Liberty Quotes - Daily Email History

"From the equality of rights springs identity of our highest interests; you cannot subvert your neighbor's rights without striking a dangerous blow at your own."

~ Carl Schurz  

"The uneven impact of actual enforcement measures tends to mirror and
reinforce more general patterns of discrimination (along socioeconomic,
racial and ethnic, sexual, and perhaps generational lines) within the
society. As a consequence, such enforcement (ineffective as it may be
in producing conformity) almost certainly reinforces feelings of
alienation already prevalent within major segments of the population."

~ Edwin M. Schur  

"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within
limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add
'within the limits of the law,' because law is often but the tyrant's
will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual."

~ Thomas Jefferson  

"Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation we began by declaring that 'all men are created equal.' When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read 'all men are created equal, except Negroes and foreigners and Catholics.' When it comes to this, I shall prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty -- to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy hypocrisy."

~ Abraham Lincoln  

"Knowledge -- that is, education in its true sense -- is our best
protection against unreasoning prejudice and panic-making fear,
whether engendered by special interest, illiberal minorities,
or panic-stricken leaders."

~ Franklin D. Roosevelt  

"No man has ever been born a Negro hater,
a Jew hater, or any other kind of hater.
Nature refuses to be involved in such
suicidal practices."

~ Harry Bridges  

"There will never be a generation of great men
until there has been a generation of free women -- of free mothers."

~ Robert G. Ingersoll  

"Men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing less."

~ Susan B. Anthony  

"To divide along the lines of section or caste or creed is un-American."

~ Theodore Roosevelt  

"The regulation prohibiting abusive comment that tends or is likely to expose a person or a group to hatred or contempt is necessary not only to avoid harm to the persons targeted, but also to ensure that Canadian values are respected for all Canadians. The broadcast of remarks that could expose individuals or groups to hatred or contempt can attract individuals to its cause and in the process create serious discord between various groups in Canadian society to the detriment of all of Canadian society. This harm undermines the cultural, political and social fabric of Canada which the Canadian broadcasting system is expressly meant to safeguard, enrich and strengthen. It also undermines the multicultural and multiracial nature of Canadian society, which the programming of the Canadian broadcasting system should reflect. Protection from the harms of abusive comment is for the benefit of all Canadians."

~ Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission  

"'Balanced' is a code for 'denied':
a right to free speech that must be 'balanced'
against so exhaustive a list of other supposed
values means a right that can be exercised
only when those in power judge that the
speech in question is innocuous to them."

~ Ronald Dworkin  

"I may not agree with what you say,
but to the death I will defend your right to say it."

~ Voltaire (False)  

"Our institutions were not devised to bring about uniformity of opinion; if they had we might well abandon hope. It is important to remember, as has well been said, 'the essential characteristic of true liberty is that under its shelter many different types of life and character and opinion and belief can develop unmolested and unobstructed.'"

~ Justice Charles Evans Hughes  

"The real guarantee of freedom
is an equilibrium of social forces in conflict,
not the triumph of any one force."

~ Max Eastman  

"Nature smiles at the union of freedom and equality in our utopias. For freedom and equality are sworn and everlasting enemies, and when one prevails the other dies. Leave men free, and their natural inequalities will multiply almost geometrically, as in England and America in the nineteenth century under laissez-faire. To check the growth of inequality, liberty must be sacrificed, as in Russia after 1917. Even when repressed, inequality grows; only the man who is below the average in economic ability desires equality; those who are conscious of superior ability desire freedom, and in the end superior ability has its way."

~ Will Durant