Liberty Quotes - Daily Email History

It cannot be supposed that they should intend, had they a power so to do, to give to any one, or more, an absolute arbitrary power over their persons and estates, and put a force into the magistrate's hand to execute his unlimited will arbitrarily upon them. This were to put themselves into a worse condition than the state of nature, wherein they had a liberty to defend their right against the injuries of others, and were upon equal terms of force to maintain it, whether invaded by a single man, or many in combination. Whereas by supposing they have given up themselves to the absolute arbitrary power and will of a legislator, they have disarmed themselves, and armed him, to make a prey of them when he pleases; he being in a much worse condition, who is exposed to the arbitrary power of one man, who has the command of 100,000, than he that is exposed to the arbitrary power of 100,000 single men; no body being secure, that his will, who has such a command, is better than that of other men, though his force be 100,000 times stronger.

~ John Locke  

"Nations crumble from within when the citizenry
asks of government those things which
the citizenry might better provide for itself. ...
[I] hope we have once again reminded people that
man is not free unless government is limited.
There's a clear cause and effect here that
is as neat and predictable as a law of physics:
As government expands, liberty contracts."

~ Ronald Reagan  

"As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights. Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions."

~ James Madison  

"Man free, man working for himself, with choice of time, place, and object."

~ William Wordsworth  

"A man has to live with himself, and he should see to it that he always has good company."

~ Justice Charles Evans Hughes  

"Do not go where the path may lead,
go instead where there is no path and leave a trail."

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson  

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference."

~ Robert Frost  

"I am only one, but I am one.
I cannot do everything, but I can do something.
And because I cannot do everything,
I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.
What I can do, I should do.
And what I should do, by the grace of God, I will do."

~ Edward Everett Hale  

"One man can completely change
the character of a country,
and the industry of its people,
by dropping a single seed
in fertile soil."

~ John C. Gifford  

"It is an injustice, a grave evil and a disturbance of the right order,
for a larger and higher organisation, to arrogate to itself functions
which can be performed efficiently by smaller and lower bodies."

~ Pope Leo XIII  

"I do not like the pretensions of Government -- the grounds on which it demands my obedience -- to be pitched too high. I don't like the medicine-man's magical pretensions nor the Bourbon's Divine Right. This is not solely because I disbelieve in magic and in Bossuet's Politique. I believe in God, but I detest theocracy. For every Government consists of mere men and is, strictly viewed, a makeshift; if it adds to its commands 'Thus saith the Lord', it lies, and lies dangerously.

On just the same ground I dread government in the name of science. That is how tyrannies come in. In every age the men who want us under their thumb, if they have any sense, will put forward the particular pretension which the hopes and fears of that age render most potent. They 'cash in'. It has been magic, it has been Christianity. Now it will certainly be science. Perhaps the real scientists may not think much of the tyrants' 'science'-- they didn't think much of Hitler's racial theories or Stalin's biology. But they can be muzzled."

~ C. S. Lewis