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Famous Quotes about Liberty
 
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Half the work that is done in this world is to make things appear what they are not.
-- Elias Root Beadle		 
So, you listen to me. Listen to me! Television is not the truth. Television's a god-damned amusement park. Television is a circus, a carnival, a traveling troupe of acrobats, storytellers, dancers, singers, jugglers, sideshow freaks, lion tamers, and football players. We're in the boredom-killing business... We deal in illusions, man. None of it is true! But you people sit there day after day, night after night, all ages, colors, creeds. We're all you know. You're beginning to believe the illusions we're spinning here. You're beginning to think that the tube is reality and that your own lives are unreal. You do whatever the tube tells you. You dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your children like the tube. You even think like the tube. This is mass madness. You maniacs. In God's name, you people are the real thing. We are the illusion.
-- Howard Beale		 
One of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the great struggle for independence.
-- Charles Austin Beard		 
The Rockefeller Foundation and the Council on Foreign Relations … intend to prevent, if they can, a repetition of what they call in the vernacular “the debunking journalistic campaign following World War I.” Translated into precise English, this means that the Foundation and the Council do not want journalists or any other persons to examine too closely and criticize too freely the official propaganda and official statements relative to “our basic aims and activities” during World War II. In short, they hope that, among other things, the policies and measures of Franklin D. Roosevelt will escape in the coming years the critical analysis, evaluation and exposition that befell the policies and measures of Woodrow Wilson and the Entente Allies after World War I.
-- Charles Austin Beard		 
As long as I don't write about the government, religion, politics, and other institutions, I am free to print anything.
-- Pierre-Augustin Beaumarchais		 
Provided I do not write about the government, or about religion, or politics, or morals, or those in power, or public bodies, or the Opera, or the other state theatres, or about anybody who is active in anything, I can print whatever I want.
-- Pierre-Augustin Beaumarchais		 
The laws of this nature are those which forbid to wear arms, disarming those only who are not disposed to commit the crime which the laws mean to prevent. Can it be supposed, that those who have the courage to violate the most sacred laws of humanity, and the most important of the code, will respect the less considerable and arbitrary injunctions, the violation of which is so easy, and of so little comparative importance? Does not the execution of this law deprive the subject of that personal liberty, so dear to mankind and to the wise legislator? and does it not subject the innocent to all the disagreeable circumstances that should only fall on the guilty? It certainly makes the situation of the assaulted worse, and of the assailants better, and rather encourages than prevents murder, as it requires less courage to attack unarmed than armed persons.
-- Cesare Beccaria		 
False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for one imaginary or trifling inconvenience; that would take fire from men because it burns, and water because one may drown in it; that has no remedy for evils except destruction.
-- Cesare Beccaria		 
The punishment of death is the war of a nation against a citizen whose destruction it judges to be necessary or useful.
-- Cesare Beccaria		 
For a punishment to be just it should consist of only such gradations of intensity as suffice to deter men from committing crimes.
-- Cesare Beccaria		 
A principal source of errors and injustice are false ideas of utility. For example: that legislator has false ideas of utility who considers particular more than general conveniencies, who had rather command the sentiments of mankind than excite them, who dares say to reason, 'Be thou a slave;' who would sacrifice a thousand real advantages to the fear of an imaginary or trifling inconvenience; who would deprive men of the use of fire for fear of their being burnt, and of water for fear of their being drowned; and who knows of no means of preventing evil but by destroying it.
-- Cesare Beccaria		 
False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for one imaginary or trifling inconvenience; that would take fire from men because it burns, and water because one may drown in it; that has no remedy for evils except destruction. The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Can it be supposed that those who have the courage to violate the most sacred laws of humanity, the most important of the code, will respect the less important and arbitrary ones, which can be violated with ease and impunity, and which, if strictly obeyed, would put an end to personal liberty... and subject innocent persons to all the vexations that the guilty alone ought to suffer? Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man. They ought to be designated as laws not preventive but fearful of crimes, produced by the tumultuous impression of a few isolated facts, and not by thoughtful consideration of the inconveniences and advantages of a universal decree.
-- Cesare Beccaria		 
If a theory and its proponents stubbornly refuse falsification by an ever increasing body of substantial conflicting evidence, the theory degenerates into a textbook example of dogmatic pseudo-science. The neo-Darwinian theory of macroevolution has failed on all fronts, from mathematical feasibility, to theoretical plausibility and explanatory power, to empirical support.
-- Günter Bechly		 
We used to be a free people. Now we are hedged in by millions of laws. Harassed by a plague of opportunistic lawyers. Harmed by regulations meant for our protection. Unnecessarily taxed to pay for a suffocating bureaucracy. Drowning in petty paperwork. Stifled by “rights” that rarely benefit anyone.
-- Joan Beck		 
We are all born mad. Some remain so.
-- Samuel Beckett		 
The defect of equality is that we only desire it with our superiors.
-- Henry Becque		 
Government should allow persons to engage in whatever conduct they want to, no matter how deviant or abnormal it may be, so long as (a) they know what they are doing, (b) they consent to it, and (c) no one -- at least no one other than the participants -- is harmed by it.
-- Hugo Adam Bedau		 
We are more especially called upon to maintain the principles of free discussion in case of unpopular sentiments or persons, as in no other case will any effort to maintain them be needed.
-- Edward Beecher		 
There are three schoolmasters for everybody that will employ them - the senses, intelligent companions, and books.
-- Rev. Henry Ward Beecher		 
Make men large and strong and tyranny will bankrupt itself in making shackles for them.
-- Rev. Henry Ward Beecher		 
Liberty is the soul's right to breathe and, when it cannot take a long breath, laws are girdled too tight.
-- Rev. Henry Ward Beecher		 
A bird in a cage is not half a bird.
-- Rev. Henry Ward Beecher		 
The worst thing in this world, next to anarchy, is government.
-- Rev. Henry Ward Beecher		 
The tidal wave of God's providence is carrying liberty throughout the globe.
-- Rev. Henry Ward Beecher		 
There is tonic in the things that men do not love to hear. Free speech is to a great people what the winds are to oceans...and where free speech is stopped miasma is bred, and death comes fast.
-- Rev. Henry Ward Beecher		 
No great advance has ever been made in science, politics, or religion, without controversy.
-- Lyman Beecher		 
Stroke of the pen. Law of the land. Kinda cool.
-- Paul Begala		 
Only reason can convince us of those three fundamental truths without a recognition of which there can be no effective liberty: that what we believe is not necessarily true; that what we like is not necessarily good; and that all questions are open.
-- Clive Bell		 
History is clear that the first ten amendments to the Constitution were adopted to secure certain common law rights of the people, against invasion by the Federal Government.
-- Bell v. Hood		 
I pledge allegiance to my Flag and to the Republic for which it stands; one Nation, indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all.
-- Rev. Francis Bellamy		 
To assert that the earth revolves around the sun is as erroneous to claim that Jesus was not born of a virgin.
-- Cardnial Robert Bellarmine		 
In a recent conversation with an official at the Internal Revenue Service, I was amazed when he told me that 'If the taxpayers of this country ever discover that the IRS operates on 90% bluff the entire system will collapse' .
-- Henry Bellmon		 
The control of the production of wealth is the control of human life itself.
-- Hilaire Belloc		 
[Heresy is] the dislocation of a complete and self-supporting scheme by the introduction of a novel denial of some essential part therein.
-- Hilaire Belloc		 
Never could an increase of comfort or security be a sufficient good to be bought at the price of liberty.
-- Hilaire Belloc		 
Open discussion of many major public questions has for some time now been taboo. We can’t open our mouths without being denounced as racists, misogynists, supremacists, imperialists or fascists. As for the media, they stand ready to trash anyone so designated.
-- Saul Bellow		 
I don't want my children fed or clothed by the state, but if I had to choose, I would prefer that to their being educated by the state.
-- Max Victor Belz		 
Politics is the art of looking for trouble,finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy.
-- Ernest Benn		 
Pursue what catches your heart, not what catches your eyes.
-- Roy T. Bennett		 
Perhaps the most obvious political effect of controlled news is the advantage it gives powerful people in getting their issues on the political agenda and defining those issues in ways likely to influence their resolution.
-- W. Lance Bennett		 
If America is destroyed, it may be by Americans who salute the flag, sing the national anthem, march in patriotic parades, cheer Fourth of July speakers – normally good Americans, but Americans who fail to comprehend what is required to keep our country strong and free, Americans who have been lulled away into a false security.
-- Ezra Taft Benson		 
You cannot do wrong and feel right. It is impossible!
-- Ezra Taft Benson		 
No power of government ought to be employed in the endeavor to establish any system or article of belief on the subject of religion.
-- Jeremy Bentham		 
As to the evil which results from censorship, it is impossible to measure it, because it is impossible to tell where it ends.
-- Jeremy Bentham		 
Among the several cloudy appellatives which have been commonly employed as cloaks for misgovernment, there is none more conspicuous in this atmosphere of illusion than the word Order.
-- Jeremy Bentham		 
As to the evil which results from a censorship, it is impossible to measure it, for it is impossible to tell where it ends.
-- Jeremy Bentham		 
Governments last as long as the undertaxed can defend themselves against the overtaxed.
-- Bernard Berenson		 
Usurpation, the exercise of power not granted, is not legitimized by repetition.
-- Raoul Berger		 
The average taxpayer in Germany or Japan pays less for the defense of his country than the average taxpayer in America pays for the defense of Germany or Japan.
-- David Bergland		 
Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.
-- Henri-Louis Bergson		 
Given a short time with a psycho-politician you can alter forever the loyalty of a soldier in our hands or a statesman or a leader in his own country, or you can destroy his mind... (more)
-- Lavrentii Pavlovich Beria		 
He who says there is no such thing as an honest man, you may be sure is himself a knave.
-- George Berkeley		 
I thank God, we have not free schools nor printing; and I hope we shall not have these hundred years. For learning has brought disobedience, and heresy and sects into the world; and printing has divulged them and libels against the government. God keep us from both!
-- Sir William Berkeley		 
Political correctness is really a subjective list put together by the few to rule the many -- a list of things one must think, say, or do. It affronts the right of the individual to establish his or her own beliefs.
-- Mark Berley		 
Purveyors of political correctness will, in the final analysis, not even allow others their judgments... They celebrate “difference,” but they will not allow people truly to be different -- to think differently, and to say what they think.
-- Mark Berley		 
Injustice, poverty, slavery, ignorance -- these may be cured by reform or revolution. But men do not live only by fighting evils. They live by positive goals, individual and collective, a vast variety of them, seldom predictable, at times incompatible.
-- Isaiah Berlin		 
Conformities are called for much more eagerly today than yesterday... skeptics, liberals, individuals with a taste for private life and their own inner standards of behavior, are objects of fear and derision and targets of persecution for either side... in the great ideological wars of our time.
-- Isaiah Berlin		 
Those who have ever valued liberty for its own sake believed that to be free to choose, and not to be chosen for, is an unalienable ingredient in what makes human beings human.
-- Isaiah Berlin		 
All forms of tampering with human beings, getting at them, shaping them against their will to your own pattern, all thought control and conditioning is, therefore, a denial of that in men which makes them men and their values ultimate.
-- Isaiah Berlin		 
The first people totalitarians destroy or silence are men of ideas and free minds.
-- Isaiah Berlin		 
But to manipulate men, to propel them toward goals which you – the social reformers – see, but they may not, is to deny their human essence, to treat them as objects without wills of their own, and therefore to degrade them.
-- Isaiah Berlin		 
Justice in the hands of the powerful is merely a governing system like any other. Why call it justice? Let us rather call it injustice, but of a sly effective order, based entirely on cruel knowledge of the resistance of the weak, their capacity for pain, humiliation and misery.
-- Georges Bernanos		 
Civilization exists precisely so that there may be no masses but rather men alert enough never to constitute masses.
-- Georges Bernanos		 
The first sign of corruption in a society that is still alive is that the end justifies the means.
-- Georges Bernanos		 
The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.
-- Edward Bernays		 
The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society.
-- Edward Bernays		 
The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society.
-- Edward L. Bernays		 
In almost every act of our lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business or in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind.
-- Edward L. Bernays		 
If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it not possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing about it? The recent practice of propaganda has proved that it is possible, at least up to a certain point and within certain limits.
-- Edward L. Bernays		 
Those who manipulate the unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested largely by men we have never heard of.
-- Edward L. Bernays		 
In order to get the truth, conflicting arguments and expression must be allowed. There can be no freedom without choice, no sound choice without knowledge.
-- David K. Berninghausen		 
For the first time in history, the rational and the good are fully armed in the battle against evil. Here we finally find the answer to our paradox; now we can understand the nature of the social power held by evil. Ultimately, the evil, the irrational, truly has no power. The evil men’s control of morality is transient; it lives on borrowed time made possible only by the errors of the good. In time, as more honest men grasp the truth, evil’s stranglehold will be easily broken.
-- Andrew Bernstein		 
Altruism demands that an individual serve others, but doesn’t stipulate whether those others should be one’s family, or the homeless, or society as a whole. Collectivism states that, in politics, society comes first and the individual must obey.  Collectivism is the application of the altruist ethics to politics.
-- Andrew Bernstein		 
Statism – the subordination of the individual to the state --  leads inevitably to the most hideous oppression.
-- Andrew Bernstein		 
Collectivism is the political theory that states that the will of the people is omnipotent, an individual must obey; that society as a whole, not the individual, is the unit of moral value. ... Collectivism is the application of the altruist ethics to politics.
-- Andrew Bernstein		 
I would not be fooled by the old myth that reporting is about objectivity. Deciding what is news is the most subjective of acts and it is probably the most important thing that we do.
-- Carl Bernstein		 
The whole point of the liberal revolution that gave rise to the 1960’s was to free us from somebody else’s dogma, but now the same people…are striving to impose on others a secularized religion…disguising it behind innocuous labels like ‘diversity training’ and ‘respect for difference.’
-- Richard Bernstein		 
It's never over 'till it's over.
-- Yogi Berra		 
If you don't know where you're going, when you get there you'll be lost.
-- Yogi Berra		 
Even Napoleon had his Watergate.
-- Yogi Berra		 
If the world were perfect, it wouldn't be.
-- Yogi Berra		 
I don't know a more irreligious attitude, one more utterly bankrupt of any human content, than one which permits childred to be destroyed.
-- Daniel Berrigan		 
But how shall we educate men to goodness, to a sense of one another, to a love of truth? And more urgently, how shall we do this in a bad time?
-- Daniel Joseph Berrigan		 
If your library is not ‘unsafe’, it probably isn’t doing its job.
-- John Berry		 
What a valuable tool food aid can be in changing behaviour. ... food is power. ... Yes, it's bribery. We don't apologize for that.
-- Catherine Bertini		 
Let's have no illusions. We can't easily change the underlying beliefs and prejudices that do so much damage to women worldwide. We cannot quickly change attitudes, but we can change behaviour. At the World Food Programme we have recognized what a valuable tool food aid can be in changing behaviour. In so many poorer countries food is money, food is power. In some of our most successful food aid projects, we literally pay families who do not believe in educating their daughters to send those girls to school. A little free cooking oil can go a long way. We trade a 5 litre can of oil for 30 days of school attendance by a young girl. Yes, it's bribery. We don't apologize for that. We are changing behaviour, we are giving hope and opportunity to young girls and that is all that counts. Each small change in behaviour will one day pay off in a change in attitude.
-- Catherine Bertini		 
Tolerance is the eager and glad acceptance of the way along which others seek the truth.
-- Sir Walter Besant		 
It is wrong to take half or more of what people earn; wrong to force some people to pay for the support of others, threatening them with jail if they refuse (are in “noncompliance”).
-- Tom Bethel		 
No Gulag, evidently, can deter the advocates of state power from believing in their own virtue and in the morality of the power they exercise. We are all Hobbesians now. Virtue is presumed to reside in the state. Its reliance on compulsion is seen as fulfilling, not undermining, morality. Our communicators, oddly employed in the private sector, work tirelessly to ensure that state control is maintained, our taxes stay high, the official message is promoted. The people know, and can only know, a tiny fraction of what Leviathan does, and what they know is what these partisans tell them.
-- Tom Bethel		 
No government has ever commanded the resources at the disposal of our ungodly Leviathan, which consumes about 25 percent of the product of the world’s richest country. It is driven by a voracious alliance of government’s own employees, and those who receive benefits from the state. At least 90 million Americans either depend directly on government handouts or jobs, and each private worker must support not only himself and his family, but also carry a government worker on his shoulders.
-- Tom Bethel		 
If we accept and acquiesce in the face of discrimination, we accept the responsibility ourselves. We should, therefore, protest openly everything ... that smacks of discrimination or slander.
-- Mary McLeod Bethune		 
This is exactly the message that fairy tales get across to the child in manifold form: that a struggle against severe difficulties in life is unavoidable, is an intrinsic part of human existence -- but that if one does not shy away, but steadfastly meets unexpected and often unjust hardships, one masters all obstacles and at the end emerges victorious.
-- Bruno Bettelheim		 
If liberty is worth keeping and free representative government worth saving, we must stand for all American fundamentals—not some, but all. All are woven into the great fabric of our national well-being. We cannot hold fast to some only, and abandon others that, for the moment, we find inconvenient. If one American fundamental is prostrated, others in the end will surely fall.
-- Albert J. Beveridge		 
Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so.
-- Albert J. Beveridge		 
America would be better off as a country and Americans happier and more prosperous as a people if half of our government boards, bureaus, and commissions were Abolished, hundreds of thousands of our government officials, agents and employees were discharged, and two-thirds of our government regulations, restrictions, inhibitions were removed.
-- Albert J. Beveridge		 
A newspaper has three things to do. One is to amuse, another is to entertain and the rest is to mislead.
-- Ernest Bevin		 
You know all what I'm about to, what I've said, and you know what I've done, and you know what we're doing, and you know -- I know what you're doing.
-- Joe Biden		 
Republicans don't know how to defend morally an individual's right to achieve wealth and to keep it, and that is why they fail. ... It's part and parcel with their ambivalence over the individualist heritage of the nation. ... One of the things that people have to understand is that the American Revolution was truly an epic revolution in the way individuals were perceived in relation to the rest of the society.  Throughout history individuals had always been cogs in some machine; they'd always been something to be sacrificed for the king, the tribe, the gang, the chieftain, the society around them, the race, whatever, and the real revolution, in America especially, was a moral revolution.  It was a moral revolution in that ... suddenly, with the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, the individual, his life, his well-being, his property, his happiness became central to our values, and thatis what really made America unique.  People came here from all over the world to try to escape the kind of oppression they had and experienced in the past. They came here for freedom; they came here for self-expression and self-realization, and America offered them that kind of a place.
-- Robert Bidinotto		 
Republicans don't know how to defend morally an individual's right to achieve wealth and to keep it, and that is why they fail. ... It's part and parcel with their ambivalence over the individualist heritage of the nation. ... One of the things that people have to understand is that the American Revolution was truly an epic revolution in the way individuals were perceived in relation to the rest of the society.  Throughout history individuals had always been cogs in some machine; they'd always been something to be sacrificed for the king, the tribe, the gang, the chieftain, the society around them, the race, whatever, and the real revolution, in America especially, was a moral revolution.  It was a moral revolution in that ... suddenly, with the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, the individual, his life, his well-being, his property, his happiness became central to our values, and that is what really made America unique.  People came here from all over the world to try to escape the kind of oppression they had and experienced in the past. They came here for freedom; they came here for self-expression and self-realization, and America offered them that kind of a place.
-- Robert Bidinotto		 
Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.
-- Ambrose Bierce		 


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