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Famous Quotes about Liberty
 
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Whereas it has been proposed that the United States of America become a part of a world federal government; and ... this program...would entail the surrender of our national sovereignty and...bring into being a form of government whose authority would supercede that of the Constitution of The United States Government; and ...institute a system of laws where-by American citizens could be tried by aliens in controversion of the provisions of the Constitution of the United States; and ...the Veterans of Foreign Wars is composed solely of men who have worn the uniform of the United States on foreign shores and in hostile waters in time of war and from their personal experiences are familiar with the traditions and operations of other countries; and ...many of our comrades rest forever in foreign soil and their sacrifices were made to retain the dignity and sovereignty of the United States of America: Now therefore, be it Resolved by the Fiftieth Annual Convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States, That we hereby declare that we are unalterably opposed to any program which would entail the surrender of any part of the sovereignty of the United States of America in favor of a world government...
-- Veterans of Foreign Wars		 
The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western world. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity -- much less dissent.
-- Gore Vidal		 
When you control opinion, as corporate America controls opinion in the United States by owning the media, you can make the [many] believe almost anything you want, and you can guide them.
-- Gore Vidal		 
You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, and that's good enough.
-- Dr. Edwin Vieira		 
Democracy, though slowly attained and never by revolutionary jumps, is the best government on earth when it tries to make all its citizens aristocrats. But not when it guillotines whoever is individual, superior, or just different.
-- Peter Viereck		 
The first duty of government is to protect the citizen from assault. Unless it does this, all the civil rights and civil liberties in the world aren't worth a dime.
-- Richard A. Viguerie		 
The basis of the First Amendment is the hypothesis that speech can rebut speech, propaganda will answer propaganda, free debate of ideas will result in the wisest governmental policies.
-- Frederick M. Vinson		 
A man without religion is like a fish without a bicycle.
-- Vique's Law		 
Yield not to evils, but attack all the more boldly.
-- Virgil		 
Had the states been despoiled of their sovereignty by the generality of the preamble, and had the Federal Government been endowed with whatever they should judge to be instrumental towards the union, justice, tranquility, common defence, general welfare, and the preservation of liberty, nothing could have been more frivolous than an enumeration of powers.
-- Virginia’s General Assembly		 
The rights enumerated in this Bill of Rights shall not be construed to limit other rights of the people not therein expressed.
-- Virginia Declaration of Rights		 
That religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence; and therefore all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience; and that it is the duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love and charity towards each other.
-- Virginia Declaration of Rights		 
[T]his Assembly doth explicitly and peremptorily declare, that it views the powers of the Federal Government, as resulting from the compact, to which the States are parties, as limited by the plain sense and intention of the instrument constituting the compact as no further valid than they are authorized by the grants enumerated in that compact; and that in case of a deliberate, palpable and dangerous exercise of other powers, not granted by the said compact, the States who are parties thereto, have the right, and are duty bound, to interpose, for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining within their respective limits, the authorities, rights and liberties appertaining to them.
-- Virginia Resolution of 1798		 
The rights of human beings cannot be considered outside the perogatives of governments, and the very understanding of human rights is a governmental concept.
-- Andrei Vishinsky		 
It is a sobering fact that the prominence of central banks in this century has coincided with a general tendency towards more inflation, not less. [I]f the overriding objective is price stability, we did better with the nineteenth-century gold standard and passive central banks, with currency boards, or even with ‘free banking.’ The truly unique power of a central bank, after all, is the power to create money, and ultimately the power to create is the power to destroy.
-- Paul Volcker		 
It is a sobering fact that the prominence of central banks in this century has coincided with a general tendency towards more inflation, not less. [I]f the overriding objective is price stability, we did better with the nineteenth-century gold standard and passive central banks, with currency boards, or even with 'free banking.' The truly unique power of a central bank, after all, is the power to create money, and ultimately the power to create is the power to destroy.
-- Paul Volcker		 
Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value -- zero.
-- Voltaire		 
God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.
-- Voltaire		 
I may not agree with what you say, but to the death I will defend your right to say it.
-- Voltaire (False)		 
It is clear that the individual who persecutes a man, his brother, because he is not of the same opinion, is a monster.
-- Voltaire		 
Those who can make you believe in absurdities can make you commit atrocities!
-- Voltaire		 
Let the laws be clear, uniform and precise; to interpret laws is almost always to corrupt them.
-- Voltaire		 
The superfluous is very necessary.
-- Voltaire		 
The art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one party of citizens to give to the other.
-- Voltaire		 
It is the characteristic of the most stringent censorships, that they give credibility to the opinions they attack.
-- Voltaire		 
What is not in nature can never be true.
-- Voltaire		 
All men have equal rights to liberty, to their property, and to the protection of the laws.
-- Voltaire		 
In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other.
-- Voltaire		 
The secret of being tiresome is to tell everything.
-- Voltaire		 
To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.
-- Voltaire		 
Liberty is not and cannot be anything but the power of doing what we will.
-- Voltaire		 
It is better to risk saving a guilty man than to condemn an innocent one.
-- Voltaire		 
Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too.
-- Voltaire		 
Many are destined to reason wrongly; others, not to reason at all; and others to persecute those who do reason.
-- Voltaire		 
It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.
-- Voltaire		 
We have a natural right to make use of our pens as of our tongue, at our peril, risk and hazard.
-- Voltaire		 
It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.
-- Voltaire		 
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
-- Voltaire		 
It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue.
-- Voltaire		 
Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road.
-- Voltaire		 
Your book is dedicated by the soundest reason. You had better get out of France as quickly as you can.
-- Voltaire		 
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.
-- Voltaire		 
It is amusing that a virtue is made of the vice of chastity; and it's a pretty odd sort of chastity at that, which leads men straight into the sin of Onan, and girls to the waning of their color.
-- Voltaire		 
History is fables agreed upon.
-- Voltaire		 
The monster, fanaticism, still exists, and whoever seeks after truth will run the risk of being persecuted.
-- Voltaire		 
The ideal form of government is democracy tempered with assassination.
-- Voltaire		 
Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.
-- Voltaire		 
What is tolerance? -- it is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly -- that is the first law of nature.
-- Voltaire		 
I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write.
-- Voltaire		 
The safest course is to do nothing against one's conscience. With this secret, we can enjoy life and have no fear from death.
-- Voltaire		 
The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbors, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.
-- Voltaire		 
We are all full of weakness and errors, let us mutually pardon each other our follies. It is the first law of nature.
-- Voltaire		 
Prejudices are what fools use for reason.
-- Voltaire		 
The tyranny of the many would be when one body takes over the rights of others, and then exercises its power to change the laws in its favor.
-- Voltaire		 
The death of Lincoln was a disaster for Christendom. There was no man in the United States great enough to wear his boots and the bankers went anew to grab the riches. I fear that foreign bankers with their craftiness and tortuous tricks will entirely control the exuberant riches of America and use it to systematically corrupt civilisation.
-- Otto von Bismarck		 
The less people know about how sausages and laws are made, the better they'll sleep at night.
-- Otto von Bismarck		 
A little caution outflanks a large cavalry.
-- Otto von Bismarck		 
War is not merely a political act but a real political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse, a carrying out of the same by other means.
-- Karl von Clausewitz		 
No one starts a war -- or rather no one in his senses ought to do so -- without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve in that war and how he intends to conduct it.
-- Karl von Clausewitz		 
If we cannot live so as to be happy, let us at least live so as to deserve it.
-- Immanuel Hermann von Fichte		 
Fifty-one percent of a nation can establish a totalitarian regime,  suppress minorities and still remain democratic.
-- Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn		 
Ten million ignorances do not constitute one knowledge.
-- Clemens von Metternich		 
The essential characteristic of Western civilization that distinguishes it from the arrested and petrified civilizations of the East was and is its concern for freedom from the state. The history of the West, from the age of the Greek polis down to the present-day resistance to socialism, is essentially the history of the fight for liberty against the encroachments of the officeholders.
-- Ludwig Von Mises		 
The essential characteristic of Western civilization that distinguishes it from the arrested and petrified civilizations of the East was and is its concern for freedom from the state.
-- Ludwig Von Mises		 
The market is not a place, a thing, or a collective entity. It is a process.
-- Ludwig von Mises		 
The worst evils which mankind has ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments. The state can be and has often been in the course of history the main source of mischief and disaster.
-- Ludwig von Mises		 
Education rears disciples, imitators, and routinists, not pioneers of new ideas and creative geniuses. The schools are not nurseries of progress and improvement, but conservatories of tradition and unvarying modes of thought.
-- Ludwig von Mises		 
Once it has been perceived that the division of labour is the essence of society, nothing remains of the antithesis between individual and society. The contradiction between individual principle and social principle disappears.
-- Ludwig von Mises		 
Many of those who attack capitalism know very well that their situation under any other economic system will be less favorable. Nevertheless, with full knowledge of this fact, they advocate a reform, e.g., socialism, because they hope that the rich, whom they envy, will also suffer under it.
-- Ludwig von Mises		 
There are for man only two principles available for a mental grasp of reality, namely, those of teleology and causality. What cannot be brought under either of these categories is absolutely hidden to the human mind. An event not open to an interpretation by one of these two principles is for man inconceivable and mysterious. Change can be conceived as the outcome either of the operation of mechanistic causality or of purposeful behavior; for the human mind there is no third way available.
-- Ludwig von Mises		 
True, a socialistic society could see that 1000 litres of wine were better than 800 litres. It could decide whether or not 1000 litres of wine were to be preferred to 500 litres of oil. Such a decision would involve no calculation. The will of some man would decide. But the real business of economic administration, the adaptation of means to ends only begins when such a decision is taken. And only economic calculation makes this adaptation possible. Without such assistance, in the bewildering chaos of alternative materials and processes the human mind would be at a complete loss. Whenever we had to decide between different processes or different centres of production, we would be entirely at sea.
-- Ludwig von Mises		 
Economic control is not merely control of a sector of human life that can be separated from the rest; it is the control of the means for all our ends.
-- Ludwig von Mises		 
The main political problem is how to prevent the police power from becoming tyrannical. This is the meaning of all the struggles for liberty.
-- Ludwig Von Mises		 
The struggle for freedom ... is not the struggle of the many against the few, but of minorities -- sometimes of a minority of but one man -- against the majority.
-- Ludwig von Mises		 
It is impossible to understand the history of economic thought if one does not pay attention to the fact that economics as such is a challenge to the conceit of those in power. An economist can never be a favorite of autocrats and demagogues. With them he is always the mischief-maker, and the more they are inwardly convinced that his objections are well-founded, the more they hate him.
-- Ludwig von Mises		 
There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as a result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final or total catastrophe of the currency system involved.
-- Ludwig von Mises		 
Depression and mass unemployment are not caused by the free market, but by government interference in the economy.
-- Ludwig von Mises		 
Modern society, based as it is on the division of labor, can be preserved only under conditions of lasting peace.
-- Ludwig von Mises		 
Spiritual movements are revolts of thought against inertia, of the few against the many; of those who because they are strong in spirit are strongest alone against those who can express themselves only in the mass and the mob, and who are significant only because they are numerous.
-- Ludwig von Mises		 
The champions of socialism call themselves progressives, but they recommend a system which is characterized by rigid observance of routine and by a resistance to every kind of improvement. They call themselves liberals, but they are intent upon abolishing liberty. They call themselves democrats, but they yearn for dictatorship. They call themselves revolutionaries, but they want to make the government omnipotent. They promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office. Every man but one a subordinate clerk in a bureau. What an alluring utopia! What a noble cause to fight!
-- Ludwig von Mises		 
The direction of all economic affairs is in the market society a task of the entrepreneurs. Theirs is the control of production. They are at the helm and steer the ship. A superficial observer would believe that they are supreme. But they are not. They are bound to obey unconditionally the captain's orders. The captain is the consumer. ...[Consumers] make poor people rich and rich people poor. They determine precisely what should be produced, in what quality, and in what quantities.
-- Ludwig von Mises		 
Those who call themselves "liberals" today are asking for policies which are precisely the opposite of those policies which the liberals of the nineteenth century advocated in their liberal programs. The so-called liberals of today have the very popular idea that freedom of speech, of thought of the press, freedom of religion, freedom from imprisonment without trial -- that all these freedoms can be preserved in the absence of what is called economic freedom. They do not realize that, in a system where there is no market, where the government directs everything, all those other freedoms are illusory, even if they are made into laws and written up in constitutions.
-- Ludwig von Mises		 
Violent resistance against the power of the state is the last resort of the minority in its effort to break loose from the oppression of the majority. ... The citizen must not be so narrowly circumscribed in his activities that, if he thinks differently from those in power, his only choice is either to perish or to destroy the machinery of state.
-- Ludwig von Mises		 
Socialism is not in the least what it pretends to be. It is not the pioneer of a better and finer world, but the spoiler of what thousands of years of civilization have created. It does not build, it destroys. For destruction is the essence of it. It produces nothing, it only consumes what the social order based on private ownership in the means of production has created.
-- Ludwig von Mises		 
Government means always coercion and compulsion and is by necessity the opposite of liberty. Government is a guarantor of liberty and is compatible with liberty only if its range is adequately restricted to the preservation of economic freedom. Where there is no market economy, the best-intentioned provisions of constitutions and laws remain a dead letter.
-- Ludwig von Mises		 
Political ideas that have dominated the public mind for decades cannot be refuted through rational arguments. They must run their course in life and cannot collapse otherwise than in great catastrophe...
-- Ludwig von Mises		 
The common man is the sovereign consumer whose buying or abstention from buying ultimately determines what should be produced and in what quantity and quality.
-- Ludwig von Mises		 
The first thing a genius needs is to breath free air.
-- Ludwig Von Mises		 
This, then, is freedom in the external life of man -- that he is independent of the arbitrary power of his fellows.
-- Ludwig von Mises		 
Government cannot make man richer, but it can make him poorer.
-- Ludwig von Mises		 
Against nature and within nature there is no freedom.
-- Ludwig Von Mises		 
It is not conclusive proof of a doctrine’s correctness that its adversaries use the police, the hangman, and violent mobs to fight it. But it is a proof of the fact that those taking recourse to violent oppression are in their subconscious convinced of the untenability of their own doctrines.
-- Ludwig Von Mises		 
We do not know of how much a man is capable if he has the will, and to what point he will raise himself if he feels free.
-- Johannes von Muller		 
One does what one is; one becomes what one does.
-- Robert von Musil		 
There's no greater threat to our independence, to our cherished freedoms and personal liberties than the continual, relentless injection of these insidious poisons into our system. We must decide whether we cherish independence from drugs, without which there is no freedom.
-- William Von Raab		 
Man is created free, and is free, even though born in chains. [Ger., Der Mensch ist frei geschaffen, ist frei Und wurd' er in Ketten geboren.]
-- Johann von Schiller		 
The voice of the majority is no proof of justice.
-- Johann von Schiller		 
Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it absolutely vile!
-- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.		 
All these people talk so eloquently about getting back to good old-fashioned values…and I say let’s get back to the good old-fashioned First Amendment of the good old-fashioned Constitution of the United States – and to hell with the censors! Give me knowledge or give me death!
-- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.		 
We are what we pretend to be.
-- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.		 


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