Famous Quotations / Quotes
Famous Quotes about Liberty
 
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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 children 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		 
Vote: The instrument and symbol of a free man's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.
-- Ambrose Bierce		 
The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.
-- Ambrose Bierce		 
Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.
-- Ambrose Bierce		 
Optimism: The doctrine that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly, everything good, especially the bad, and everything right that is wrong. ... It is hereditary, but fortunately not contagious.
-- Ambrose Bierce		 
Opposition, n. In politics the party that prevents the government from running amuck by hamstringing it.
-- Ambrose Bierce		 
Idiot, n. A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling.
-- Ambrose Bierce		 
As records of courts and justice are admissible, it can easily be proved that powerful and malevolent magicians once existed and were a scourge to mankind... Nothing in any existing court was ever more thoroughly proved than the charges of witchcraft and sorcery for which so many suffered death. If there were no witches, human testimony and human reason are alike destitute of value.
-- Ambrose Bierce		 


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