Liberty Quotes - Daily Email History

"Since they have dared, I too shall dare. I shall tell the truth because I pledged myself to tell it if justice regularly empowered did not do so fully, unmitigated. My duty is to speak; I have no wish to be an accomplice."

~ Emile Zola  

"To speak practically and as a citizen, unlike those who call themselves no-government men, I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government. Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it. After all, the practical reason why, when the power is once in the hands of the people, a majority are permitted, and for a long period continue, to rule, is not because they are most likely to be in the right, nor because this seems fairest to the minority, but because they are physically the strongest.

But a government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as men understand it. Can there not be a government in which majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience? -- in which majorities decide only those questions to which the rule of expediency is applicable? Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then?

I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right. It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience. Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice."

~ Henry David Thoreau  

"Posterity -- you will never know how much it has cost my generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it."

~ John Quincy Adams  

"A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined;
to which end a uniform and well-digested plan is requisite."

~ George Washington  

"Liberty is the luxury of self-discipline, that those nations historically who have failed to discipline themselves have had discipline imposed by others."

~ Alistair Cooke  

"Dignity does not float down from heaven it cannot be purchased nor manufactured. It is a reward reserved for those who labor with diligence."

~ Bill Hybels  

"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  

"There is only one basic human right,
the right to do as you damn well please. 
And with it comes the only basic human duty,
the duty to take the consequences."

~ P. J. O'Rourke  

"Let us have faith that right makes might,
and in that faith let us to the end
dare to do our duty as we understand it."

~ Abraham Lincoln