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Famous Quotes about Liberty
 
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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		 
I hate it when they say, “He gave his life for his country.” Nobody gives their life for anything. We steal the lives of these kids. We take it away from them. They don’t die for the honor and glory of their country. We kill them.
-- Admiral Gene LaRocque		 
Since independence in the fourteenth century, the Swiss have been required to keep and bear arms, and since 1515, have had a policy of armed neutrality. Its form of government is similar to the one set up by our Founders -- a weak central government exercising few, defined powers having to do mostly with external affairs and limited authority over internal matters at the canton (state) and local levels.
-- Benedict D. LaRosa		 
A lot of people mistake a short memory for a clear conscience.
-- Doug Larson		 
Every State is known by the rights it maintains.
-- Harold J. Laski		 
The only real security for social well-being is the free exercise of men’s minds.
-- Harold J. Laski		 
No citizen enjoys genuine freedom of religious conviction until the state is indifferent to every form of religious outlook from Atheism to Zoroastrianism.
-- Harold J. Laski		 
[C]ivilization means, above all, an unwillingness to inflict unnecessary pain ... those of us who heedlessly accept the commands of authority cannot yet claim to be civilized men.
-- Harold J. Laski		 
Dogma is a defensive reaction against doubt in the mind of the theorist, but doubt of which he is unaware.
-- Harold D. Lasswell		 
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
-- Late 16th Century Proverb		 
Principio Obstate (Resist from the beginning).
-- Latin Proverb		 
History is written by the victor.
-- Latin Proverb		 
Suum cuique [To each his own, to each according to his merits.]
-- Latin Proverb		 
If the wind will not serve, take to the oars.
-- Latin Proverb		 
I believe in my right to be wrong, and still more in my right to be right.
-- Owen Lattimore		 
There is no such thing as an inevitable war. If war comes it will be from failure of human wisdom.
-- Andrew B. Law		 
Men are freest when they are most unconscious of freedom. The shout is a rattling of chains and always was.
-- D. H. Lawrence		 
Do not allow to slip away from you freedoms the people who came before you won with such hard knocks.
-- D. H. Lawrence		 
I do esteem individual liberty above everything. What is a nation for, but to secure the maximum liberty to every individual?
-- D. H. Lawrence		 
Men fight for liberty and win it with hard knocks. Their children, brought up easy, let it slip away again, poor fools. And their grand-children are once more slaves.
-- D. H. Lawrence		 
I say that you cannot administer a wicked law impartially. You can only destroy. You can only punish. I warn you that a wicked law, like cholera, destroys everyone it touches — its upholders as well as its defiers.
-- Jerome Lawrence		 
The Liberal Democrat remain steadfast in their belief that liberty must not be sacrificed on the altar of security and regrets the climate of fear that has been fostered by the approach of both Labour and the Conservatives to issues of domestic and international security. We believe that liberty, justice and the separation of powers are essential to achieving lasting security and that abandoning liberties, particularly in the face of unconventional threats from criminals and terrorists, will only serve to make Britain both less free and less secure.
-- Robin Lawrence		 
The high-handed bureaucratic excesses of the IRS are a national disgrace ... riding roughshod over the taxpayers and making a joke out of our rule of laws.
-- Paul Laxalt		 
It is the tragic story of the cultural crusader in a mass society that he cannot win, but that we would be lost without him.
-- Paul F. Lazarsfeld		 
Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me: I lift my lamp beside the golden door.
-- Emma Lazarus		 
The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduce them. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.
-- Gustave Le Bon		 
I think the greatest single enemy is the misuse of information, the perversion of truth in the hands of terribly skillful people.
-- John le Carré		 
The only fool bigger than the person who knows it all is the person who argues with him.
-- Stanislaw Jerszy Lec		 
One has to multiply thoughts to the point where there aren't enough policemen to control them.
-- Stanislaw Jerszy Lec		 
The right of property is the guardian of every other right, and to deprive the people of this, is in fact to deprive them of their liberty.
-- Arthur Lee		 
A teacher is never a giver of truth -- he is a guide, a pointer to the truth that each student must find for himself. A good teacher is merely a catalyst.
-- Bruce Lee		 
Ever since I was a child I have had this instinctive urge for expansion and growth. To me, the function and duty of a quality human being is the sincere and honest development of one's potential.
-- Bruce Lee		 
Before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself.  The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.
-- Harper Lee		 
The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.
-- Harper Lee		 
It must never be forgotten...that the liberties of the people are not so safe under the gracious manner of government as by the limitation of power.
-- Richard Henry Lee		 
It is true, the yeomanry of the country possess the lands, the weight of property, possess arms, and are too strong a body of men to be openly offended—and, therefore, it is urged, they will take care of themselves, that men who shall govern will not dare pay any disrespect to their opinions. It is easily perceived, that if they have not their proper negative upon passing laws in congress, or on the passage of laws relative to taxes and armies, they may in twenty or thirty years be by means imperceptible to them, totally deprived of that boasted weight and strength: This may be done in great measure by congress.
-- Richard Henry Lee		 
[If Parliament] may take from me one shilling in the pound, what security have I for the other nineteen?
-- Richard Henry Lee		 
The constitution ought to secure a genuine militia and guard against a select militia. .... all regulations tending to render this general militia useless and defenseless, by establishing select corps of militia, or distinct bodies of military men, not having permanent interests and attachments to the community ought to be avoided.
-- Richard Henry Lee		 
To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them.
-- Richard Henry Lee		 
Why then sir, why do we longer delay? Why still deliberate? Let this happy day give birth to an American Republic. Let her arise not to devastate and to conquer but to reestablish the reign of peace and law. The eyes of Europe are fixed upon us. She demands of us a living example of freedom that may exhibit a contrast in the felicity of the citizen to the ever-increasing tyranny which desolates her polluted shores. She invites us to prepare an asylum where the unhappy may find solace, and the persecuted repose. If we are not this day wanting in our duty, the names of the American legislators of 1776 will be placed by posterity at the side of all of those whose memory has been and ever will be dear to virtuous men and good citizens.
-- Richard Henry Lee		 
A militia, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves...and include all men capable of bearing arms.
-- Richard Henry Lee		 
Governor, if I had foreseen the use those people designed to make of their victory, there would have been no surrender at Appomattox Courthouse; no sir, not by me. Had I foreseen these results of subjugation, I would have preferred to die at Appomattox with my brave men, my sword in my right hand.
-- Robert E. Lee		 
[W]e made a great mistake in the beginning of our struggle, and I fear, in spite of all we can do, it will prove to be a fatal mistake. We appointed all our worst generals to command our armies, and all our best generals to edit the newspapers.
-- Robert E. Lee		 
...[T]here is no more dangerous experiment than that of undertaking to be one thing before a man's face and another behind his back.
-- Robert E. Lee		 
With all my devotion to the Union and the feeling of loyalty and duty of an American citizen, I have not been able to make up my mind to raise my hand against my relatives, my children, my home. I have therefore resigned my commission in the Army, and save in defense of my native State, with the sincere hope that my poor services may never be needed, I hope I may never be called on to draw my sword...
-- Robert E. Lee		 
I have been up to see Congress and they do not seem to be able to do anything except to eat peanuts and chew tobacco, while my army is starving.
-- Robert E. Lee		 
It is well that war is so terrible -- we should grow too fond of it.
-- Robert E. Lee		 
You must study to be frank with the world: frankness is the child of honesty and courage. Say just what you mean to do on every occasion, and take it for granted that you mean to do right.
-- Robert E. Lee		 
According to the Washington based Tax Foundation, the average American worked until May 7th of this year to earn enough money to pay local, state, and federal taxes for 1996. By comparison, Tax Freedom Day fell on January 31st in 1902; February 13th in 1930; March 8th in 1940; April 10th in 1952; April 16th in 1960; April 28th in 1972; May 1st in 1980; and May 6th last year.
-- Robert W. Lee		 
It is becoming increasingly apparent that many—arguably most—of the problems that plague our nation have been aggravated rather than alleviated by federal intervention. In one area after another, massive infusions of tax dollars have been squandered on false solutions which, when they fail to achieve their stated objectives, are cited to justify even more spending on other futile schemes that result in bigger government. Examples include programs and laws supposedly intended to reduce racial animosity which have instead heightened race-related tensions; welfare schemes that, rather than reducing poverty, have enticed millions of Americans to become dependent on Washington for their daily bread; federal funding (and control) of education, which has spawned a monumental education crisis; a “war” on drugs which has done little to curb drug traffic, but which has eroded many personal liberties; a health-care finance system that has deteriorated as government meddling and regulation have increased; and a masochistic immigration policy larded with false "solutions" that, while failing to stop the inflow of illegal aliens, have paved the way for further government intrusion into the lives of nearly all Americans.
-- Robert W. Lee		 
The statist objective, always, is to make as many persons as possible, as dependent as possible, on a government as big as possible.
-- Robert W. Lee		 
[M]y work, which I've done for a long time, was not pursued in order to gain the praise I now enjoy, but chiefly from a craving after knowledge, which I notice resides in me more than in most other men. And therewithal, whenever I found out anything remarkable, I have thought it my duty to put down my discovery on paper, so that all ingenious people might be informed thereof.
-- Antonie van Leeuwenhoek		 
Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat.
-- John Lehman		 
I practice journalism in accordance with the following guidelines: \\ • Do nothing I cannot defend. \\ • Do not distort, lie, slant or hype. \\ • Do not falsify facts or make up quotes. \\ • Cover, write and present every story with the care I would want if the story were about me.\\ • Assume there is at least one other side or version to every story. \\ • Assume the viewer is as smart and caring and good a person as I am. \\ • Assume the same about all people on whom I report. \\ • Assume everyone is innocent until proven guilty. \\ • Assume personal lives are a private matter until a legitimate turn in the story mandates otherwise. \\ • Carefully separate opinion and analysis from straight news stories and clearly label it as such. \\ • Do not use anonymous sources or blind quotes except on rare and monumental occasions. No one should ever be allowed to attack another anonymously. \\ • Do not broadcast profanity or the end result of violence unless it is an integral and necessary part of the story and/or crucial to its understanding. \\ • Acknowledge that objectivity may be impossible but fairness never is. \\ • Journalists who are reckless with facts and reputations should be disciplined by their employers. \\ • My viewers have a right to know what principles guide my work and the process I use in their practice. \\ • I am not in the entertainment business.
-- Jim Lehrer		 
Censorship…is always and everywhere an evil. Censorship means the screening of material by an authority invested with power to ban that which it disapproves….And who is that paragon to whom we would be willing to entrust such authority?
-- Arthur Lelyveld		 
[R]evenues drive expenditures, not the inverse. ... tax evasion represents a net benefit to everybody ... A statue should be erected to the unknown tax evader.
-- Pierre Lemieux		 
Pity the poor opponents of the right to keep and bear arms! They must distrust just everybody except criminals and except the tyrant to whom they concede the armed monopoly of their protection.
-- Pierre Lemieux		 
Public Choice theory, if nothing else, has taught economists to consider the state as it is, not as it should be in a dream world: the state is a potential tyrant, not a benevolent God.
-- Pierre Lemieux		 
We do not have time to play at “oppositions” at “conferences.” We will keep our political opponents... whether open or disguised as “nonparty,” in prison.
-- Vladimir Ilyich Lenin		 
I don’t care what becomes of Russia. To hell with it. All this is only the road to a World Revolution.
-- Vladimir Ilyich Lenin		 
Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.
-- Vladimir Ilyich Lenin		 
One of the basic conditions for the victory of socialism is the arming of the workers (Communist) and the disarming of the bourgeoisie (the middle class).
-- Vladimir Ilyich Lenin		 
We can and must write in a language which sows among the masses hate, revulsion, and scorn toward those who disagree with us.
-- Vladimir Ilyich Lenin		 
Destroy the family, you destroy the country.
-- Vladimir Ilyich Lenin		 
It would be the greatest mistake, certainly, to think that concessions mean peace. Nothing of the kind. Concessions are nothing but a new form of war.
-- Vladimir Ilyich Lenin		 
Ideological talk and phrase mongering about political liberties should be disposed with; all that is just mere chatter and phrase mongering. We should get away from those phrases.
-- Vladimir Ilyich Lenin		 


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