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Famous Quotes about Liberty
 
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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		 
The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is its inefficiency.
-- Eugene McCarthy		 
There is danger in the concentration of control in the television and radio networks, especially in the large television and radio stations; danger in the concentration of ownership in the press…and danger in the increasing concentration of selection by book publishers and reviewers and by the producers of radio and television programs.
-- Eugene McCarthy		 
Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to understand the game, and dumb enough to think it's important.
-- Eugene McCarthy		 
Bureaucracy, the rule of no one, has become the modern form of despotism.
-- Mary McCarthy		 
The notion that journalism can regularly produce a product that violates the fundamental interests of media owners and advertisers … is absurd.
-- Robert McChesney		 
Former ABC News reporter/anchor Sam Donaldson is ready to say the last rites for network news because it will soon lose its dominant position as Americans' primary source of news. 'I think it's dead. Sorry,' he said during a breakfast panel Tuesday at the National Association of Broadcasters' convention in Las Vegas.
-- Bill McConnell		 
If, as it appears, the experiment that was called 'America' is at an end ... then perhaps a fitting epitaph would be ... 'here lies America the greatest nation that might have been had it not been for the Edomite bankers who first stole their money, used their stolen money to buy their politicians and press and lastly deprived them of their constitutional freedom by the most evil device yet created --- The Federal Reserve Banking System.'
-- G. D. McDaniel		 
The drive of the Rockefellers and their allies is to create a one-world government combining supercapitalism and Communism under the same tent, all under their control. … Do I mean conspiracy? Yes I do. I am convinced there is such a plot, international in scope, generations old in planning, and incredibly evil in intent.
-- Larry P. McDonald		 
The drive of the Rockefellers and their allies is to create a one-world government combining supercapitalism and communism under the same tent, all under their control... Do I mean conspiracy? Yes I do. I am convinced there is such a plot, international in scope, generations old in planning, and incredibly evil in intent.
-- Larry P. McDonald		 
Whatever the immediate gains and losses, the dangers to our safety arising from political suppression are always greater than the dangers to the safety resulting from political freedom. Suppression is always foolish.
-- Neil A. McDonald		 
Freedom is not a fixed and possessed thing. It is a quality of life. And like action itself, it is something experienced only by individuals.
-- Neil A. McDonald		 
Now the truth of the matter is, there is nothing wrong with this country. Please. The message I want to leave with you is that there's nothing wrong with this country that the proper leadership won't cure. We've been here before. In 1787, the economy of our nation was in absolute chaos and as a consequence, they met in Philadelphia to form a new country, and when they did, they did the right things, and in the second State of the Union address, which was written at that time by George Washington, he said the foundations, the economic foundations of our nation are on such sound footing that it would have been a madman would have suspected 3 years ago. The fact is that the chaos that they're creating doesn't mean that America can or has to be in decline. It means that we need to remove them as rapidly as possible and get people that know what to do and America will continue to climb.
-- Bob McEwen		 
In the 1950’s [America was] the richest nation, the richest city on earth was Detroit. They voted for change and so now it is the poorest city in America. At the same time, the nation of South Korea, of all the nations on earth, was third from the bottom. Virtually the poorest nation on earth. It is now tenth from the top. If you understand the principle, the greater freedom, the greater the wealth, you can then put any nation [on this chart]. Now you can go to Tagusagopos, you can go to Buenos Aires, you can go to Cairo, you can go to Philadelphia and all you need to know is what percentage of the Gross Domestic Product is controlled by government, and the greater the government, the greater the poverty, and that’s all politics is about. Every day politicians say, “I can make a better decision for you than you can for yourself, and let me take your money away from you and make it on your behalf” and thus make the nation poorer.
-- Bob McEwen		 


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