Famous Quotations / Quotes
Famous Quotes about Liberty
 
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It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.
-- Mark Twain		 
Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
-- Mark Twain		 
Carlye said, A lie cannot live; it shows he did not know how to tell them.
-- Mark Twain		 
It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either.
-- Mark Twain		 
It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that makes horse races.
-- Mark Twain		 
Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.
-- Mark Twain		 
One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.
-- Mark Twain		 
Let me make the superstitions of a nation and I care not who makes its laws or its songs either.
-- Mark Twain		 
... if it is a Miracle, any sort of evidence will answer, but if it is a Fact, proof is necessary.
-- Mark Twain		 
The history of the race, and each individual's experience, are thick with evidence that a truth is not hard to kill and that a lie told well is immortal.
-- Mark Twain		 
One of the proofs of the immortality of the soul is that myriads have believed in it. They have also believed the world was flat.
-- Mark Twain		 
Don't go around saying the world owes you a living; the world owes you nothing; it was here first.
-- Mark Twain		 
Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.
-- Mark Twain		 
We are discreet sheep; we wait to see how the drove is going, and then go with the drove. We have two opinions: one private, which we are afraid to express; and another one - the one we use - which we force ourselves to wear to please Mrs. Grundy, until habit makes us comfortable in it, and the custom of defending it presently makes us love it, adore it, and forget how pitifully we came by it. Look at it in politics.
-- Mark Twain		 
Fleas can be taught nearly anything that a Congressman can.
-- Mark Twain		 
I am aware that when even the brightest mind in our world has been trained up from childhood in a superstition of any kind, it will never be possible for that mind, in its maturity, to examine sincerely, dispassionately, and conscientiously any evidence or any circumstance which shall seem to cast a doubt upon the validity of that superstition... (more)
-- Mark Twain		 
Irreverence is the champion of liberty and its only sure defense.
-- Mark Twain		 
When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.
-- Mark Twain		 
All Congresses and Parliaments have a kindly feeling for idiots, and a compassion for them, on account of personal experience and heredity.
-- Mark Twain		 
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
-- Mark Twain		 
Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.
-- Mark Twain		 
Travel is lethal to prejudice.
-- Mark Twain		 
When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.
-- Mark Twain		 
My kind of loyalty was to one's country, not to its institutions or its officeholders. The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease, and death.
-- Mark Twain		 
We are discreet sheep; we wait to see how the drove is going, and then go with the drove.
-- Mark Twain		 
It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either.
-- Mark Twain		 
The mania for giving the Government power to meddle with the private affairs of cities or citizens is likely to cause endless trouble, through the rivaly of schools and creeds that are anxious to obtain official recognition, and there is great danger that our people will lose our independence of thought and action which is the cause of much of our greatness, and sink into the helplessness of the Frenchman or German who expects his government to feed him when hungry, clothe him when naked, to prescribe when his child may be born and when he may die, and, in time, to regulate every act of humanity from the cradle to the tomb, including the manner in which he may seek future admission to paradise.
-- Mark Twain		 
Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.
-- Mark Twain		 
Each must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, and which course is patriotic and which isn’t. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your convictions is to be an unqualified and inexcusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let man label you as they may. If you alone of all the nation shall decide one way, and that way be the right way according to your convictions of the right, you have done your duty by yourself and by your country- hold up your head! You have nothing to be ashamed of.
-- Mark Twain		 
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.
-- Mark Twain		 
Adam was not alone in the Garden of Eden, however, and does not deserve all the credit; much is due to Eve, the first woman, and Satan, the first consultant.
-- Mark Twain		 
For in a Republic, who is "the country?" Is it the Government which is for the moment in the saddle? Why, the Government is merely a servant -- merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn't. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them.
-- Mark Twain		 
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.
-- Mark Twain		 
I wasn't worth a cent two years ago, and now I owe two million dollars.
-- Mark Twain		 
Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform.
-- Mark Twain		 
Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed.
-- Mark Twain		 
Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
-- Mark Twain		 
It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.
-- Mark Twain		 
If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.
-- Mark Twain		 
Duties are not performed for duty's sake, but because their neglect would make the man uncomfortable. A man performs but one duty -- the duty of contenting his spirit, the duty of making himself agreeable to himself.
-- Mark Twain		 
Few things are more irritating than when someone who is wrong is also very effective in making his point.
-- Mark Twain		 
When in doubt, tell the truth.
-- Mark Twain		 
Man is the only animal that blushes -- or needs to.
-- Mark Twain		 
There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
-- Mark Twain		 
Often the less there is to justify a traditional custom the harder it is to get rid of it.
-- Mark Twain		 
It is our nature to conform; it is a force which not many people can successfully resist. What is its seat? The inborn requirement of self-approval.
-- Mark Twain		 
I reverently believe that the maker who made us all makes everything in New England, but the weather. I don't know who makes that, but I think it must be raw apprentices in the weather-clerks factory who experiment and learn how, in New England, for board and clothes, and then are promoted to make weather for countries that require a good article, and will take their custom elsewhere if they don't get it.
-- Mark Twain		 
The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin.
-- Mark Twain		 
[N]o country can be well governed unless its citizens as a body keep religiously before their minds that they are the guardians of the law and that the law officers are only the machinery for its execution, nothing more.
-- Mark Twain		 
Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
-- Mark Twain		 
It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.
-- Mark Twain		 
God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board.
-- Mark Twain		 
If you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed.
-- Mark Twain		 
Truth is the most valuable thing we have, so I try to conserve it.
-- Mark Twain		 
I am different from Washington; I have a higher, grander standard of principle. Washington could not lie. I can lie, but I won't.
-- Mark Twain		 
As long as I count the votes, what are you going to do about it?
-- William Marcy Tweed		 
I don't care who does the electing, so long as I get to do the nominating.
-- William Marcy Tweed		 
According to the Taranto Principle, the press's failure to hold left-wingers accountable for bad behavior merely encourages the left's bad behavior to the point that its candidates are repellent to ordinary Americans.
-- R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.		 
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess of the public treasury. From that time on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the results that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.
-- Sir Alex Fraser Tytler (Questionable)		 
The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to complacency; from complaceny to apathy; from apathy to dependence; from dependency back again into bondage.
-- Sir Alex Fraser Tytler (Questionable)		 
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess of the public treasury. From that time on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the results that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.... The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from great courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependence; from dependency back again to bondage.
-- Sir Alex Fraser Tytler (Questionable)		 
When the leader is morally weak and his discipline not strict, when his instructions and guidance are not enlightened, when there are no consistent rules, neighboring rulers will take advantage of this.
-- Sun Tzu		 
In all history, there is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare. Only one who knows the disastrous effects of a long war can realize the supreme importance of rapidity in bringing it to a close.
-- Sun Tzu		 
Those who excel in war first cultivate their own humanity and justice and maintain their laws and institutions. By these means they make their governments invincible.
-- Sun Tzu		 
If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.
-- Sun Tzu		 
All warfare is based on deception. There is no place where espionage is not used. Offer the enemy bait to lure him.
-- Sun Tzu		 
We have, I fear, confused power with greatness.
-- Stewart L. Udall		 
[The problem is]...small arms are spreading throughout society with little documentation, since they are frequently bought from private individuals.
-- UN Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice		 
The skeptic does not mean him who doubts, but him who investigates or researches, as opposed to him who asserts and thinks he has found.
-- Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo		 
[The Clinton Administration] may find it useful to invoke the commitments made here [in the UN] to Americans as a lever to persuade the gun lobby.
-- Unidentified diplomat		 
I solemnly affirm to exercise in all loyalty, discretion and conscience ... in the interest of the United Nations ... and not to seek or accept instructions ... from any government or other authority external to the organization...
-- United Nations' Loyalty Oath		 
The age of nations must end... The governments of the nations have decided to order their separate sovereignties into one government to which they surrender their arms.
-- United Nations' World Constitution (False)		 
Everyone has the right…to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of frontiers.
-- United Nations		 
Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others, and in public or in private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.
-- United Nations		 
No state shall emit bills of credit, make any thing but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts, coin money...
-- United States Constitution		 
No State shall... coin money; emit bills of credit; make any thing but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts...
-- United States Constitution		 
... [the 16th Amendment] conferred no new power of taxation... [and]... prohibited the ... power of income taxation possessed by Congress from the beginning from being taken out of the category of indirect taxation to which it inherently belonged...
-- United States Supreme Court		 
The Constitution is a written instrument. As such it's meaning does not alter. That which it meant when adopted, it means now.
-- United States Supreme Court		 
...the intent of the lawmaker is to be found in the language that he has used.
-- United States Supreme Court		 
To lay with one hand the power of the government on the property of the citizen, and with the other to bestow it upon favored individuals to aid private enterprises and build up private fortunes, is nonetheless a robbery because it is done under the forms of law and is called taxation. This is not legislation. It is a decree under legislative forms.
-- United States Supreme Court		 
Because of what appears to be a lawful command on the surface, many Citizens, because of their respect for what appears to be law, are cunningly coerced into waiving their rights due to ignorance.
-- United States Supreme Court		 
Our tax system is based upon voluntary assessment and payment, not upon distraint.
-- United States Supreme Court		 
The Constitution prohibits any direct tax, unless in proportion to numbers as ascertained by the census..... [and] ... prohibits Congress from laying a direct tax on the revenue from property of the citizen without regard to state lines...
-- United States Supreme Court		 
... bank records are not the depositor's private papers and having given the information to the bank, the depositor has no legitimate expectation of continued privacy... Records of an individual's accounts with banks are not the individual's private papers protected against compulsory production by the 4th Amendment, but instead are the business records of the banks.
-- United States Supreme Court		 
It would indeed be ironic if, in the name of national defense, we would sanction the subversion of one of the liberties ... which makes the defense of the Nation worthwhile.
-- United States v. Robel		 
Do not mistake for conspiracy and intrigue what can best be explained by stupidity and incompetence.
-- Unknown		 
The capacity to learn is a gift; The ability to learn is a skill; The WILLINGNESS to learn is a choice.
-- Unknown		 
Letter to the President of the United States from an American Indian: 'Be careful with your immigration laws. We were careless with ours.'
-- Unknown		 
The slow man with integrity will ultimately catch the swift one who has none.
-- Unknown		 
The worst penalties are always imposed on those seeking to help the oppressed.
-- Unknown		 
Though most of the muck-rakers were moderate in temper and aim, a few of them were Socialists. Upton Sinclair ran unsuccessfully for office several times as a Socialist, and he nearly was elected governor of California in 1934, when he managed to win the Democratic nomination. Other Socialist muck-rakers include Charles Edward Russell, who ran for mayor of NYC on the Socialist ticket in 1913, and Gustavus Myers.
-- Unknown		 
There's a little truth to every 'just kidding'.
-- Unknown		 
Dawn: The time when men of reason go to bed. Certain old men prefer to rise at about that time, taking a cold bath and a long walk with an empty stomach, and otherwise mortifying the flesh. They then point with pride to these practices as the cause of their sturdy health and ripe years; the truth being that they are hearty and old, not because of their habits, but in spite of them. The reason we find only robust persons doing this thing is that it has killed all the others who have tried it.
-- Unknown		 
War is the tool through which the remaining Constitutional restraints on government and rights of the people will be destroyed. War will be the gateway through which total statism in any of its forms (fascism, socialism, communism) will be imposed upon the United States. They will rally the people’s patriotism, and give the laws Orwellian sounding names like the “Patriot Acts”, and “Freedom Laws” and cries of “America First,” but these acts will be anti-patriotic, anti-freedom, and anti-American. At the core of all these activities will be one purpose -- to impose ever increasing control over the citizens, marching toward total statism. They will suspend due process and Constitutional restrictions proclaiming “extraordinary times” require extraordinary measures. At first they will only be used against a few select atrocious and most heinous individuals with unfamiliar appearance, customs and beliefs. Initially, it will simply be a matter of degree, but the precedent is now set. Extraordinary measures solely for extraordinary individuals, but slowly and then more rapidly the extraordinary will become the ordinary until such measures can apply to anyone. They will deride anyone who opposes these Orwellian acts as dangerously naïve, as pacifists, as isolationists, as unpatriotic, as sympathizing with “the enemy” whoever “the enemy” may be at the time, and as un-American. They will make war with vague, ever changing goals and objectives. They will make war on elusive, obscure enemies by proclaiming wars against “subversives” or “guerillas” or “militias” or “revolutionaries” or “aggressors” or “terrorists” or whatever ambiguous name they can imagine so that the “enemies” will always be elusive, never eliminated or fully defeated. There will always be more “enemies.” War will be perpetual, lasting years or even decades. War will be the final mechanism that destroys America from within; and the people will proudly cheer and defend and support the dismantling of their rights and destruction of their Constitutional Republic, all out of supposed “necessity” to support “the war.”
-- Unknown		 
A committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and then quietly strangled.
-- Unknown		 
Never risk what you can't afford to lose.
-- Unknown		 
Democracy, by definition, is participatory. Without participation, there is no democracy; that’s why the U.S. doesn’t have one. To participate, one must be educated and interested. There you have it.
-- Unknown		 
On the surface of the world right now there is War and violence and things seem dark. But calmly and quietly, at the same time, Something else is happening underground. An inner revolution is taking place And certain individuals are being called to a higher light. It is a silent revolution. From the inside out. From the ground up. This is a Global operation. A Spiritual Conspiracy. There are sleeper cells in every nation on the planet. You won't see us on the TV. You won't read about us in the newspaper. You won't hear about us on the radio. We don't seek any glory. We don't wear any uniform. We come in all shapes and sizes, colors and styles. Most of us work anonymously. We are quietly working behind the scenes In every country and culture of the world Cities big and small, mountains and valleys, In farms and villages, tribes and remote islands. You could pass by one of us on the street And not even notice. We go undercover. We remain behind the scenes. It is of no concern to us who takes the final credit But simply that the work gets done. Occasionally we spot each other in the street. We give a quiet nod and continue on our way. During the day many of us pretend we have normal jobs But behind the false storefront at night Is where the real work takes place. Some call us the Conscious Army. We are slowly creating a new world With the power of our minds and hearts. We follow, with passion and joy Our orders come from the Central Spiritual Intelligence. We are dropping soft, secret love bombs when no one is looking Poems ~ Hugs ~ Music ~ Photography ~ Movies ~ Kind words ~ Smiles ~ Meditation and prayer ~ Dance ~ Social activism ~ Websites Blogs ~ Random acts of kindness... We each express ourselves in our own unique ways With our own unique gifts and talents. Be the change you want to see in the world. That is the motto that fills our hearts. We know it is the only way real transformation takes place. We know that quietly and humbly we have the Power of all the oceans combined. Our work is slow and meticulous Like the formation of mountains. It is not even visible at first glance. And yet with it entire tectonic plates Shall be moved in the centuries to come. Love is the new religion of the 21st century. You don't have to be a highly educated person Or have any exceptional knowledge to understand it. It comes from the intelligence of the heart Embedded in the timeless evolutionary pulse of all human beings. Be the change you want to see in the world. Nobody else can do it for you. We are now recruiting. Perhaps you will join us Or already have. All are welcome. The door is open.
-- Unknown		 
Time and attention are our scarcest commodities - use them wisely.
-- Unknown		 
There are three parties in Washington, D.C. . . . Republican, Democratic and Cocktail.
-- Unknown		 


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