of this great land had no difficulty whatsoever understanding the agenda of bankers, and they frequently referred to them and their kind as, quote, 'friends of paper money.' They hated the Bank of England, in particular, and felt that even were we successful in winning our independence from England and King George, we could never truly be a nation of freemen, unless we had an honest money system. Through ignorance, but moreover, because of apathy, a small, but wealthy, clique of power brokers have robbed us of our Rights and Liberties, and we are being raped of our wealth. We are paying the price for the near-comatose levels of complacency by our parents, and only God knows what might become of our children, should we not work diligently to shake this country from its slumber! Many a nation has lost its freedom at the end of a gun barrel, but here in America, we just decided to hand it over voluntarily. Worse yet, we paid for the tyranny and usurpation out of our own pockets with "voluntary" tax contributions and the use of a debt-laden fiat currency!
-- Peter Kershaw		 
Take what you can use and let the rest go by.
-- Ken Kesey		 
In truth, attempts to regulate the civilian possession of firearms have five political functions. They (1) increase citizen reliance on government and tolerance of increased police powers and abuse; (2) help prevent opposition to the government; (3) facilitate repressive action by government and its allies; (4) lessen the pressure for major or radical reform; and (5) can be selectively enforced against those perceived to be a threat to government.
-- Raymond G. Kessler		 
...you must take the problem as it is, and let it be what it wants to be.
-- Charles F. Kettering		 
Whenever you look at a piece of work and you think the fellow was crazy, then you want to pay some attention to that. One of you is likely to be, and you better find out which one it is. It makes an awful lot of difference.
-- Charles F. Kettering		 
And there is the point exactly, we are all the time blaming difficulties on to something else. Our real trouble is that we are too soft to solve the problem.
-- Charles F. Kettering		 
My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there.
-- Charles F. Kettering		 
Engineering is thus a combination of brains and material -- the more brains the less material.
-- Charles F. Kettering		 
Character is the accumulated confidence that individual men and women acquire from years of doing the right thing, over and over again, even when they don't feel like it. People with character understand that their lives are filled with events and choices that are significant, above all, not because of the short term success or failure of the search for money or position, but because the choices we make are actually making us into one kind of person, or another. Our life of choices is a life-long labor to make ourselves into a person who has begun to respond adequately to the awesome gift we received from God when He made us in His image.
-- Alan Keyes		 
The act of voting is one opportunity for us to remember that our whole way of life is predicated on the capacity of ordinary people to judge carefully and well.
-- Alan Keyes		 
...[A] prohibition on moral judgments against various sexual behaviors is a violation of the freedom, even of the religious liberty, of those who view such behavior as wrong. If we don't have a right to act according to our religious belief by forming judgments according to those beliefs about human conduct and behavior, then, exactly what does the free exercise of religion mean? Can the free exercise of religion really mean simply that I have the right to believe that God has ordained certain things to be right or wrong but that I can't act accordingly? Surely free exercise means the freedom to act according to belief. And, yet, if we are not allowed to act according to belief when it comes to fundamental moral precepts, then what will be the moral implications of religion? None at all. But if we accept an understanding of religious liberty that doesn't permit us to discriminate the wheat from the chaff in our own actions and those of others, haven't we in fact permitted the government to dictate to us a uniform approach to religion? And, isn't that dictation of uniformity in religion exactly what the First Amendment intended to forbid?
-- Alan Keyes		 
The difficulty lies not in the new ideas but in escaping from the old ones.
-- John Maynard Keynes		 
If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with bank-notes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coal-mines which are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish, and leave it to private enterprise on well-tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again (the right to do so being obtained, of course, by tendering for leases of the note-bearing territory), there need be no more unemployment and, with the help of repercussions, the real income of the community, and its capital wealth, would probably become a good deal greater than it actually is.
-- John Maynard Keynes		 
When I change my mind I say so, what do you do?
-- John Maynard Keynes		 
Those, who are strongly wedded to what I shall call 'the classical theory', will fluctuate, I expect, between a belief that I am quite wrong and a belief that I am saying nothing new. It is for others to determine if either of these or the third alternative is right.
-- John Maynard Keynes		 
Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. … Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.
-- John Maynard Keynes		 
By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.
-- John Maynard Keynes		 
If, however, a government refrains from regulations and allows matters to take their course, essential commodities soon attain a level of price out of the reach of all but the rich, the worthlessness of the money becomes apparent, and the fraud upon the public can be concealed no longer.
-- John Maynard Keynes		 
Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalistic System was to debauch the currency. . . Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million can diagnose.
-- John Maynard Keynes		 
Government machinery has been described as a marvelous labor saving device which enables ten men to do the work of one.
-- John Maynard Keynes		 
Government machinery has been described as a marvelous labor saving device which enables ten men to do the work of one.
-- John Maynard Keynes		 
The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that carries any reward.
-- John Maynard Keynes		 
The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth -- he could at the same time and by the same means adventure his wealth in the natural resources and new enterprise of any quarter of the world -- he could secure forthwith, if he wished, cheap and comfortable means of transit to any country or climate without passport or other formality.
-- John Maynard Keynes		 
A man’s greatest pleasure is to defeat his enemies, to drive them before him, to take from them that which they possessed, to see those whom they cherished in tears, to ride their horses, and to hold their wives and daughters in his arms.
-- Genghis Khan		 
Words that enlighten are more precious than jewels.
-- Hazrat Inayat Khan		 
The moving finger writes; and having writ moves on. Nor all your piety nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all your tears wash out a word of it.
-- Omar Khayyam		 
Indeed the Idols I have loved so long,\\ have done my credit in this World much wrong;\\ have drowned my Glory in a shallow Cup,\\ and sold my Reputation for a Song.
-- Omar Khayyam		 
Society cannot leap into Communism from capitalism without going through a socialist stage of development.
-- Nikita Khrushchev		 
Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even where there is no river.
-- Nikita Khrushchev		 
We cannot expect the American People to jump from Capitalism to Communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving them small doses of Socialism, until they awaken one day to find that they have Communism.
-- Nikita Khrushchev (Questionable)		 
Comrades!  We must abolish the cult of the individual decisively, once and for all.
-- Nikita Khrushchev		 
Comrades!  We must abolish the cult of the individual decisively, once and for all.
-- Nikita S. Khrushchev		 
Your children’s children will live under communism. You Americans are so gullible. No, you won’t accept Communism outright, but we’ll keep feeding you small doses of Socialism until you will finally wake up and find that you already have Communism. We won’t have to fight you; We’ll so weaken your economy, until you fall like overripe fruit into our hands.
-- Nikita Khrushschev		 
The Rules for Liberty\\\\ 1) Don’t hurt people: Free people just want to be left alone, not hassled or harmed by someone else with an agenda or designs over their life and property.\\ 2) Don’t take people’s stuff: America’s founders fought to ensure property rights and our individual right to the fruits of our labors.\\ 3) Take responsibility: Liberty takes responsibility. Don’t sit around waiting for someone else to solve your problems.\\ 4) Work for it: For every action there is an equal reaction. Work hard and you’ll be rewarded.\\ 5) Mind your own business: Free people live and let live.\\ 6) Fight the power: Thanks to the Internet and the decentralization of knowledge, there are more opportunities than ever to take a stand against corrupt authority.
-- Matt Kibbe		 
People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid.
-- Soren Kierkegaard		 
Truth always rests with the minority, and the minority is always stronger than the majority, because the minority is generally formed by those who really have an opinion, while the strength of a majority is illusory, formed by the gangs who have no opinion -- and who, therefore, in the next instant (when it is evident that the minority is the stronger) assume its opinion ... while Truth again reverts to a new minority.
-- Soren Kierkegaard		 
To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily. To not dare is to lose oneself.
-- Soren Kierkegaard		 
People hardly ever make use of the freedom they have, for example, freedom of thought; instead they demand freedom of speech as a compensation.
-- Soren Kierkegaard		 
It is quite true what Philosophy says: that Life must be understood backwards. But that makes one forget the other saying: that it must be lived-forwards. The more one ponders this, the more it comes to mean that life in the temporal existence never becomes quite intelligible, precisely because at no moment can I find complete quiet to take the backward-looking position.
-- Soren Kierkegaard		 
Why did they devise censorship? To show a world which doesn’t exist, an ideal world, or what they envisaged as the ideal world. And we wanted to depict the world as it was.
-- Krzysztof Kieslowski		 
Education is unique among consumer products -- when it fails to work as advertised, it's the customer that gets labelled as defective.
-- Kevin Killion		 
Express everything you like. No word can hurt you. None. No idea can hurt you. Not being able to express an idea or word will hurt you more. Like a bullet.
-- Jamaica Kincaid		 
To ignore evil is to become an accomplice to it.
-- Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.		 
The Negro has no room to make any substantial compromises because his store of advantages is too small. He must press unrelentingly for quality, integrated education or his whole drive for freedom will be undermined by the absence of a most vital and indispensable element -- learning.
-- Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.		 
In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law ... That would lead to anarchy. An individual who breaks a law that his conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.
-- Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.		 
In our struggle against racial segregation in Montgomery, Alabama, I came to see at a very early stage that a synthesis of Gandhi's method of nonviolence and the Christian ethic of love is the best weapon available to Negroes for this struggle for freedom and human dignity. It may well be that the Gandhian approach will bring about a solution to the race problem in America. His spirit is a continual reminder to oppressed people that it is possible to resist evil and yet not resort to violence.
-- Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.		 
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.' ... I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.
-- Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.		 
We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.
-- Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.		 
One of the greatest casualties of the war in Vietnam is the Great Society ... shot down on the battlefield of Vietnam.
-- Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.		 
We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was “legal” and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was “illegal.”
-- Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.		 
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
-- Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.		 
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and consciencious stupidity.
-- Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.		 
One who breaks an unjust law that conscience tells him is unjust ... is in reality expressing the highest respect for law ... We will not obey your evil laws.
-- Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.		 
I have a dream that one day ... the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
-- Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.		 
The soft-minded man always fears change. He feels security in the status quo, and he has an almost morbid fear of the new. For him, the greatest pain is the pain of a new idea.
-- Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.		 
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
-- Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.		 
I never intend to adjust myself to the madness of militarism.
-- Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.		 
The limitation of riots, moral questions aside, is that they cannot win and their participants know it. Hence, rioting is not revolutionary but reactionary because it invites defeat. It involves an emotional catharsis, but it must be followed by a sense of futility.
-- Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.		 
One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws, but conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.
-- Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.		 
It is precisely because education is the road to equality and citizenship, that it has been made more elusive for Negroes than many other rights. The walling off of Negroes from equal education is part of the historical design to submerge him in second class status. Therefore, as Negroes have struggled to be free they have had to fight for the opportunity for a decent education.
-- Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.		 
The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges. But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.
-- Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.		 
We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.
-- Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.		 
A man who won't die for something is not fit to live.
-- Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.		 
When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, 'Free at last! free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!'
-- Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.		 
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.
-- Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.		 


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