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Famous Quotes about Liberty
 
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Consider compulsory school-attendance laws, for instance. They fill government schools with children who don't want to be there. Some students are violent, attacking -- and even killing -- teachers and other students. Teachers must lock their classrooms to keep hoodlums at bay in the hallways. Thus, compulsory attendance laws, alleged to promote education, can make it almost impossible.
-- Marisa Manley		 
Since time immemorial, governments have claimed moral superiority. Yet they use laws to loot the productive wealth of working people and build palaces, pyramids, religious monuments, military forces, and other symbols of their power.
-- Marisa Manley		 
No man escapes\\ When freedom fails,\\ The best men rot in filthy jails;\\ And they who cried: “Appease, Appease!”\\ Are hanged by men they tried to please.
-- Hiram Mann		 
We who are engaged in the sacred cause of education are entitled to look upon all parents as having given hostages to our cause.
-- Horace Mann		 
Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil.
-- Thomas Mann		 
Time has no divisions to mark its passage, there is never a thunderstorm or blare of trumpets to announce the beginning of a new month or year. Even when a new century begins it is only we mortals who ring bells and fire off pistols.
-- Thomas Mann		 
It is impossible for ideas to compete in the marketplace if no forum for their presentation is provided or available.
-- Thomas Mann		 
Speech is civilization itself. The word, even the most contradictory word, preserves contact – it is silence which isolates.
-- Thomas Mann		 
True liberty can exist only when justice is equally administered to all.
-- Katherine Mansfield		 
We will offer the Christian world unheard of peace overtures, and these nations, stupid and decadent, will leap at the chance to be our friends; they will willingly cooperate in their own destruction. Then, when their guard is down, and they have gone to sleep, we will smash them with our clenched fist.
-- Dmitri Manuilsky		 
Justice, being violated, destroys; justice, being preserved, preserves: therefore, justice must not be violated, lest violated justice destroy us.
-- Manusmriti		 
No age is unique in producing privileged persons who can happily dichotomize condemnation of their society and enjoyment of its fruits. The eighteenth century had its landau liberals as the nineteenth would have its carriage Communists.
-- Alf Mapp, Jr.		 
All laws which are repugnant to the Constitution are null and void.
-- Marbury vs. Madison		 
There is a wonderful mythical law of nature that the three things we crave most in life -- happiness, freedom, and peace of mind -- are always attained by giving them to someone else.
-- Peyton Conway March		 
When they are contending for victory, they avow their intention of enjoying the fruits of it. ... They see nothing wrong in the rule that to the victor belongs the spoils.
-- William Marcy		 
To many a man, and sometimes to a youth, there comes the opportunity to choose between honorable competence and tainted wealth. The young man who starts out to be poor and honorable, holds in his hand one of the strongest elements of success.
-- Orison Swett Marden		 
A single idea, if it is right, saves us the labor of an infinity of experiences.
-- Jacques Maritain		 
Where both deliberate, the love is slight: Who ever lov'd, that lov'd not at first sight?
-- Christopher Marlowe		 
Goodness is beauty in the best estate.
-- Christopher Marlowe		 
The interpretation of our reality through patterns not our own, serves only to make us ever more unknown, ever less free, ever more solitary.
-- Gabriel Garcia Marquez		 
It is emphatically the province and duty of the Judicial Department to say what the law is. Those who apply the rule to particular cases must, of necessity, expound and interpret that rule. If two laws conflict with each other, the Courts must decide on the operation of each. So, if a law be in opposition to the Constitution, if both the law and the Constitution apply to a particular case, so that the Court must either decide that case conformably to the law, disregarding the Constitution, or conformably to the Constitution, disregarding the law, the Court must determine which of these conflicting rules governs the case. This is of the very essence of judicial duty. If, then, the Courts are to regard the Constitution, and the Constitution is superior to any ordinary act of the Legislature, the Constitution, and not such ordinary act, must govern the case to which they both apply.
-- John Marshall		 
The province of the Court is solely to decide on the rights of individuals... . Questions, in their nature political or which are, by the Constitution and laws, submitted to the Executive, can never be made in this court.
-- John Marshall		 
A legislative act contrary to the Constitution is not law.
-- Justice John Marshall		 
That the people have an original right to establish, for their future government, such principles as, in their opinion, shall most conduce to their own happiness, is the basis, on which the whole American fabric has been erected.... The principles, therefore, so established, are deemed fundamental. And as the authority, from which they proceed, is supreme ... they are designed to be permanent.... The powers of the legislature are defined, and limited; and that those limits may not be mistaken, or forgotten, the constitution is written.
-- Justice John Marshall		 
State inspection laws, health laws, and laws for regulating the internal commerce of a State, and those which respect turnpike roads, ferries, &c. are not within the power granted to Congress. ... Inspection laws, quarantine laws, health laws of every description, as well as laws for regulating the internal commerce of a State, and those which respect turnpike roads, ferries, &c., are component parts of this mass. No direct general power over these objects is granted to Congress, and, consequently, they remain subject to State legislation.
-- Justice John Marshall		 
An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy; because there is a limit beyond which no institution and no property can bear taxation.
-- Justice John Marshall		 
Let the end be legitimate, let it be within the scope of the constitution, and all means which are appropriate, which are plainly adapted to that end, which are not prohibited, but consist with the letter and spirit of the constitution, are constitutional. ... [S]hould Congress, under the pretext of executing its powers, pass laws for the accomplishment of objects not entrusted to the government, such [acts are] not the law of the land.
-- Justice John Marshall		 
[T]he framers of the constitution contemplated that instrument, as a rule for the government of courts, as well as of the legislature.
-- Justice John Marshall		 
This government is acknowledged by all, to be one of enumerated powers.
-- Justice John Marshall		 
It is now well established that the Constitution protects the right to receive information and ideas. ... This right to receive information and ideas, regardless of their social worth, ... is fundamental to our free society.
-- Justice Thurgood Marshall		 
If the First Amendment means anything, it means that a state has no business telling a man, sitting alone in his own house, what books he may read or what films he may watch. Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men's minds.
-- Justice Thurgood Marshall		 
Only oppression should fear the full exercise of freedom.
-- Jose Marti y Perez		 
To change masters is not to be free.
-- Jose Marti y Perez		 
Service cannot be expected from a friend in service; let him be a freeman who wishes to be my master. [Lat., Non bene, crede mihi, servo servitur amico; Sit liber, dominus qui volet esse meus.]
-- Martial		 
Morality cannot exist one minute without freedom... Only a free man can possibly be moral. Unless a good deed is voluntary, it has no moral significance.
-- Everett Dean Martin		 
Tolerance is a better guarantee of freedom than brotherly love; for a man may love his brother so much that he feels himself thereby appointed his brother’s keeper.
-- Everett Dean Martin		 
One of the serious results of propaganda is that it has caused the public to think that education and propaganda are the same thing, and thus to make an ignorant multitude believe it is being educated when it is only being manipulated. Education aims at independence of judgement. Propaganda offers ready-made opinions for the unthinking herd.
-- Everett Dean Martin		 
It is the trivial, the irrelevant, the sensational, the appeal to obsolete bigotry which naturally give it greatest publicity. In such publicity it becomes a mere vulgar caricature of itself.
-- Everett Dean Martin		 
The educator aims at a slow process of development; the propagandist, at quick results. The educator tries to tell people how to think; the propagandist, what to think. The educator strives to develop individual responsibility; the propagandist, mass effects. The educator wants thinking; the propagandist, action. The educator fails unless he achieves an open mind; the propagandist, unless he achieves a closed mind.
-- Everett Dean Martin		 
Forgiving releases you from the punishment of a self-made prison where you are both the inmate and the jailer.
-- Howard Martin		 
By the power to lay and collect imposts Congress may impose duties on any or every article of commerce imported into these states to what amount they please. By the power to lay excises, a power very odious in its nature, since it authorizes officers to examine into your private concerns, the Congress may impose duties on every article of use or consumption: On the food that we eat, on the liquors we drink, on the clothes that we wear, the glass which enlighten our houses, or the hearths necessary for our warmth and comfort. By the power to lay and collect taxes, they may proceed to direct taxation on every individual either by a capitation tax on their heads or an assessment on their property. By this part of the section, therefore, the government has a power to tax to what amount they choose and thus to sluice the people at every vein as long as they have a drop of blood left.
-- Luther Martin		 
However, is it not prudent, since no one has gone into the future, to pay attention to our elders?
-- Thomas Martin		 
There is no such thing as the last word in history. There is always scope for debate in the reading of history which is never static.
-- Tony Martin		 
Thanks to the war on drugs, nearly 700,000 people were arrested in the United States for possession of marijuana in 1997, while 400,000 currently sit in prison for drug crimes -- more than the entire prison population of Britain, Germany and Belgium -- for what is a consensual act. Nearly $35 billion a year is spent on arresting, prosecuting and jailing drug criminals in the US -- $400 million in Canada -- to hammer at a crime which essentially harms no one but the drug user.
-- Steven Martinovich		 
Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.
-- Groucho Marx		 
Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others.
-- Groucho Marx		 
The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made.
-- Groucho Marx		 
There's one way to find out if a man is honest - ask him. If he says, "Yes," you know he is a crook.
-- Groucho Marx		 
Although gold and silver are not by nature money, money is by nature gold and silver.
-- Karl Marx		 
The more the division of labor and the application of machinery extend, the more does competition extend among the workers, the more do their wages shrink together.
-- Karl Marx		 
There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc., that are common to all states of society. But Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience.
-- Karl Marx		 
From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.
-- Karl Marx		 
The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to Socialism.
-- Karl Marx		 
Machines were, it may be said, the weapon employed by the capitalists to quell the revolt of specialized labor.
-- Karl Marx		 
Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks.
-- Karl Marx		 
The education of all children, from the moment that they can get along without a mother's care, shall be in state institutions at state expense.
-- Karl Marx		 
The theory of Communism may be summed up in one sentence: Abolish all private property.
-- Karl Marx		 
Democracy is a form of government that cannot long survive, for as soon as the people learn that they have a voice in the fiscal policies of the government, they will move to vote for themselves all the money in the treasury, and bankrupt the nation.
-- Karl Marx (Questionable)		 
1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes. 2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax. 3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance. 4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels. 5. Centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly. 6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state. 7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan. 8. Equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture. 9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country. 10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc.
-- Karl Marx		 
My object in life is to dethrone God and destroy capitalism.
-- Karl Marx		 
Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
-- Karl Marx		 
The poor despise labor when performed by slaves.
-- George Mason		 
To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them.
-- George Mason		 
The freedom of the press is one of the great bulwarks of liberty, and can never be restrained but by despotic governments.
-- George Mason		 
All men are created equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; among which are the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing the obtaining of happiness and safety.
-- George Mason		 
Now all acts of legislature apparently contrary to natural right and justice, are, in our laws, and must be in the nature of things, considered as void. The laws of nature are the laws of God: A legislature must not obstruct our obedience to him from whose punishments they cannot protect us. All human constitutions which contradict His laws, we are in conscience bound to disobey. Such have been the adjudications of our courts of justice.
-- George Mason		 
When the same man, or set of men, holds the sword and the purse, there is an end of liberty.
-- George Mason		 
Government is, or ought to be, instituted for the common benefit and security of the people, nation or community; whenever any government shall be found inadequate or contrary to these purposes, a majority of the community hath an indubitable, unalienable, indefeasible right, to reform, alter, or abolish it, in such manner as shall be judged most conducive to the public Weal.
-- George Mason		 
No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people, but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality and virtue, and by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.
-- George Mason		 
Who are the militia, if they be not the people of this country...? I ask, who are the militia?  They consist of now of the whole people, except a few public officers.
-- George Mason		 
That the people have a Right to mass and to bear arms; that a well regulated militia composed of the Body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper natural and safe defense of a free State...
-- George Mason		 
Considering the natural lust for power so inherent in man, I fear the thirst of power will prevail to oppress the people.
-- George Mason		 
[W]hen the resolution of enslaving America was formed in Great Britain, the British Parliament was advised by an artful man, who was governor of Pennsylvania, to disarm the people; that it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them; but that they should not do it openly, but weaken them, and let them sink gradually, by totally disusing and neglecting the militia.
-- George Mason		 
A frequent recurrence to the fundamental principles of the constitution, and a constant adherence to those of piety, justice, moderation, temperance, industry and frugality, are absolutely necessary to preserve the advantages of liberty, and to maintain a free government.
-- Massachusetts Bill of Rights		 
The liberty of the press is essential to the security of freedom in a state; it ought not, therefore, to be restricted in this commonwealth.
-- Massachusetts Declaration of Rights		 
Ense petit placidam sub libertate quietem (By the sword we seek peace, but peace only under liberty)
-- Massachusetts State Motto		 
One of the things that really bothers me is that Americans don't have any sense of history. The majority of Americans don't have any idea of where we've come from, so they naturally succumb to the kind of cliche version that Ronald Reagan represented.
-- Robert K. Massie		 
Somebody recently figured out that we have 35 million laws to enforce the ten commandments.
-- Bert Masterson		 
Don't I have the right to do what I want with my own money?
-- Matthew 20:15		 
The issue of this campaign -- it IS that word socialism. Some people like it. Younger people like it. Those of us like me, who grew up in a cold war and saw some aspects of it while visiting places like Vietnam, like I have, and seeing countries like Cuba, being there. I’m seeing what socialism’s like. I don’t like it. OK? It’s not only not free. It doesn’t freakin’ work!
-- Chris Matthews		 
Power corrupts. But it does more than that. Power attracts the corrupt, then corrupts them further.
-- Don Matthews		 
In 1950, the average family of four paid 2% of its earnings to federal taxes. Today it pays 24%.
-- William R. Mattox, Jr.		 
You can't learn too soon that the most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.
-- W. Somerset Maugham		 
There are two good things in life -- freedom of thought and freedom of action.
-- W. Somerset Maugham		 
If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that, too.
-- W. Somerset Maugham		 
It's a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.
-- W. Somerset Maugham		 
The scapegoat has always had the mysterious power of unleashing man's ferocious pleasure in torturing, corrupting, and befouling.
-- Francois Mauriac		 
In literature as in love, we are astonished by what is chosen by others.
-- Andre Maurois		 
Human freedom involves the capacity to pause, to choose the one response toward which we wish to throw our weight.
-- Rollo May		 
No taxation without representation.
-- Jonathan Mayhew		 
To say that subjects in general are not proper judges (of the law) when their governors oppress them and play the tyrant, and when they defend their rights ...is as great a treason as ever a man uttered... (more)
-- Jonathan Mayhew		 
We, today, stand on the shoulders of our predecessors who have gone before us. We, as their successors, must catch the torch of freedom and liberty passed on to us by our ancestors. We cannot lose this battle.
-- Benjamin E. Mays		 
Liberty, understood by materialists as the right to do or not to do anything not directly injurious to others, we understand as the faculty of choosing, among the various modes of fulfilling duty, those most in harmony with our own tendencies.
-- Giuseppe Mazzini		 
It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in an argument.
-- William Gibbs McAdoo		 
The fact is that there is a serious danger of this country becoming a pluto-democracy; that is, a sham republic with the real government in the hands of a small clique of enormously wealthy men, who speak through their money, and whose influence, even today, radiates to every corner of the United States.
-- William Gibbs McAdoo		 
In every declining civilization there is a small "remnant" of people who adhere to the right against the wrong; who recognize the difference between good and evil and who will take an active stand for the former and against the latter; who can still think and discern and who will courageously take a stand against the political, social, moral, and spiritual rot or decay of their day.
-- Donald S. McAlvaney		 
Switzerland, on the other hand, insists that every male of military age must keep a powerful, fully automatic assault rifle in his home. Every home must be armed -- by law -- and some even keep mortars. Yet Switzerland has one of the most law-abiding citizenry, the lowest crime rate, and least violence of any country in the free world. And it has remained free for over a thousand years. Compare it to New York and Washington where handguns are completely banned. In fact, in Washington, Chief of Police Maurice Turner recently said that the District of Columbia gun ban law had completely failed, and he has called for armed citizen's police auxiliary to help restore order.
-- Donald S. McAlvaney		 
Thus perhaps the most dangerous of all socialist attacks on America in the 1990s is the onslaught to register and confiscate America's firearms. America cannot be subjugated to communism or a socialist dictatorship until Americans are first disarmed. Poland has strict gun control; so does Cambodia, Russia, and Red China. Over 100 million people were brutally slaughtered in those countries, but first they were disarmed. The danger to people when they can't own guns is far greater than any danger gun ownership can ever create.
-- Donald S. McAlvaney		 
The solution to our drug problem is not in incarceration.
-- Barry McCaffrey		 
The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is inefficiency. An efficient bureaucracy is the greatest threat to liberty.
-- Eugene McCarthy		 


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