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Famous Quotes about Liberty
 
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The vulgar impression that parents have a legal right to dictate to teachers is entirely erroneous.
-- John Swett		 
It is a maxim among lawyers that whatever hath been done before may be done again, and therefore they take special care to record all the decisions formerly made against common justice and the general reason of mankind. These, under the name of precedents, they produce as authorities to justify the most iniquitous opinions, and the judges never fail of directing them accordingly.
-- Jonathan Swift		 
Whoever could make two ears of corn or two blades of grass to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before would deserve better of mankind and do more essential service to his country than the whole race of politicians put together.
-- Jonathan Swift		 
By the laws of God, of nature, of nations, and of your country you are and ought to be as free a people as your brethren in England.
-- Jonathan Swift		 
I would rather be a freeman among slaves than a slave among freemen.
-- Jonathan Swift		 
Liberty of conscience is nowadays only understood to be the liberty of believing what men please, but also of endeavoring to propagate that belief as much as they can.
-- Jonathan Swift		 
Laws are like cobwebs which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.
-- Jonathan Swift		 
There is no such thing ... in America as an independent press.
-- John Swinton		 
The first duty of a newspaper is to be accurate. If it is accurate, it follows that it is fair.
-- Herbert B. Swope		 
The public expects too much from teachers because educationists have led it to believe teachers could be substitute parents, psychotherapists, cops, social workers, dieticians, nursemaids, babysitters, and nose wipers and still do a decent job teaching kids to read, write, and do math. Instead of saying no, educationists have added courses in environmental education, death education, personal hygiene, self-esteem, driver's ed, job readiness, sexual harassment, radon studies, yoga, yogurt awareness, and god-knows-what-else.
-- Charlie Sykes		 
The Illinois eavesdropping statute restricts a medium of expression commonly used for the preservation and communication of information and ideas, thus triggering First Amendment scrutiny. Illinois has criminalized the nonconsensual recording of most any oral communication, including recordings of public officials doing the public’s business in public and regardless of whether the recording is open or surreptitious. Defending the broad sweep of this statute, the State’s Attorney relies on the government’s interest in protecting conversational privacy, but that interest is not implicated when police officers are performing their duties in public places and engaging in public communications audible to persons who witness the events. Even under the more lenient intermediate standard of scrutiny applicable to content-neutral burdens on speech, this application of the statute very likely flunks. The Illinois eavesdropping statute restricts far more speech than necessary to protect legitimate privacy interests; as applied to the facts alleged here, it likely violates the First Amendment’s free-speech and free-press guarantees.
-- Judge Diane Schwerm Sykes		 
Audio and audiovisual recording are communication technologies, and as such, they enable speech. Criminalizing all nonconsensual audio recording necessarily limits the information that might later be published or broadcast -- whether to the general public or to a single family member or friend -- and thus burdens First Amendment rights. If, as the State’s Attorney would have it, the eavesdropping statute does not implicate the First Amendment at all, the State could effectively control or suppress speech by the simple expedient of restricting an early step in the speech process rather than the end result. We have no trouble rejecting that premise. Audio recording is entitled to First Amendment protection.
-- Judge Diane Schwerm Sykes		 
I think the inherent right of the government to lie to save itself when faced with nuclear disaster is basic -- basic.
-- Arthur Sylvester		 
I consider marijuana the worst of all narcotics, far worse than the use of morphine or cocaine. Under its influence men become beasts... Marijuana destroys life itself. I have no sympathy with those who sell this weed. The government is going to enforce this new law to the letter.
-- Judge John Foster Symes		 
Those who cannot afford to sue currently have no protection of their property rights if they come in conflict with a regulation.
-- Steve Symms		 
Take care that no one hates you justly.
-- Publilius Syrus		 
Keep the golden mean between saying too much and too little.
-- Publilius Syrus		 
The battle for the world is the battle for definitions.
-- Thomas Szasz		 
The proverb warns that 'You should not bite the hand that feeds you.' But maybe you should if it prevents you from feeding yourself.
-- Thomas Szasz		 
Men love liberty because it protects them from control and humiliation by others, thus affording them the possibility of dignity; they loathe liberty because it throws them back on their own abilities and resources, thus confronting them with the possibility of insignificance.
-- Thomas Szasz		 
Formerly, when religion was strong and science weak, men mistook magic for medicine; now, when science is strong and religion weak, men mistake medicine for magic.
-- Thomas Szasz		 
Punishment is now unfashionable... because it creates moral distinctions among men, which, to the democratic mind, are odious. We prefer a meaningless collective guilt to a meaningful individual responsibility.
-- Thomas Szasz		 
Men are rewarded and punished not for what they do, but rather for how their acts are defined. This is why men are more interested in better justifying themselves than in behaving themselves.
-- Thomas Szasz		 
Discovery consists in seeing what everyone else has seen and thinking what no one else has thought.
-- Albert Szent-Gyorgi		 
The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.
-- Cornelius Tacitus		 
The lust for power in dominating others inflames the heart more than any other passion.
-- Cornelius Tacitus		 
Formerly we suffered from crimes; now we suffer from laws.
-- Cornelius Tacitus		 
Such being the happiness of the times, that you may think as you wish, and speak as you think. [Lat., Rara temporum felicitate, ubi sentire quae velis, et quae sentias dicere licet.]
-- Cornelius Tacitus		 
Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges. (The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.)
-- Cornelius Tacitus		 
So, as you go into battle, remember your ancestors and remember your descendants.
-- Cornelius Tacitus		 
In the struggle between those seeking power there is no middle course.
-- Cornelius Tacitus		 
The lust for power, for dominating others, inflames the heart more than any other passion.
-- Cornelius Tacitus		 
[That form of] eloquence, the foster-child of licence, which fools call liberty. [Lat., Eloquentia, alumna licentiae, quam stulti libertatem vocabant.]
-- Cornelius Tacitus		 
Liberty is given by nature even to mute animals. [Lat., Liberatem natura etiam mutis animalibus datam.]
-- Cornelius Tacitus		 
It is the rare fortune of these days that one may think what one likes and say what one thinks.
-- Cornelius Tacitus		 
We are corrupted by prosperity. And when the state is corrupt, then the laws are most multiplied.
-- Publius Cornelius Tacitus		 
When I say liberty…I mean liberty of the individual to think his own thoughts and live his own life as he desires to think and live; the liberty of the family to decide how they wish to live, what they wanted to eat for breakfast and for dinner, and how they wish to spend their time; liberty of a man to develop his ideas and get other people to teach those ideas, if he can convince them that they have some value to the world…
-- Robert A. Taft		 
Every Republican candidate for President since 1936 has been nominated by the Chase National Bank.
-- Robert A. Taft		 
Constitutions are checks upon the hasty action of the majority. They are the self-imposed restraints of a whole people upon a majority of them to secure sober action and a respect for the rights of the minority.
-- William Howard Taft		 
Next to the right of liberty, the right of property is the most important individual right guaranteed by the Constitution and the one which, united with that of personal liberty, has contributed more to the growth of civilization than any other institution established by the human race.
-- William Howard Taft		 
Socialism proposes no adequate substitute for the motive of enlightened selfishness that today is at the basis of all human labor and effort, enterprise and new activity.
-- William Howard Taft		 
If you shut your door to all errors, truth will be shut out.
-- Rabindrnath Tagore		 
An important art of politicians is to find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the public.
-- Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord		 
An important art of politcians is to find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the public.
-- Talleyrand		 
Who can protest and does not, is an accomplice in the act.
-- The Talmud		 
You see what power is -- holding someone else's fear in your hand and showing it to them!
-- Amy Tan		 
In America nobody says you have to keep the circumstances you were born with.
-- Amy Tan		 
[A]s recent advances in genetic and molecular science increasingly challenge the tenets of Neo-Darwinism, the teaching of non-random, intelligence-based alternatives should be permitted under the Establishment Clause provided such alternatives are supported by scientific evidence and are presented in a secular manner.
-- Roger L. Tarbutton		 
Illusions are like mistresses. We can have many of them without tying ourselves down to responsibility. But truth insists on marriage. Once a person embraces truth, he is in its ruthless, but gentle, grasp.
-- Rebazar Tarzs		 
The Constitution is like my old blue dress ... it doesn't fit anymore.
-- Rep. Ellen Tauscher		 
Bankruptcies of governments have, on the whole, done less harm to mankind than their ability to raise loans.
-- R. H. Tawney		 
It is probable that democracy owes more to nonconformity than to any other single movement.
-- R. H. Tawney		 
Freedom does not always win. This is one of the bitterest lessons of history.
-- A. J. P. Taylor		 
No matter what political reasons are given for war, the underlying reason is always economic.
-- A. J. P. Taylor		 
Conscience is, in most, an anticipation of the opinion of others.
-- Henry Taylor		 
If the means to which the government of the union may resort for executing the power confided to it, are unlimited, it may easily select such as will impair or destroy the powers confided to the state governments.
-- John Taylor		 
Constitutions are violated, and it would be absurd to expect the federal government to enforce the Constitution against itself. If the very federal judges the Constitution was partly intended to restrain were the ones exclusively charged with enforcing it, then “America possesses only the effigy of a Constitution.” The states, the very constituents of the Union, had to do the enforcing.
-- John Taylor		 
... I suggest that the more the state intervenes in such situations, the more 'necessary' (on this view) it becomes, because positive altruism and voluntary cooperative behaviour atrophy in the presence of the state and grow in its absence. Thus, again, the state exacerbates the conditions which are supposed to make it necessary. We might say that the state is like an addictive drug: the more of it we have, the more we 'need' it and the more we come to 'depend' on it.
-- Michael Taylor		 
It is morally as bad not to care whether a thing is true or not, so long as it makes you feel good, as it is not to care how you got your money as long as you have it.
-- Edwin Way Teale		 
Live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart.\\ Trouble no one about his religion.\\ Respect others in their views and demand that they respect yours.\\ Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life.\\ Seek to make your life long and of service to your people.\\ Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide.\\ Always give a word or sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend, or even a stranger, if in a lonely place.\\ Show respect to all people, but grovel to none.\\ When you rise in the morning, give thanks for the light, for your life, for your strength. \\ Give thanks for your food and for the joy of living. If you see no reason to give thanks, the fault lies in yourself.\\ Abuse no one and no thing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision.\\ When your time comes to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way.\\ Sing your death song, and die like a hero going home.
-- Tecumseh		 
When cryptography is outlawed, bayl bhgynjf jvyy unir cevinpl!
-- Brad Templeton		 
No human has yet grasped 1% of what can be known about spiritual realities ... I grew up Presbyterian. Presbyterians thought the Methodists were wrong. Catholics thought all Protestants were wrong. The Jews thought the Christians were wrong. So, what I'm financing is humility. I want people to realize that you shouldn't think you know it all.
-- John Templeton		 
That government being instituted for the common benefit, the doctrine of nonresistance against arbitrary power and oppression is absurd, slavish, and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind.
-- Tennessee Constitution		 
This declaration ... gives to every man the right to arm himself in any manner he may choose, however unusual or dangerous the weapons he may employ, and thus armed, to appear wherever he may think proper, without molestation or hindrance, and that any law regulating his social conduct, by restraining the use of any weapon or regulating the manner in which it shall be carried, is beyond the legislative competency to enact, and is void.
-- Tennessee Supreme Court		 
Ring out the old, ring in the new,\\ Ring, happy bells, across the snow:\\ The year is going, let him go;\\ Ring out the false, ring in the true.\\
-- Alfred Lord Tennyson		 
Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.
-- Alfred Lord Tennyson		 
If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.
-- Mother Teresa		 
Human rights are not a privilege conferred by government. They are every human being's entitlement by virtue of his humanity. The right to life does not depend, and must not be contingent, on the pleasure of anyone else, not even a parent or sovereign. ... You must weep that your own government, at present, seems blind to this truth.
-- Mother Teresa		 
It is a fundamental human right, a privilege of nature, that every man should worship according to his own convictions. One man’s religion neither harms nor helps another man. It is assuredly no part of religion to compel religion, to which free will and not force should lead us.
-- Tertullian		 
In the twenty-first century, the robot will take the place which slave labor occupied in ancient civilization.
-- Nikola Tesla		 
...and in all cases of libels, the jury shall have the right to determine the law and the facts, under the direction of the court, as in other cases.
-- Texas Constitution		 
When a government has ceased to protect the lives, liberty and property of the people, from whom its legitimate powers are derived, and for the advancement of whose happiness it was instituted, and so far from being a guarantee for the enjoyment of those inestimable and inalienable rights, becomes an instrument in the hands of evil rulers for their oppression.

When the Federal Republican Constitution of their country, which they have sworn to support, no longer has a substantial existence, and the whole nature of their government has been forcibly changed, without their consent, from a restricted federative republic, composed of sovereign states, to a consolidated central military despotism, in which every interest is disregarded but that of the army and the priesthood, both the eternal enemies of civil liberty, the everready minions of power, and the usual instruments of tyrants.

When, long after the spirit of the constitution has departed, moderation is at length so far lost by those in power, that even the semblance of freedom is removed, and the forms themselves of the constitution discontinued, and so far from their petitions and remonstrances being regarded, the agents who bear them are thrown into dungeons, and mercenary armies sent forth to force a new government upon them at the point of the bayonet.

When, in consequence of such acts of malfeasance and abdication on the part of the government, anarchy prevails, and civil society is dissolved into its original elements. In such a crisis, the first law of nature, the right of self-preservation, the inherent and inalienable rights of the people to appeal to first principles, and take their political affairs into their own hands in extreme cases, enjoins it as a right towards themselves, and a sacred obligation to their posterity, to abolish such government, and create another in its stead, calculated to rescue them from impending dangers, and to secure their future welfare and happiness.

...

These, and other grievances, were patiently borne by the people of Texas, untill they reached that point at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue. We then took up arms in defence of the national constitution. We appealed to our Mexican brethren for assistance. Our appeal has been made in vain. Though months have elapsed, no sympathetic response has yet been heard from the Interior. We are, therefore, forced to the melancholy conclusion, that the Mexican people have acquiesced in the destruction of their liberty, and the substitution therfor of a military government; that they are unfit to be free, and incapable of self government.

The necessity of self-preservation, therefore, now decrees our eternal political separation.
-- Texas Declaration of Independence		 
These, and other grievances, were patiently borne by the people of Texas, untill they reached that point at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue. We then took up arms in defence of the national constitution.
-- Texas Declaration of Independence		 
Not only, therefore, can there be no loss of separate and independent autonomy to the states, through their union under the Constitution, but it may be not unreasonably said that the preservation of the states, and the maintenance of their governments, are as much within the design and care of the Constitution as the preservation of the Union and the maintenance of the national government. The Constitution, in all its provisions, looks to an indestructible Union, composed of indestructible states.
-- Texas v. White		 
To endure is greater than to dare; to tire out hostile fortune; to be daunted by no difficulty; to keep heart when all have lost it; to go through intrigue spotless; to forgo even ambition when the end is gained -- who can say this is not greatness?
-- William Makepeace Thackeray		 


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