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Famous Quotes about Liberty
 
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In our dreams, people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present education conventions of intellectual and character education fade from their minds, and, unhampered by tradition, we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive folk.      We shall not try to make these people, or any of their children, into philosophers, or men of science. We have not to raise up from them authors, educators, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for great artists, painters, musicians nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen -- of whom we have an ample supply.      The task is simple. We will organize children and teach them in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way.
-- John D. Rockefeller, Sr.		 
If something is wrong for you or me, it is also wrong for the cop, the soldier, the mayor, the governor, the general, the Fed chairman, the president. Theft does not become acceptable when they call it taxation, counterfeiting when they call it monetary policy, kidnapping when they call it the draft, mass murder when they call it foreign policy. We understand that it is never acceptable to wield violence nor the threat of violence against the innocent, whether by the mugger or the politician.
-- Lew Rockwell		 
Even though they are a relatively recent policy development, civil rights laws are considered necessary to insure rights for blacks. But they are, in fact, among the most draconian forms of intervention into the free market. They attack the essence of private property, the ability to exercise control over it. Such laws have resulted in lessened economic freedom, lowered prosperity, heightened social tension, and more trouble for the groups the laws are supposed to help. ... A Korean grocer may want to employ only Korean clerks, a magazine for black professionals only black editors and writers, and a German restaurant only German cooks and waiters. An employer may think that Iraqi-Americans have been unfairly treated and want to favor them. A women’s health club may want only women customer’s and a men’s bar may want only men. There is nothing wrong with any of these behaviors, although civil rights laws seek to end them. In addition to violating the free labor contract, civil rights laws guarantee everyone the right of “access” to “public accommodations” like restaurants, movie theaters, and shops. In fact, what the civil rights laws call public is really private. These businesses are established by private entrepreneurs with private money. The owners should no more be required to serve everyone who comes into their place than they are required to invite everyone to their home for dinner. A large downtown restaurant is as private as a small house in the country. The real difference between private and public is one of ownership, not function or location.
-- Lew Rockwell		 
American money was never more sound, or banking more free, than 200 years ago. Since then, it’s been a long steady decline from the gold standard and competitive banking to our Fed-run system of inflated paper currency, deposit insurance, and perpetually shaky banks on the dole.
-- Lew Rockwell		 
Repeal the entire Banking Act of 1933, and Austrian School economists will cheer, especially if the current system were replaced by a 100%-reserve competitive banking with no central bank. That banking reform would give us a sound money system, meaning no more business cycle, bailouts, or inflation.
-- Lew Rockwell		 
Anything other than free enterprise always means a society of compulsion and lower living standards, and any form of socialism strictly enforced means dictatorship and the total state.  That this statement is still widely disputed only illustrates the degree to which malignant fantasy can capture the imagination of intellectuals.
-- Lew Rockwell		 
The only reason for a government service is precisely to provide financial support for an operation that is otherwise unsustainable, or else there would be no point in the government’s involvement at all.
-- Lew Rockwell		 
If you think you're too small to make a difference, you haven't been in bed with a mosquito.
-- Anita Roddick		 
You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.
-- Dr. Adrian Rogers		 
I believe that the testing of the student's achievements in order to see if he meets some criterion held by the teacher, is directly contrary to the implications of therapy for significant learning.
-- Carl Rogers		 
The issues can be stated very briefly: Who will be controlled? Who will exercise control? What type of control will be exercised? Most important of all, toward what end or purpose, or in the pursuit of what value, will control be exercised?
-- Carl Rogers		 
Your mothers get mighty shocked at you girls nowadays, but in her day, her mother was just on the verge of sending her to reform school.
-- Will Rogers		 
We are always yapping about the 'Good Old Days' and how we look back and enjoy it, but I tell you there is a lot of hooey to it.   There is a whole lot of all our past lives that wasn't so hot.
-- Will Rogers		 
I see where they are going to be more strict with these robbers; when they catch 'em from now on, they're going to publish their names.
-- Will Rogers		 
It will take America fifteen years of steady taking care of our own business and letting everybody else's alone, to get us back to where everybody speaks to us again.
-- Will Rogers		 
Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.
-- Will Rogers		 
An economist is a man that can tell you...what can happen under any given condition, and his guess is liable to be as good as anybody else's too.
-- Will Rogers		 
I bet after seeing us, George Washington would sue us for calling him 'father'.
-- Will Rogers		 
On account of us being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only people in the world that has to keep a government four years no matter what it does.
-- Will Rogers		 
All one has to do to get one's stuff in the Congressional Record is to find a stenographer that can stay awake long enough to take it down. Then you mark in the 'Applause' and 'Laughter' parts yourself.
-- Will Rogers		 
Those tax-exempt bonds were put in so that a town or a state or a government could sell more bonds than it ought to.
-- Will Rogers		 
The United States investigates everything -- usually after it's dead.
-- Will Rogers		 
We are sure living in a peculiar time. You get more for not working than you will for working, and more for not raising a hog than for raising it.
-- Will Rogers		 
This stuff they are talking here in Congress costs the people of the United States $44 a page. That's beside what it costs to ship it to the asylums where it's read.
-- Will Rogers		 
Hurray! Congress is to adjourn! Only four more days of Congressional burglary on the Treasury!
-- Will Rogers		 
I guess truth can hurt you worse in an election than about anything that can happen to you.
-- Will Rogers		 
If we have Senators and Congressmen there that can't protect themselves against the evil temptations of lobbyists, we don't need to change our lobbies, we need to change our representatives.
-- Will Rogers		 
A Country can get more real joy out of just Hollering for their Freedom than they can if they get it.
-- Will Rogers		 
There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you.
-- Will Rogers		 
I bet you, if I had met Trotsky, and had had a chat with him, I would have found him a very interesting and human fellow, for I have never yet met a man I didn't like.
-- Will Rogers		 
America has a very unique record. We never lost a war or won a conference...
-- Will Rogers		 
Ammunition beats persuasion when you are looking for freedom.
-- Will Rogers		 
There is two types of Larceny, Petty and Grand. They are supposed to be the same in the eyes of the law, but judges always put a little extra on you for Petty, which is kind of a fine for stupidness.
-- Will Rogers		 
Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.
-- Will Rogers		 
Of course nothing is ever done about a [presidential] commission report, except, they say, once a man at the state prison for the criminally insane actually read one once clear through. Then he did something about it. He made a bonfire that lasted a week.
-- Will Rogers		 
Ohio claims they are due a president as they haven't had one since Taft. Look at the United States, they have not had one since Lincoln.
-- Will Rogers		 
We are the only nation in the world that waits till we get into a war before we start getting ready for it.
-- Will Rogers		 
If we ever pass out as a great nation we ought to put on our tombstone, 'America died from a delusion that she has moral leadership'.
-- Will Rogers		 
It sure did kick up some excitement in the Senate when one Senator called the other Senators 'sons of Wild jackasses.' Well, if you thought it made the Senators hot, you wait till you see what happens when the jackasses hear how they have been slandered.
-- Will Rogers		 
The short memories of the American voters is what keeps our politicians in office.
-- Will Rogers		 
I'm not a member of any organized political party. I'm a Democrat.
-- Will Rogers		 
Ancient Rome declined because it had a Senate, now what's going to happen to us with both a House and a Senate?
-- Will Rogers		 
A foreigner coming here and reading the Congressional Record would say that the President of the United States was elected solely for the purpose of giving Senators somebody to call a horse thief.
-- Will Rogers		 
Elections are a good deal like marriages, there's no accounting for anyone's taste. Every time we see a bridegroom we wonder why she ever picked him, and it's the same with Public Officials.
-- Will Rogers		 
Tomorrow is Labor Day, I suppose set by Act of Congress. Everything we do nowadays is either by, or against, Acts of Congress. How Congress knew anything about Labor is beyond us.
-- Will Rogers		 
Never blame a legislative body for not doing something. When they do nothing, that don't hurt anybody. When they do something is when they become dangerous.
-- Will Rogers		 
Liberty doesn't work as well in practice as it does in speeches.
-- Will Rogers		 
That's what a Congressman or a Senator is for -- to see that too much money don't accumulate in the national Treasury.
-- Will Rogers		 
Nothing makes a man, or a body of men, as mad as the truth. If there is no truth in it, they laugh it off.
-- Will Rogers		 
This thing about getting rid of a man in the Cabinet is all right, but there is one bad feature to it that few people realize. That is, that unfortunately every one of them is replaced by someone else. If it wasn't for that, this resignation business would be great.
-- Will Rogers		 
The difference between death and taxes is death doesn't get worse every time Congress meets.
-- Will Rogers		 
There is good news from Washington today. The Congress is deadlocked and can't act.
-- Will Rogers		 
Diplomats are just as essential in starting a war as soldiers are in finishing it.
-- Will Rogers		 
You shake a slogan at an American and it's just like showing a hungry dog a bone.
-- Will Rogers		 
If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.
-- Will Rogers		 
The minute you read something that you can't understand, you can almost be sure it was drawn up by a lawyer.
-- Will Rogers		 
Will somebody please tell me what they do with all the Vice-Presidents a bank has? Why the United States is the biggest business institution in the world, and they got only one Vice-President and nobody has ever found anything for him to do.
-- Will Rogers		 
You see, in Washington they have these bodies, Senate and the House of Representatives. That is for the convenience of the visitors. If there is nothing funny happening in one, there is sure to be in the other, and in case one body passes a good bill, why, the other can see it in time and kill it.
-- Will Rogers		 
I doubt if a charging elephant, or a rhino, is as determined or hard to check as a socially ambitious mother.
-- Will Rogers		 
Diplomacy is the art of saying nice doggy until you can find a rock.
-- Will Rogers		 
Don't let yesterday use up too much of today.
-- Will Rogers		 
You can have all the advanced war methods you want, but, after all, nobody has ever invented a war that you don't have to have somebody in the guise of soldiers to stop the bullets.
-- Will Rogers		 
On account of being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter what it does.
-- Will Rogers		 
Income taxes have made more liars out of the American people than golf.
-- Will Rogers		 
How is the government going to get the extra taxes? Out of the rich -- or just out of the poor, as usual?
-- Will Rogers		 
Instead of giving money to found colleges to promote learning, why don't they pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting anybody from learning anything? If it works as good as the Prohibition one did, why, in five years we would have the smartest race of people on earth!
-- Will Rogers		 
If we took Congress seriously, we would be worrying all the time.
-- Will Rogers		 
Farmers, get out your sense of humor! Congress meets to relieve you again next week.
-- Will Rogers		 
I don't make jokes -- I just watch the government and report the facts.
-- Will Rogers		 
Things in our country run in spite of the government, not by the aid of it.
-- Will Rogers		 
The more you read and observe about this Politics thing, you got to admit that each party is worse than the other. The one that's out always looks the best.
-- Will Rogers		 
One of these days they are going to remove so much of the 'hooey' and the thousands of things the schools have become clogged up with, and we will find that we can educate our broods for about one-tenth of the price and learn 'em something that they might accidentally use after they escape.
-- Will Rogers		 
Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.
-- Will Rogers		 
Fairness does not require the redistribution of wealth; it requires the creation of wealth, geared to an economy that can provide employment for everyone able and willing to work.
-- Felix Rohatyn		 
Since I am an immature and wicked man, war and unrest appeal to me more than good bourgeois order. Brutality is respected, the people need wholesome fear. They want to fear someone. They want someone to frighten them and make them shudderingly submissive.
-- Ernst Rohm		 
The relative openness or closedness of a mind cuts across specific content; that is, it is not restricted to any one particular ideology, or religion, or philosophy, or scientific viewpoint.
-- Milton Rokeach		 
O liberty! O liberty! What crimes are committed in thy name!
-- Madame Jeanne-Marie Roland		 
The test for whether one is living in a police state is that those who are charged with enforcing the law are allowed to break the laws with impunity.
-- Jon Roland		 
We make money the old fashioned way. We print it.
-- Art Rolnick		 
I am convinced that we can do to guns what we've done to drugs: create a multi-billion dollar underground market over which we have absolutely no control.
-- George L. Roman		 
Felix qui nihil debet. (Happy is he who owes nothing.)
-- Roman Proverb		 
Give me control over a man's economic actions, and hence over his means of survival, and except for a few occasional heroes, I'll promise to deliver to you men who think and write and behave as I want them to.
-- Benjamin A. Rooge		 
Anyone who knows history, particularly the history of Europe, will, I think, recognize that the domination of education or of government by any one particular religious faith is never a happy arrangement for the people.
-- Eleanor Roosevelt		 
We do not move forward by curtailing people’s liberty because we are afraid of what they may do or say.
-- Eleanor Roosevelt		 
Those of us who believe in the right of any human being to belong to whatever church he sees fit, and to worship God in his own way, cannot be accused of prejudice when we do not want to see public education connected with religious control of the schools, which are paid for by taxpayers' money.
-- Eleanor Roosevelt		 
Smearing good people like Lauchlin Currie [former administrative assistant to President Roosevelt], Alger Hiss and others is, I think, unforgiveable... Anyone knowing Mr. Currie or Mr. Hiss, who are the two people whom I happen to know fairly well, would not need any denial on their part to know they are not Communists. Their records prove it.
-- Eleanor Roosevelt		 
Spiritual leadership should remain spiritual leadership and the temporal power should not become too important in any church.
-- Eleanor Roosevelt		 
The things you refuse to meet today always come back at you later on, usually under circumstances which make the decision twice as difficult as it originally was.
-- Eleanor Roosevelt		 
It is not that you set the individual apart from society but that you recognize in any society that the individual must have rights that are guarded.
-- Eleanor Roosevelt		 
Are we going to take the hands of the federal government completely off any effort to adjust the growing of national crops, and go right straight back to the old principle that every farmer is a lord of his own farm and can do anything he wants, raise anything, any old time, in any quantity, and sell any time he wants?
-- Franklin D. Roosevelt		 
The creed of our democracy is that liberty is acquired and kept by men and women who are strong and self-reliant, and possessed of such wisdom as God gives mankind -- men and women who are just, and understanding, and generous to others -- men and women who are capable of disciplining themselves. For they are the rulers and they must rule themselves.
-- Franklin D. Roosevelt		 
If the fires of freedom and civil liberties burn low in other lands, they must be made brighter in our own. If in other lands the press and books and literature of all kinds are censored, we must redouble our efforts here to keep them free. If in other lands the eternal truths of the past are threatened by intolerance, we must provide a safe place for their perception.
-- Franklin D. Roosevelt		 
True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence.
-- Franklin D. Roosevelt		 
It is a good thing to demand liberty for ourselves and for those who agree with us, but it is a better thing and a rarer thing to give liberty to others who do not agree with us.
-- Franklin D. Roosevelt		 
A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car, but if he has a university education he may steal the whole railroad.
-- Franklin D. Roosevelt		 
[The commerce clause was written] in the horse-and-buggy age ... since that time … we have developed an entirely different philosophy. ... We are interdependent, we are tied in together. And the hope has been that we could, through a period of years, interpret the interstate commerce clause of the Constitution in the light of these new things that have come to the country. It has been our hope that under the interstate commerce clause we could recognize by legislation and by judicial decision that a harmful practice in one section of the country could be prevented on the theory that it was doing harm to another section of the country. That was why the Congress for a good many years, and most lawyers, have had the thought that in drafting legislation we could depend on an interpretation that would enlarge the constitutional meaning of interstate commerce to include not only those matters of direct interstate commerce, but also those matters which indirectly affect interstate commerce.
-- Franklin D. Roosevelt		 
Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.
-- Franklin D. Roosevelt		 
We, and all others who believe in freedom as deeply as we do, would rather die on our feet than live on our knees.
-- Franklin D. Roosevelt		 
In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happened, you can bet it was planned that way.
-- Franklin D. Roosevelt		 
I do not believe in communism any more than you do, but there is nothing wrong with the communists in this country. Several of the best friends I have are Communists.
-- Franklin D. Roosevelt		 


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