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Famous Quotes about Liberty
 
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...for that nothing doth more hurt in a state, than that cunning men pass for wise.
-- Francis Bacon		 
Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.
-- Francis Bacon		 
Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider.
-- Francis Bacon		 
For whatever deserves to exist deserves also to be known, for knowledge is the image of existence, and things mean and splendid exist alike.
-- Sir Francis Bacon		 
Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is.
-- Sir Francis Bacon		 
Knowledge is power.
-- Sir Francis Bacon		 
If money be not thy servant, it will be thy master. The covetous man cannot so properly be said to possess wealth, as that may be said to possess him.
-- Sir Francis Bacon		 
A just fear of an imminent danger, though there be no blow given, is a lawful cause of war.
-- Sir Francis Bacon		 
A forbidden writing is thought to be a certain spark of truth, that flies up in the face of them who seek to tread it out.
-- Sir Francis Bacon		 
Knowledge and human power are synonymous.
-- Sir Francis Bacon		 
They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they see nothing but sea.
-- Sir Francis Bacon		 
One of the Seven [wise men of Greece] was wont to say: That laws were like cobwebs, where the small flies are caught and the great break through.
-- Sir Francis Bacon		 
Liberty of speech invites and provokes liberty to be used again, and so bringeth much to a man’s knowledge.
-- Sir Francis Bacon		 
It is a strange desire to seek power and to lose liberty, or to seek power over others and to lose power over a man's self.
-- Sir Francis Bacon		 
The man who fears no truths has nothing to fear from lies.
-- Sir Francis Bacon		 
Man prefers to believe what he prefers to be true.
-- Sir Francis Bacon		 
There are in fact four very significant stumblingblocks in the way of grasping the truth, which hinder every man however learned, and scarcely allow anyone to win a clear title to wisdom, namely, the example of weak and unworthy authority, longstanding custom, the feeling of the ignorant crowd, and the hiding of our own ignorance while making a display of our apparent knowledge.
-- Roger Bacon		 
Allow me to dispel a myth. People in the Middle East do not hate us for our freedom. They do not hate us for our lifestyle. They hate us because we have spent many years attempting to force them to emulate our lifestyle. The US government overthrew the democratically elected leader of Iran and replaced him with the Shah. The US government gave weapons, intelligence and money to Saddam Hussein. The US government also helped Libyan Col. Qaddafi come to power, propped up the Saudi monarchy and the Egyptian regime, and gave assistance to Osama bin Laden. Most Americans have forgotten these events. But the people of the Middle East will always remember. It was because of American troops in Saudi Arabia, lethal sanctions on Iraq, support for states in serious violation of International Law, and siding with Israel in its dispute with the Palestinians that terrorist leaders were able to recruit those individuals who caused 3,000 Americans to pay the ultimate price on September 11, 2001.
-- Michael Badnarik		 
How bad do things have to get before you do something? Do they have to take away all your property? Do they have to license every activity that you want to engage in? Do they have to start throwing you on cattle cars before you say “now wait a minute, I don’t think this is a good idea.” How long is it going to be before you finally resist and say “No, I will not comply. Period!” Ask yourself now because sooner or later you are going to come to that line, and when they cross it, you’re going to say well now cross this line; ok now cross that line; ok now cross this line. Pretty soon you’re in a corner. Sooner or later you’ve got to stand your ground whether anybody else does or not. That is what liberty is all about.
-- Michael Badnarik		 
The Democrats and Republicans stand at two extremes, characterized by which parts of our lives they emphasize their desire to control.  Libertarians reject both extremes in favor of the government leaving control of your life to you.
-- Michael Badnarik		 
I have the right to do whatever I wish with my property. If I own a pile of wood, I can set fire to it even if it is currently nailed together in the shape of a barn. Cigarettes may not be healthy for me in the long run, but I have the freedom to smoke them anyway. Drinking alcohol may or may not have negative side effects, but even if it does, the government has no authority to prohibit you from consuming it, even if it is "in your own best interest." Since when do we let the government decide what is or isn't good for us? What the hell does Congress know about nutrition, anyway? (For that matter, what does Congress know about the Constitution?) If the government can use force whenever something is "in our best interest" then government should force everyone to wake up at 6am every morning for calisthenics in the front yard. Fast food establishments should be torn down and replaced with bars that serve carrot juice and alfalfa sprouts, since - "it's in your best interest." This paternalistic attitude that "the government knows best" and that you are merely a helpless child is insulting and reprehensible. Hitler used the same attitude to persuade the Germans to subjugate themselves to the "Fatherland.
-- Michael Badnarik		 
If I give you a forty five percent chance at lethal injection, a fifty percent chance at the electric chair, and a five percent chance for escape which are you going to vote for? The electric chair, because you're likely to win?
-- Michael Badnarik		 
Letting a maximum number of views be heard regularly is not just a nice philosophical notion. It is the best way any society has yet discovered to detect maladjustments quickly, to correct injustices, and to discover new ways to meet our continuing stream of novel problems that rise in a changing environment.
-- Ben H. Bagdikian		 
In the US, voters cast ballots for individual candidates who are not bound to any party program except rhetorically, and not always then. Some Republicans are more liberal than some Democrats, some libertarians are more radical than some socialists, and many local candidates run without any party identification. No American citizen can vote intelligently without knowledge of the ideas, political background, and commitments of each individual candidate.
-- Ben H. Bagdikian		 
So long as there are earnest believers in the world, they will always wish to punish opinions, even if their judgment tells them it is unwise and their conscience tells them it is wrong.
-- Walter Bagehot		 
A democratic despotism is like a theocracy: it assumes its own correctness.
-- Walter Bagehot		 
The cardinal maxim is, that any aid to a present bad Bank is the surest mode of preventing the establishment of a future good Bank.
-- Walter Bagehot		 
Persecution in intellectual countries produces a superficial conformity, but also underneath an intense, incessant, implacable doubt.
-- Walter Bagehot		 
The freedom to share one’s insights and judgments verbally or in writing is, just like the freedom to think, a holy and inalienable right of humanity that, as a universal human right, is above all the rights of princes.
-- Carl Friedrich Bahrdt		 
Can any of you seriously say the Bill of Rights could get through Congress today? It wouldn't even get out of committee.
-- F. Lee Bailey		 
The people who burned witches at the stake never for one moment thought of their act as violence; rather they thought of it as an act of divinely mandated righteousness. The same can be said of most of the violence we humans have ever committed.
-- Gil Bailie		 
The freedom allowed in the United States to all sorts of inquiry and discussion necessarily leads to a diversity of opinion, which is seen not only in there being different denominations, but different opinions also in the same denomination.
-- Robert Baird		 
Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things.
-- Russell Baker		 
The communism of Marx seeks a strong state centralization, and where this exists, there the parasitic Jewish nation -- which speculates upon the labor of people - will always find the means for its existence.
-- Mikhail Bakunin		 
Intellectual slavery, of whatever nature it may be, will always have as a natural result both political and social slavery.
-- Mikhail A. Bakunin		 
The right to unite freely and to separate freely is the first and most important of all political rights.
-- Mikhail A. Bakunin		 
Liberty means that a man is recognized as free and treated as free by those who surround him.
-- Mikhail A. Bakunin		 
Freedom, morality, and the human dignity of the individual consists precisely in this; that he does good not because he is forced to do so, but because he freely conceives it, wants it, and loves it.
-- Mikhail A. Bakunin		 
Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch.
-- James Baldwin		 
Freedom is not something that can be given. Freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be.
-- James Baldwin		 
The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.
-- James Baldwin		 
I am for socialism, disarmament, and ultimately, for abolishing the state itself. … Communism is the goal.
-- Roger Baldwin		 
I joined. I don’t regret being a part of the Communist tactic, which increased the effectiveness of a good cause. I knew what I was doing. I was not an innocent liberal. I wanted what the Communists wanted.
-- Roger Baldwin		 
The power of authority is never more subtle and effective than when it produces a psychological “atmosphere” or “climate” favorable to the life of certain modes of belief, unfavorable, and even fatal, to the life of others.
-- Arthur Balfour		 
In fact, the big corporations who understand the regulatory game can actually benefit from it. They can lobby for expensive regulations only the largest corporations can afford, effectively keeping upstarts and competitors at bay.
-- Radley Balko		 
Weary the path that does not challenge. Doubt is an incentive to truth and patient inquiry leadeth the way.
-- Hosea Ballou		 
The oppression of any people for opinion’s sake has rarely had any other effect than to fix those opinions deeper, and render them more important.
-- Hosea Ballou		 
Madison, agreeing with the journal of the convention, records that the grant of power to emit bills of credit was refused by a majority of more than four to one. The evidence is perfect; no power to emit paper money was granted to the legislature of the United States.
-- George Bancroft		 
Gun control has proved to be a grievous failure, a means of disarming honest citizens without limiting firepower available to those who prey on the law-abiding. Attempting to use the legal system to punish the weapon rather than the person misusing the weapon is similarly doomed to fail.
-- Doug Bandow		 
[E]conomic liberty and creative entrepreneurship are the basis of any solution to today’s social and economic difficulties. Blaming business, setting wages, and attempting to run the economy by decree from Washington only exacerbates the problems. Consider the minimum wage. It seems so simple: Tell business to pay its workers more. But a hike in the minimum wage is essentially a tax, punishing precisely those companies that hire workers with the least skills.
-- Doug Bandow		 
[R]eal charity doesn’t mean giving away someone else’s money.
-- Doug Bandow		 
Being paid by the government to shelve books in a library, whether as an employee or as an Americorps member, is no more laudable or valuable than being paid by Crown Books to stock bookshelves in a bookstore. A host of private-sector jobs provide enormous public benefits—consider health care professionals, medical and scientific researchers, entrepreneurs, inventors, and artists. Many of these people earn less than they could in alternative work; they have chosen to serve in their own way. Yet government programs that equate public employment with service to society effectively denigrate service through private employment.
-- Doug Bandow		 
The history of the welfare state is the history of public enterprise pushing out private organization. The impact was largely unintentional, but natural and inevitable. Higher taxes left individuals with less money to give; government’s assumption of responsibility for providing welfare shriveled the perceived duty of individuals to respond to their neighbors’ needs; and the availability of public programs gave recipients an alternative to private assistance, one which did not challenge recipients to reform their destructive behavior.
-- Doug Bandow		 
The Internal Revenue Service is everything the so-called tax protesters said it was; nonresponsive, unable to withstand scrutiny, tyrannical, and oblivious to the rule of law and the U.S. Constitution.
-- Joseph Banister		 
Nobody can be exactly like me. Even I have trouble doing it.
-- Tallulah Bankhead		 
Cocaine habit forming? Of course not. I ought to know, I've been using it for years.
-- Tallulah Bankhead		 
I'm a foe of moderation, the champion of excess. If I may lift a line from a die-hard whose identity is lost in the shuffle, "I'd rather be strongly wrong than weakly right.
-- Tallulah Bankhead		 
A man is either free or he is not. There cannot be any apprenticeship for freedom.
-- Imamu Amiri Baraka		 
Freedom all solace to man gives: He lives at ease that freely lives.
-- John Barbour		 
Self-defense is a part of the law of nature; nor can it be denied the community, even against the king himself.
-- William Barclay		 
The tree of liberty could not grow were it not watered with the blood of tyrants.
-- Bertrand Barere de Vieuzac		 
In terms of altering sociological patterns, free speech, rather than being the enemy, is a long-tested and worthy ally. To deny free speech in order to engineer social changes in the name of accomplishing a greater good for one sector of our society erodes the freedoms of all.
-- Sarah Evans Barker		 
To permit every interest group, especially those who claim to be victimized by unfair expression, their own legislative exceptions to the First Amendment so long as they succeed in obtaining a majority of legislative votes in their favor demonstrates the potentially predatory nature of what defendants seek through this Ordinance.
-- Sarah Evans Barker		 
What I'd like to see police do is deal with important issues and not these sorts of victimless crimes when society is riddled with problems.
-- Alderman Rodney Barket		 
I have great sympathy for the oppressed but I do not expect them to be morally superior to the oppressors. I merely expect them to be oppressed.
-- Jerome Barkow		 
[Individual disarmament] palsies the hand and brutalizes the mind; an habitual disuse of physical force totally destroys the moral; and men lose at once the power of protecting themselves, and of discerning the cause of their oppression.
-- Joel Barlow		 
I don't believe medical discoveries are doing much to advance human life. As fast as we create ways to extend it we are inventing ways to shorten it.
-- Christiaan Barnard		 
I will not dwell on all the bitter results of new secular age. Suffice it to say that the campaign to destroy the traditional moral order has brought with it immense suffering, wreckage, and misery. And yet, the forces of secularism, ignoring these tragic results, press on with even greater militancy. Among these militant secularists are many so-called “progressives.” But where is the progress? We are told we are living in a post-Christian era. But what has replaced the Judeo-Christian moral system? What is it that can fill the spiritual void in the hearts of the individual person? And, what is a system of values that can sustain human social life? The fact is that no secular creed has emerged capable of performing the role of religion.
-- William Barr		 
In the past, when societies are threatened by moral chaos, the overall social costs of licentiousness and irresponsible personal conduct becomes so high that society ultimately recoils and reevaluates the path they are on. But today – in the face of all the increasing pathologies – instead of addressing the underlying cause, we have the State in the role of Alleviator of Bad Consequences. We call on the State to mitigate the social costs of personal misconduct and irresponsibility. So the reaction to growing illegitimacy is not sexual responsibility, but abortion. The reaction to drug addiction is safe injection sites. The solution to the breakdown of the family is for the State to set itself up as the ersatz husband for single mothers and the ersatz father to their children. The call comes for more and more social programs to deal with the wreckage. While we think we are solving problems, we are underwriting them. We start with an untrammeled freedom and we end up as dependents of a coercive state on whom we depend.
-- William Barr		 
One of the ironies, as some have observed, is that the secular project has itself become a religion, pursued with religious fervor. It is taking on all the trappings of a religion – including inquisitions and excommunication. Those who defy the creed risk a figurative burning at the stake – social, educational, and professional ostracism and exclusion waged through lawsuits and savage social media campaigns.
-- William Barr		 
In any age, the so-called progressives treat politics as their religion. Their holy mission is to use the coercive power of the State to remake man and society in their own image, according to an abstract ideal of perfection. Whatever means they use are therefore justified because, by definition, they are a virtuous people pursing a deific end. They are willing to use any means necessary to gain momentary advantage in achieving their end, regardless of collateral consequences and the systemic implications. They never ask whether the actions they take could be justified as a general rule of conduct, equally applicable to all sides.
-- William Barr		 
The fact of the matter is that, in waging a scorched earth, no-holds-barred war of ‘Resistance’ against this Administration, it is the Left that is engaged in the systematic shredding of norms and the undermining of the rule of law. This highlights a basic disadvantage that conservatives have always had in contesting the political issues of the day. It was adverted to by the old, curmudgeonly Federalist, Fisher Ames, in an essay during the early years of the Republic.
-- William Barr		 
It is easier to run away from a local tyranny than a national one. … [I]f it is one size fits all – if every congressional enactment or Supreme Court decision establishes a single rule for every American – then the stakes are very high as to what that rule is.
-- William Barr		 
When the entire press ‘advances along the same track,’ as Tocqueville put it, the relationship between the press and the energized majority becomes mutually reinforcing. Not only does it become easier for the press to mobilize a majority, but the mobilized majority becomes more powerful and overweening with the press as its ally. This is not a positive cycle, and I think it is fair to say that it puts the press’s role as a breakwater for the tyranny of the majority in jeopardy. The key to restoring the press in that vital role is to cultivate a greater diversity of voices in the media.
-- William Barr		 
Today in the United States, the corporate – or ‘mainstream’ – press is massively consolidated. And it has become remarkably monolithic in viewpoint, at the same time that an increasing number of journalists see themselves less as objective reporters of the facts, and more as agents of change.
-- William Barr		 


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