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Famous Quotes about Liberty
 
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God may forgive your sins, but your nervous system won't.
-- Alfred Korzyybski		 
The cause of freedom is identified with the destinies of humanity, and in whatever part of the world it gains ground by and by, it will be a common gain to all those who desire it.
-- Louis Kossuth		 
Some police chiefs for years have warned that we are “militarizing” our nation’s police. “Smart bombs” are used to enter drug dens. Officers are clad in paramilitary garb including battle helmets. Armored “urban” assault vehicles are tactically utilized on city streets. Cops are trained in military tactics. You cannot train officers in such a manner and then expect them to behave like “Officer Friendly” .... The FBI is an investigatory agency. Originally, they weren’t even armed. Why are lawyers and accountants being transformed into G.I. Joes? When such occurs we come dangerously close to establishing a National Police Force, something not intended by the framers of the U.S. Constitution.
-- Police Chief James J. Kouri		 
There's a standard formula for success in the entertainment medium, and that is: "Beat it to death if it succeeds."
-- Ernie Kovacs		 
The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed — where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once.
-- Judge Alex Kozinski		 
[Y]ou wonder why anyone would make the mistake of calling it the Commerce Clause instead of the 'Hey, you -can-do-whatever-you-feel-like Clause?'
-- Judge Alex Kozinski		 
The first goal and primary function of the U.S. public school is not to educate good people, but good citizens. It is the function which we call - in enemy nations - 'state indoctrination.'
-- Jonathan Kozol		 
When governments use the judiciary to recover “damage,” the courts intrude on the regulatory and revenue responsibilities of legislatures. And when lawsuits based on tenuous legal theories impose high costs on defendants, due process gives way to a form of extortion, with public officials serving as bagmen for private contingency fee lawyers.
-- Michael I. Kraus		 
The Brady Bill's only effect will be to desensitize the public to regulation of weapons in preparation for their ultimate confiscation.
-- Charles Krauthammer		 
The World is divided into armed camps ready to commit genocide just because we can't agree on whose fairy tales to believe. In the end, Religion will kill us all.
-- Ed Krebs		 
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
-- Krishnamurti		 
This is painful for a liberal to admit, but conservatives have a point when they suggest that America’s safety net can sometimes entangle people in a soul-crushing dependency. Our poverty programs do rescue many people, but other times they backfire.
-- Nicholas Kristof		 
Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose, Nothin' ain't worth nothin', but it's free.
-- Kris Kristofferson		 
Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions -- it only guarantees equality of opportunity.
-- Irving Kristol		 
True individualists tend to be quite unobservant; it is the snob, the... sophisticate, the frightened conformist, who keeps a fascinated or worried eye on what is in the wind.
-- Louis Kronenberger		 
Many people today don't want honest answers insofar as honest means unpleasant or disturbing. They want a soft answer that turneth away anxiety.
-- Louis Kronenberger		 
The law is an adroit mixture of customs that are beneficial to society, and could be followed even if no law existed, and others that are of advantage to a ruling minority, but harmful to the masses of men, and can be enforced on them only by terror.
-- Peter Kropotkin		 
Freedom of the press, freedom of association, the inviolability of domicile, and all the rest of the rights of man are respected so long as no one tries to use them against the privileged class. On the day they are launched against the privileged they are overthrown.
-- Prince Peter Kropotkin		 
...instead it seems that business -- like weight loss -- is a subject wherein hope and fear inspire limitless gullibility.
-- Paul Krugman		 
...as an economics professor I am by nature inclined to the view that the truth isn't out there, it's in here - that usually you learn a lot more by thinking really hard about the data than you do by sniffing around for supposedly inside information.
-- Paul Krugman		 
Heterodox doctrines, in economics and elsewhere, often fail to get adequately discussed in their formative stages: both the intellectual and the political establishment tend to regard them as unworthy of notice. Meanwhile, those doctrines can seem compelling to large numbers of people (some of whom may have considerable political clout, large financial resources, or both). By the time it becomes apparent that such influential ideas demand serious attention after all, reasoned argument has become very difficult. People have become invested emotionally, politically, and financially in the doctrine; careers and even institutions have been built on it; and the proponents can no longer allow themselves to contemplate the possibility that they have taken a wrong turning.
-- Paul Krugman		 
The grand paradox of our society is this: we magnify man’s right but we minimize his capacities.
-- Joseph Wood Krutch		 
The central premise of constitutional governance is that 'We the people' have the power and the right to alter or abolish the form of government under which we live.
-- Raymond Ku		 
Those who have sought the most in gun control have sought the least in the punishment of criminals.
-- Robert J. Kukla		 
After years spent trying to deal with the effects of COINTELPRO, my rage at the FBI's almost unimaginable evil remains undiminished because I believe that it succeeded in many of its horrifying goals, given the deaths of Martin King, Malcolm X, and other sixties leaders. Since the FBI uses taxpayer dollars to fund its extreme and ridiculous investigations of anyone who expresses dissenting opinions, even resorting to crime -- including theft, encouragement to murder, subornation of perjury, and manipulation of the judicial process -- to achieve its ends, I have always advocated its disbanding.
-- William M. Kunstler		 
Free inquiry requires that we tolerate diversity of opinion and that we respect the right of individuals to express their beliefs, however unpopular they may be, without social or legal prohibition or fear of success.
-- Paul Kurtz		 
Free inquiry entails recognition of civil liberties as integral to its pursuit, that is, a free press, freedom of communication, the right to organize opposition parties and to join voluntary associations, and freedom to cultivate and publish the fruits of scientific, philosophical, artistic, literary, moral and religious freedom.
-- Paul Kurtz		 
I would rather think of life as a good book. The further you get into it, the more it begins to come together and make sense.
-- Rabbi Harold Kushner		 
Framing is a process whereby communicators, consciously or unconsciously, act to construct a point of view that encourages the facts of a given situation to be interpreted by others in a particular manner.
-- Jim Kuypers		 
Farce, gross incompetence, and tragedy is the hallmark of big centralized government, wherever it develops. Big centralized government has developed in the United States year after year since the 1930s, and it has both solidified and metastasized since 9-11. Today, we live at the will and by the grace of a dystopian and grasping government. There is not an exceptional amount of time left before this government collapses, but before it does, we the people will suffer far more than we have suffered to date. Banking collapses, mortgage fraud at the highest levels, government bailouts, currency printing, and inflation in food and energy are just a foretaste of the future, led by the same Washington public-private cartel we have suffered for decades. . . .

I believe our government -- outdated, unrestrained by the Constitution and soon to default on every debt it has taken on in our name -- cannot long endure. But unlike those who run and benefit from our modern American nationalism, corporatism and socialism, I do not fear average Americans seeking self-government, rule of law and liberty.

That's why on Sept. 11, I will not be celebrating America's undeclared wars on countries that had nothing to do with the Sept. 11 attacks 10 years ago. I will not be attending remembrances of victims of that day, because those remembrances refuse to count American liberty, rule of law and freedom of trade and movement uppermost on that list of the sacrificed. I will not attend any program offered by a religious or political organization that seeks to ride a federal government bandwagon to confirm some imperative of war against Islam halfway around the world, or that seeks to promote the false concept of a culture war as somehow God's intent for America.

On this 10-year anniversary, I intend to go about my business as usual, and say a prayer of gratitude for the small freedoms I have left. In the afternoon, I'll be in Charlottesville, Va., learning about local apprenticeship and crafts demonstrations. In the evening, I'll check the livestock and gather the eggs. I won't allow what I personally experienced that day in the Pentagon, nor the subsequent government drumbeats for war, waving the Sept. 11 banner, to diminish my awareness of the meaning of liberty.

The real battle for Americans today is a battle to reassert our independence from an overbearing and unsustainable state. Today, we can all celebrate that there are fundamental cracks in the federal state's veneer, and we can be grateful for the options we still have in our own lives to live free, to practice charity and faith, creativity and productivity and to rediscover our own power as individuals and communities.
-- Karen Kwiatkowski		 
One stumble is enough to deface the character of an honorable life.
-- Sir Roger L'Estrange		 
[Anacharsis] also said that he marvelled that among the Greeks, those who were skilful in a thing contend together; but those who have no such skill act as judges of the contest.
-- Diogenes Laërtius		 
Consequently, any activity that is potentially harmful to others and requires certain demonstrated competence for its safe performance, is subject to regulation that is, it is theoretically desirable that we regulate it. ... In fact, I dare say that parenting is a paradigm of such activities since the potential for harm is great (both in the extent of harm any one person can suffer and in the number of people potentially harmed) and the need for competence is so evident. Consequently, there is good reason to believe that parents should be licensed.
-- Hugh LaFollette		 
Let no man think we can deny civil liberty to others and retain it for ourselves. When zealous agents of the Government arrest suspected “radicals” without warrant, hold them without prompt trial, deny them access to counsel and admission of bail....we have shorn the Bill of Rights of its sanctity...
-- Robert M. Lafollette, Sr.		 
The principle of free speech is no new doctrine born of the Constitution of the United States. It is a heritage of English-speaking peoples, which has been won by incalculable sacrifice, and which they must preserve so long as they hope to live as free men.
-- Robert M. Lafollette, Sr.		 
And to kill time while awaiting death, I smoke slender cigarettes thumbing my nose to the gods.
-- Jules Laforgue		 
All stakeholders must participate in the gains and losses of any particular situation.
-- Christine Lagarde		 
The truth brings with it a great measure of absolution, always.
-- R. D. Laing		 
In the 2004 presidential election campaign 92% of contributions of $1 million or more went to Democrats. Pro-Democratic 527s, meanwhile, spent more than twice as much as their GOP counterparts.
-- Jacob Laksin		 
Awareness of death is the very bedrock of the entire path. Until you have developed this awareness, all other practices are obstructed.
-- Dalai Lama		 
I am determined my children shall be brought up in their father's religion, if they can find out what it is.
-- Charles Lamb		 
Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want and their kids pay for it.
-- Richard Lamm		 
Let me offer you, metaphorically, two magic wands that have sweeping powers to change society. With one wand you could wipe out all racism and discrimination from the hearts and minds of white America. The other wand you could wave across the ghettos and barrios of America and infuse the inhabitants with Japanese or Jewish values, respect for learning and ambition. ... I suggest that the best wand for society and for those who live in the ghettos and barrios would be the second wand.
-- Richard Lamm		 
Beware of those who would use violence, too often it is violence they want and neither truth nor freedom.
-- Louis Lamour		 
Collectivism is a form of anthropomorphism. It attempts to see a group of individuals as having a single identity similar to a person. ... Collectivism demands that the group be more important than the individual. It requires the individual to sacrifice himself for the alleged good of the group.
-- Jeff Landauer		 
Altruism is a code of ethics which hold the welfare of others as the standard of 'good', and self-sacrifice as the only moral action. The unstated premise of the doctrine of altruism is that all relationships among men involve sacrifice. This leaves one with the false choice between maliciously exploiting the other person (forcing them to be sacrificed) or being 'moral' and offering oneself up as the sacrificial victim.
-- Jeff Landauer		 
Don't accept your dog's admiration as conclusive evidence that you are wonderful.
-- Ann Landers		 
Many laws as certainly make bad men, as bad men make many bad laws.
-- Walter Savage Landor		 
Nothing whatever but the constitutional law, the political structure, of these United States protects any American from arbitrary seizure of his property and his person, from the Gestapo and the Storm Troops, from the concentration camp, the torture chamber, the revolver at the back of his neck in a cellar.
-- Rose Wilder Lane		 
Anyone who says that economic security is a human right, has been too much babied. While he babbles, other men are risking and losing their lives to protect him. They are fighting the sea, fighting the land, fighting disease and insects and weather and space and time, for him, while he chatters that all men have a right to security and that some pagan god—Society, The State, The Government, The Commune—must give it to them. Let the fighting men stop fighting this inhuman earth for one hour, and he will learn how much security there is.
-- Rose Wilder Lane		 
Happiness is something that comes into our lives through doors we don't even remember leaving open.
-- Rose Wilder Lane		 
Gun control is really race control. People who embrace gun control are really racists in nature. All gun laws have been enacted to control certain classes of people, mainly black people, but the same laws used to control blacks are being used to disarm white people as well.
-- General Laney		 
Having so pledged myself, and having been elected to my senatorship upon such pledge, and not having been elected to create an organization to which we would give a promise, either express or implied, that it would have the authority to send our boys all over the Earth, I cannot support the Charter. I believe it is fraught with danger to the American people and to American institutions.
-- William Langer		 
What this country needs are more unemployed politicians.
-- Edward Langley		 
People have often been willing to give up personal identity and join into a collective. Historically, that propensity has usually been very bad news. Collectives tend to be mean, to designate official enemies, to be violent, and to discourage creative, rigorous thought. Fascists, communists, religious cults, criminal 'families' — there has been no end to the varieties of human collectives, but it seems to me that these examples have quite a lot in common. I wonder if some aspect of human nature evolved in the context of competing packs. We might be genetically wired to be vulnerable to the lure of the mob.
-- Jaron Lanier		 
All free constitutions are formed with two views -- to deter the governed from crime, and the governors from tyranny.
-- John Lansing, Jr.		 
Try to make people moral, and you lay the groundwork for vice.
-- Lao-Tzu		 
With virtue and quietness one may conquer the world.
-- Lao-Tzu		 
The more rules and regulations, The more thieves and robbers there will be.
-- Lao-Tzu		 
Mastering others is strength. Mastering yourself is true power.
-- Lao-Tzu		 
In the highest antiquity, the people did not know that there were rulers. In the next age they loved them and praised them. In the next they feared them; in the next they despised them.
-- Lao-Tzu		 
The more laws and restrictions there are, the poorer people become.
-- Lao-Tzu		 
A government can be compared to our lungs. Our lungs are best when we don't realize they are helping us breathe. It is when we are constantly aware of our lungs that we know they have come down with an illness.
-- Lao-Tzu		 
The more prohibitions you have, the less virtuous people will be.
-- Lao-Tzu		 
Without law or compulsion, men would dwell in harmony.
-- Lao-Tzu		 
Good Government is not intrusive the people are hardly aware of it; the next best is felt yet loved; then comes that which is known and feared; the worst government is hated.
-- Lao-Tzu		 
Governing a large country is like frying a small fish. You spoil it with too much poking.
-- Lao-Tzu		 
The snow goose need not bathe to make itself white. Neither need you do anything but be yourself.
-- Lao-Tzu		 
To pretend to know when you do not know is a disease.
-- Lao-Tzu		 
The people suffer from famine because of the multitude of taxes consumed by their superiors. It is through this that they suffer famine.
-- Lao-Tzu		 
We've witnessed a fire sale of American liberties at bargain basement prices, in return for the false promise of more security... The America being designed right now won't resemble the America we've been defending... The danger isn't that Big Brother may storm the castle gates. The danger is that Americans don't realize that he is already inside the castle walls.
-- Wayne LaPierre		 
No victim of crime should be required to surrender his life, health, safety, personal dignity, or property to a criminal, nor should a victim be required to retreat in the face of an attack.
-- Wayne LaPierre		 
[O]ur greatest contributions to the cause of freedom and development overseas is not what we do over there, but what we do right here at home.
-- Frances Moore Lappé		 
Labor, in itself, is neither elevating or otherwise. It is the laborer's privilege to ennoble his work by the aim with which he undertakes it, and by the enthusiasm and faithfulness he puts into it.
-- Lucy Larcom		 
The great appear great because we are on our knees: Let us rise.
-- James Larkin		 


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