Famous Quotations / Quotes
Famous Quotes about Liberty
 
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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		 
We all know that books will burn -- yet we have the greater knowledge that books cannot be killed by fire. People die, but books never die. No man and no force can abolish memory...
-- Franklin D. Roosevelt		 
I tell the American people solemnly that the United States will never survive as a happy and fertile oasis of liberty surrounded by a cruel desert of dictatorship.
-- Franklin D. Roosevelt		 
The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government of the U.S. since the days of Andrew Jackson. History depicts Andrew Jackson as the last truly honorable and incorruptible American president.
-- Franklin D. Roosevelt		 
The saving grace of America lies in the fact that the overwhelming majority of Americans are possessed of two great qualities -- a sense of humor and a sense of proportion.
-- Franklin D. Roosevelt		 
The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over the government.
-- Franklin D. Roosevelt		 
I hope your committee will not permit doubts as to constitutionality, however reasonable, to block the suggested legislation.
-- Franklin D. Roosevelt		 
Freedom to learn is the first necessity of guaranteeing that man himself shall be self-reliant enough to be free.
-- Franklin D. Roosevelt		 
Knowledge -- that is, education in its true sense -- is our best protection against unreasoning prejudice and panic-making fear, whether engendered by special interest, illiberal minorities, or panic-stricken leaders.
-- Franklin D. Roosevelt		 
The truth is found when men are free to pursue it.
-- Franklin D. Roosevelt		 
I am much interested and deeply impressed by what he has accomplished and by his evidenced honest purpose of restoring Italy and seeking to prevent general European trouble.
-- Franklin D. Roosevelt		 
All government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management.
-- Franklin D. Roosevelt		 
No people is wholly civilized where a distinction is drawn between stealing an office and stealing a purse.
-- Theodore Roosevelt		 
All constitutions, those of the States no less than that of the nation, are designed, and must be interpreted and administered so as to fit human rights.
-- Theodore Roosevelt		 
'Liar' is just as ugly a word as 'thief,' because it implies the presence of just as ugly a sin in one case as in the other. If a man lies under oath or procures the lie of another under oath, if he perjures himself or suborns perjury, he is guilty under the statute law.
-- Theodore Roosevelt		 
To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.
-- Theodore Roosevelt		 
The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living and the get-rich-quick theory of life.
-- Theodore Roosevelt		 
Free speech exercised both individually and through a free press, is a necessity in any country where people are themselves free.
-- Theodore Roosevelt		 
Wide differences of opinion in matters of religious, political and social belief must exist if conscience and intellect alike are not to be stunted.
-- Theodore Roosevelt		 
In life, as in a football game, the principle to follow is: Hit the line hard.
-- Theodore Roosevelt		 
To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.
-- Theodore Roosevelt		 
In strict confidence … I should welcome almost any war, for I think this country needs one.
-- Theodore Roosevelt		 
Freedom is not a gift which can be enjoyed save by those shown themselves worthy of it.
-- Theodore Roosevelt		 
No man who is corrupt, no man who condones corruption in others, can possibly do his duty by the community.
-- Theodore Roosevelt		 
No man is justified in doing evil on the ground of expediency.
-- Theodore Roosevelt		 
No triumph of peace can equal the armed triumph of war.
-- Theodore Roosevelt		 
To divide along the lines of section or caste or creed is un-American.
-- Theodore Roosevelt		 
All privileges based on wealth, and all emnity to honest men merely because they are wealthy, are un-American.
-- Theodore Roosevelt		 
Any man who tries to incite class hatred, sectional hate, hate of creeds, any kind of hatred in our community, though he may affect to do so in the interest of the class he is addressing, is in the long run with absolute certainty that class’s own worst enemy.
-- Theodore Roosevelt		 
Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the President or any other public official save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. ... Every man who parrots the cry of “stand by the President” without adding the proviso “so far as he serves the Republic” takes an attitude as essentially unmanly as that of any Stuart royalist who championed the doctrine that the King could do no wrong. No self-respecting and intelligent free man could take such an attitude.
-- Theodore Roosevelt		 
Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day.
-- Theodore Roosevelt		 
If an American is to amount to anything he must rely upon himself, and not upon the State; he must take pride in his own work, instead of sitting idle to envy the luck of others. He must face life with resolute courage, win victory if he can, and accept defeat if he must, without seeking to place on his fellow man a responsibility which is not theirs.
-- Theodore Roosevelt		 
To educate a man in mind, and not in morals, is to educate a menace to society.
-- Theodore Roosevelt		 
When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer 'present' or 'not guilty.'
-- Theodore Roosevelt		 
We cannot afford to differ on the question of honesty if we expect our republic permanently to endure. Honesty is not so much a credit as an absolute prerequisite to efficient service to the public. Unless a man is honest, we have no right to keep him in public life; it matters not how brilliant his capacity.
-- Theodore Roosevelt		 
To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.
-- Theodore Roosevelt		 
There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism.
-- Theodore Roosevelt		 
To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.
-- Theodore Roosevelt		 
The one absolute certain way to bring this nation to ruin ... would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities.
-- Theodore Roosevelt		 
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
-- Theodore Roosevelt		 
Nannyism is fascism on training wheels.
-- R. L. Root		 
Lottery tickets are the only consumer products actively promoted and sold by the state. The state does not sell toothpaste, or even promote brushing your teeth. But it tells people they should gamble. The main marketing concern is how to attract new players, who otherwise wouldn't gamble.
-- I. Nelson Rose		 
No man suffers injustice without learning, vaguely but surely, what justice is.
-- Isaac Rosenfeld		 
But it became clear as time went on that in Mr. Bush’s mind the New World Order was founded on a convergence of goals and interests between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, so strong and permanent that they would work as a team through the U.N. Security Council.
-- A. M. Rosenthal		 
During the last dozen years the tales of suppression of free assemblage, free press, and free speech, by local authorities or the State operating under martial law have been so numerous as to have become an old story. They are attacked at the instigation of an economically and socially powerful class, itself enjoying to the full the advantages of free communications, but bent on denying them to the class it holds within its power...
-- Edward Alsworth Ross		 
Although it had its share of strenuous Christians... the gathering at Philadelphia was largely made up of men in whom the old fires were under control or had even flickered out. Most were nominally members of one of the traditional churches in their part of the country.. and most were men who could take their religion or leave it alone. Although no one in this sober gathering would have dreamed of invoking the Goddess of Reason, neither would anyone have dared to proclaim his opinions had the support of the God of Abraham and Paul. The Convention of 1787 was highly rationalist and even secular in spirit.
-- Clinton Rossiter		 
The Americans of 1776 were among the first men in modern society to defend rather than to seek an open society and constitutional liberty.... Perhaps the most remarkable characteristic of this political theory sits in its deep-seated conservatism. However radical the principles of the Revolution may have seemed to the rest of the world, in the minds of the colonists they were thoroughly preservative and respectful of the past.
-- Clinton Lawrence Rossiter III		 
Based on strikingly irrational beliefs and emotions, modern liberals relentlessly undermine the most important principles on which our freedoms were founded. Like spoiled, angry children, they rebel against the normal responsibilities of adulthood and demand that a parental government meet their needs from cradle to grave.
-- Lyle H. Rossiter, Jr.		 
A social scientist who understands human nature will not dismiss the vital roles of free choice, voluntary cooperation and moral integrity -- as liberals do. A political leader who understands human nature will not ignore individual differences in talent, drive, personal appeal and work ethic, and then try to impose economic and social equality on the population -- as liberals do. And a legislator who understands human nature will not create an environment of rules which over-regulates and overtaxes the nation’s citizens, corrupts their character and reduces them to wards of the state -- as liberals do.
-- Lyle H. Rossiter, Jr.		 
The roots of liberalism – and its associated madness – can be clearly identified by understanding how children develop from infancy to adulthood and how distorted development produces the irrational beliefs of the liberal mind. When the modern liberal mind whines about imaginary victims, rages against imaginary villains and seeks above all else to run the lives of persons competent to run their own lives, the neurosis of the liberal mind becomes painfully obvious.
-- Lyle H. Rossiter, Jr.		 
There can be no truly moral choice unless that choice is made in freedom; similarly, there can be no really firmly grounded and consistent defense of freedom unless that defense is rooted in moral principle. In concentrating on the ends of choice, the conservative, by neglecting the conditions of choice, loses that very morality of conduct with which he is so concerned. And the libertarian, by concentrating only on the means, or conditions, of choice and ignoring the ends, throws away an essential moral defense of his own position.
-- Murray N. Rothbard		 
It is curious that people tend to regard government as a quasi-divine, selfless, Santa Claus organization. Government was constructed neither for ability nor for the exercise of loving care; government was built for the use of force and for necessarily demagogic appeals for votes. If individuals do not know their own interests in many cases, they are free to turn to private experts for guidance. It is absurd to say that they will be served better by a coercive, demagogic apparatus.
-- Murray N. Rothbard		 
We must, therefore, emphasize that 'we' are not the government; the government is not 'us.' The government does not in any accurate sense 'represent' the majority of the people.  But, even if it did, even if 70 percent of the people decided to murder the remaining 30 percent, this would still be murder and would not be voluntary suicide on the part of the slaughtered minority.  No organicist metaphor, no irrelevant bromide that 'we are all part of one another,' must be permitted to obscure this basic fact.
-- Murray N. Rothbard		 
It is also important for the State to inculcate in its subjects an aversion to any outcropping of what is now called 'a conspiracy theory of history.' For a search for 'conspiracies,' as misguided as the results often are, means a search for motives, and an attribution of individual responsibility for the historical misdeeds of ruling elites. If, however, any tyranny or venality, or aggressive war imposed by the State was brought about not by particular State rulers but by mysterious and arcane 'social forces,' or by the imperfect state of the world -- or if, in some way, everyone was guilty -- then there is no point in anyone's becoming indignant or rising up against such misdeeds. Furthermore, a discrediting of 'conspiracy theories' will make the subjects more likely to believe the 'general welfare' reasons that are invariably put forth by the modern State for engaging in aggressive actions.
-- Murray N. Rothbard		 
It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a 'dismal science.' But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance.
-- Murray N. Rothbard		 
It is not the business of the law to make anyone good or reverent or moral or clean or upright.
-- Murray N. Rothbard		 
The great non sequitur committed by defenders of the State, including classical Aristotelian and Thomist philosophers, is to leap from the necessity of society to the necessity of the State.
-- Murray N. Rothbard		 
Since the State necessarily lives by the compulsory confiscation of private capital, and since its expansion necessarily involves ever-greater incursions on private individuals and private enterprise, we must assert that the state is profoundly and inherently anti-capitalist.
-- Murray N. Rothbard		 
It's ours to right the great wrong done,\\ Ten thousand years ago -- \\ The State, conceived in blood and hate, \\ Remains our only foe! \\ Oh, join us, brothers, join us, sisters,\\ Victory is nigh!\\ Come meet your fate, destroy the State,\\ And raise black banners high!
-- Murray N. Rothbard		 
Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes the laws.
-- Mayer Amschel Rothschild		 
Fortunately, political freedom and economic progress are natural partners.  Despite capitalism's lingering reputation as the source of all the world's evils, the fact remains that every single democracy is a capitalist country.  Half a century of economic experimentation proved beyond doubt that tyranny cannot yield prosperity. ... Socialism collapsed because it is a policy of unrestrained intervention.  It tries to fix what is 'wrong' with the spontaneous, self-organizaing phenomenon called capitalism.  But, of course, a natural process cannot be 'fixed.' ... Socialism is an ideology. Capitalism is a natural phenomenon.
-- Michael Rothschild		 


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