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Famous Quotes about Liberty
 

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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
 
...first ascertain exactly the position of the various capitalists, then control them, influence them by restricting or enlarging, facilitating or hindering their credits, and finally they can entirely determine their fate.
-- Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
 
No amount of political freedom will satisfy the hungry masses.
-- Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
 
The aim of socialism is not only to abolish the present division of mankind into small states and all-national isolation, not only to bring the nations closer to each other, but also to merge them.
-- Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
 
A system of licensing and registration is the perfect device to deny gun ownership to the bourgeoisie.
-- Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (Questionable)
 
Hundreds of thousands of rouble notes are being issued daily by our treasury. This is done, not in order to fill the coffers of the State with practically worthless paper, but with the deliberate intention of destroying the value of money as a means of payment. ... Experience has taught us it is impossible to root out the evils of capitalism merely by confiscation and expropriation… The simplest way to exterminate the very spirit of capitalism is therefore to flood the country with notes of a high face-value without financial guarantees of any sort. …[T]he great illusion of the value and power of money, on which the capitalist state is based will have been definitely destroyed.
-- Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
 
Socialized medicine is the keystone to the arch of the socialist state.
-- Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (False)
 
The surest way to destroy a nation is to debauch its currency.
-- Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (False)
 
...the concentration of capital and the growth of their turnover is radically challenging the significance of the banks. Scattered capitalists are transformed into a single collective capitalist. When carrying the current accounts of a few capitalists, the banks, as it were, transact a purely technical and exclusively auxiliary operation. When, however, these operations grow to enormous dimensions we find that a handful of monopolists control all the operations, both commercial and industrial, of capitalist society. They can, by means of their banking connections.
-- Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
 
Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.
-- Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
 
Only an armed people can be the real bulwark of popular liberty.
-- Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
 
They will furnish credits which will serve us for the support of the Communist Party in their countries and, by supplying us materials and technical equipment which we lack, will restore our military industry necessary for our future attacks against our suppliers. To put it in other words, they will work on the preparation of their own suicide.
-- Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
 
Behind the October Revolution there are more influential personalities than the thinkers and executors of Marxism.
-- Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
 
While the State exists, there can be no freedom. When there is freedom there will be no State.
-- Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
 
The bourgeoisie is many times stronger than we. To give it the weapon of freedom of the press is to ease the enemy’s cause, to help the class enemy. We do not desire to end in suicide, so we will not do this.
-- Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
 
You have read and heard that communist theory—the science of communism created in the main by Marx, this doctrine of Marxism—has ceased to be the work of a single socialist of the nineteenth century, even though he was a genius, and that it has become the doctrine of millions and tens of millions of proletarians all over the world, who are applying it in their struggle against capitalism.
-- Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
 
All our lives we fought against exalting the individual, against the elevation of the single person, and long ago we were over and done with the business of a hero, and here it comes up again: the glorification of one personality. This is not good at all.
-- Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
 
The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.
-- Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
 
The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.
-- Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
 
Did you hear that we're writing Iraq's new Constitution? Why not just give them ours? We're not using it anymore.
-- Jay Leno
 
We are told there is no cause to fear.  When we consider the great powers of Congress, there is great cause of alarm.  They can disarm the militia.  If they were armed, they would be a resource against great oppressions.  The laws of a great empire are difficult to be executed.  If the laws of the union were oppressive, they could not carry them into effect, if the people were possessed of the proper means of defence.
-- William Lenoir
 
In a world in which violent criminals are frequently armed with various deadly weapons, a public policy limiting the amount of force that may be exerted by an innocent victim in response to life-threatening aggression is puzzling. It is a curious law indeed which posits a society in which only criminals possess the means to kill. Where a violent criminal possesses a firearm, any attempt by his victim to defend himself or herself by inducing “temporary discomfort” in the criminal would likely result in serious injury to the victim or others, no matter what the extent of the defensive opportunity. One is not generally prevented from pulling the trigger of a gun because one is temporarily uncomfortable. This is especially so if the criminal is intent on hurting people. In such a situation, the only viable response by the victim entails the use of deadly force. ... It is perfectly rational for a victim who realizes that a criminal is going to attempt to kill him or her to resist that attempt with any amount of force available. It is, however, often safer, more effective, and perfectly legal to use deadly force instead.
-- John C. Lenzen
 
My concern is that past motivations for disarming blacks are really not so different from the motivations behind disarming law-abiding citizens today. In the last century, the rhetoric in support of such laws was that "they" (i.e. blacks) were too violent and too untrustworthy to be allowed weapons. Today, the same elitist rhetoric regards law-abiding Americans the same way, as children in need of guidance from the government.
-- John C. Lenzen
 
You can't run a society or cope with its problems if people are not held accountable for what they do.
-- John Leo
 
It is an injustice, a grave evil and a disturbance of the right order, for a larger and higher organisation, to arrogate to itself functions which can be performed efficiently by smaller and lower bodies.
-- Pope Leo XIII
 
Books of apostates, heretics, schismatics, and all other writers defending heresy or schism or in any attacking the foundations of religion, are altogether prohibited.
-- Pope Leo XIII
 
The liberty of thinking and publishing whatsoever each one likes, without any hindrances, is not in itself an advantage over which society can wisely rejoice. On the contrary, it is the fountainhead and origin of many evils.
-- Pope Leo XIII
 
President Vladimir Putin could never have imagined anyone so ignorant or so willing to destroy their people like Obama much less seeing millions vote for someone like Obama. They read history in America don't they? Alas, the schools in the U.S. were conquered by the Communists long ago and history was revised thus paving the way for their Communist presidents.
-- Xavier Lerma
 
Only the mediocre are always at their best.
-- Alan Jay Lerner
 
In societies like the American and West European where the dynamics of energy come from freedom and where the climate and the whole ethos are those of freedom, censorship is bound to be at worst, stupid; at best, futile; and always, to some degree, inconsonant with the character of the society as a whole.
-- Max Lerner
 
The problem of freedom in America is that of maintaining a competition of ideas, and you do not achieve that by silencing one brand of idea.
-- Max Lerner
 
When you choose the lesser of two evils, always remember that it is still an evil.
-- Max Lerner
 
The Seven Deadly Sins of the Press:\\ \\ - Concentrated Power of the Big Press. \\ - Passing of competition and the coming of monopoly. \\ - Governmental control of the press. \\ - Timidity, especially in the face of group and corporate pressures. \\ - Big Business mentality. \\ - Clannishness among the newspaper publishers that has prevented them from criticizing each other. \\ - Social blindness.
-- Max Lerner
 
Political correctness is the natural continuum from the party line. What we are seeing once again is a self-appointed group of vigilantes imposing their views on others.
-- Doris Lessing
 
With a library you are free, not confined by temporary political climates. It is the most democratic of institutions because no one – but no one at all – can tell you what to read and when and how.
-- Doris Lessing
 


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