Liberty Quotes - Daily Email History

"All political theories assume, of course,
that most individuals are very ignorant.
Those who plead for liberty differ from the rest
in that they include among the ignorant
themselves as well as the wisest."

~ Friedrich August von Hayek  

"Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man.
There has never been a really good one, and even those that are
most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping and unintelligent."

~ H. L. Mencken  

"The worth of a state, in the long run,
is the worth of the individuals composing it."

~ John Stuart Mill  

"But when no risk is taken there is no freedom.
It is thus that, in an industrial society,
the plethora of laws made for our personal safety
convert the land into a nursery, and
policemen hired to protect us
become selfserving busybodies."

~ Alan Watts  

"Make yourselves sheep
and the wolves will eat you."

~ Benjamin Franklin  

"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil
to one who is striking at the root."

~ Henry David Thoreau  

"Since independence in the fourteenth century, the Swiss have been required to keep and bear arms, and since 1515, have had a policy of armed neutrality. Its form of government is similar to the one set up by our Founders -- a weak central government exercising few, defined powers having to do mostly with external affairs and limited authority over internal matters at the canton (state) and local levels."

~ Benedict D. LaRosa  

"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force;
like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master.
Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action."

~ George Washington  

"An oppressed people are authorized, whenever they can,
to rise and break their fetters."

~ Henry Clay  

"The busybodies have begun to infect
American society with a nasty intolerance --
a zeal to police the private lives of others
and hammer them into standard forms --
A Nation of Finger Pointers."

~ Lance Morrow  

"Heretics were often most bitterly persecuted
for their least deviation from accepted belief.
It was precisely their obstinacy about trifles
that irritated the righteous to madness.
Why can they not yield on so trifling a matter?"

~ Leo Shestov  

"He who joyfully marches to music in rank
and file has already earned my contempt.
He has been given a large brain by mistake,
since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice."

~ Albert Einstein  

"The real "haves" are they who can acquire freedom, self-confidence, and even riches without depriving others of them. They acquire all of these by developing and applying their potentialities. On the other hand, the real "have nots" are they who cannot have aught except by depriving others of it. They can feel free only by diminishing the freedom of others, self-confident by spreading fear and dependence among others, and rich by making others poor."

~ Eric Hoffer  

"People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them."

~ George Bernard Shaw  

"When government accepts responsibility for people,
then people no longer take responsibility for themselves."

~ George Pataki