Liberty Quotes - Daily Email History

"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom
must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."

~ Thomas Paine  

"Liberty and happiness have a powerful enemy on each hand; on the one hand tyranny, on the other licentiousness [anarchy]. To guard against the latter, it is necessary to give the proper powers to government; and to guard against the former, it is necessary that those powers should be properly distributed."

~ James Wilson  

"It has been thought a considerable advance towards establishing
the principles of Freedom, to say, that government is a compact
between those who govern and those that are governed:
but this cannot be true, because it is putting the effect before
the cause; for as man must have existed before governments existed,
there necessarily was a time when governments did not exist,
and consequently there could originally exist no governors
to form such a compact with. The fact therefore must be, that the
individuals themselves, each in his own personal and sovereign right,
entered into a compact with each other to produce a government:
and this is the only mode in which governments have a right to arise,
and the only principle on which they have a right to exist."

~ Thomas Paine  

"Liberty is not to be found in any form of government;
she is in the heart of the free man;
he bears her with him everywhere."

~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau  

"Absolute, arbitrary power over the lives, liberty and property of freemen exists nowhere in a republic, not even in the largest majority."

~ Wyoming Declaration of Rights Art. I, Sec. 7  

"Another source of power in government is a military force. But this, to be efficient, must be superior to any force that exists among the people, or which they can command; for otherwise this force would be annihilated, on the first exercise of acts of oppression. Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States. A military force, at the command of Congress, can execute no laws, but such as the people perceive to be just and constitutional; for they will possess the power, and jealousy will instantly inspire the inclination, to resist the execution of a law which appears to them unjust and oppressive."

~ Noah Webster  

"Constitutions are checks upon the hasty action of the majority. They are the self-imposed restraints of a whole people upon a majority of them to secure sober action and a respect for the rights of the minority."

~ William Howard Taft