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Famous Quotes about Liberty
 
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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.		 
Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.
-- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.		 
But I know now that there is not a chance in hell of America becoming humane and reasonable. Because power corrupts us, and absolute power corrupts us absolutely. Human beings are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power. By saying that our leaders are power-drunk chimpanzees, am I in danger of wrecking the morale of our soldiers fighting and dying in the Middle East? Their morale, like so many lifeless bodies, is already shot to pieces. They are being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas.
-- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.		 
The banks -- commercial banks and the Federal Reserve -- create all the money of this nation and its people pay interest on every dollar of that newly created money. Which means that private banks exercise unconstitutionally, immorally, and ridiculously the power to tax the people. For every newly created dollar dilutes to some extent the value of every other dollar already in circulation.
-- Jerry Voorhis		 
What is the essence of America? Finding and maintaining that perfect, delicate balance between freedom 'to' and freedom 'from'.
-- Marilyn vos Savant		 
To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe.
-- Marilyn vos Savant		 
Right now, I'd rather be in Sweden than in the U.S. because we have seen the problems and are moving away from the welfare state. On your side of the Atlantic you are moving right into it, and you risk destroying your country.
-- Ian Wachtmeister		 
The government can’t force Americans to say things they don’t believe, and Colorado officials have paid and will continue to pay a high price when they violate this foundational freedom. For the past 12 years, Colorado has targeted people of faith and forced them to express messages that violate their conscience and that advance the government’s preferred ideology. First Amendment protections are non-negotiable. Billions of people around the world believe that marriage is the union of one man and one woman and that men and women are biologically distinct. No government has the right to silence individuals for expressing these ideas or to punish those who decline to express different views. Political and cultural winds shift, but the freedom to speak without fear of censorship is a God-given constitutionally guaranteed right, essential for a flourishing society and self-governing people.
-- Kristen Waggoner		 
Yes, I am positive that one of the great curatives of our evils, our maladies, social, moral, and intellectual, would be a return to the soil, a rehabilitation of the work of the fields.
-- Charles Wagner		 
Stop wasting jail space on prostitutes, drug users and other victimless criminals. Even if we find it morally acceptable to imprison these people for choices they make regarding their bodies, we must realize that we simply cannot afford to continue clogging the court system and the prison system with these harmless criminals.
-- Edward B. Wagner		 
There is one 'word' that the message of the Bible is all about... and that is "LOVE"... different bible versions can be interpreted many ways... But, regardless how many times the wording is changed or interpreted... 'LOVE' always is the 'word'
-- Jesse Charles Wagner II		 
A physicist is an atoms way of knowing about atoms.
-- George Wald		 
Given the ambiguity of religious texts and teachings, the mixed historical record, and the empirical evidence, it would be foolhardy to assert that religious faith necessarily upholds democratic values.
-- Kenneth D. Wald		 
The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any.
-- Alice Walker		 
Look at America now; older middle-income Americans are encouraged to divest themselves of their assets in order to qualify for Medicaid so that taxpayers at large must subsidize the costs of warehousing the artificially impoverished nursing homes -- in the name of “independent living” and “not being a burden to the children.”
-- Daniel F. Walker		 
I consider it my duty to tell you of the extremely dangerous threats that lie ahead. I know for certain that we are now in a period of the greatest strategic deception, perhaps in all history ...The Cold War is NOT over, only in the state of remission ...The Soviet Union is not truly 'on the verge of collapse'. Western defense, on the other hand, is.
-- General Sir Walter Walker		 
Why does the Air Force need expensive new bombers? Have the people we've been bombing over the years been complaining?
-- George Wallace		 
In some ways, certain books are more powerful by far than any battle.
-- Henry Wallace		 
I tell you true, liberty is the best of all things; never live beneath the noose of a servile halter.
-- William Wallace		 
When you pay social security taxes, you are in no way making provision for your own retirement. You are paying the pensions of those who are already retired. Once you understand this, you see that whether you will get the benefits you are counting on when you retire depends on whether Congress will levy enough taxes, borrow enough, or print enough money...
-- W. Allen Wallis		 
Today government touches everything in America and harms almost everything it touches. Federal, state, and local governments together spend 42 out of every 100 dollars we earn. Those who do the taxing and spending have long since ceased to work for the people as a whole. Rather, they work for themselves and for their clients—the education industry, the welfare culture, public-employee unions, etc..
-- Malcolm Wallop		 
Though I admire republican principles in theory, yet I am afraid the practice may be too perfect for human nature. We tried a republic last century, and it failed. Let our enemies try next. I hate political experiments.
-- Sir Robert Walpole		 


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