Liberty Quotes - Daily Email History

"These are the times that try men's souls.
The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will,
in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country;
but he that stands it now,
deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.
Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered;
yet we have this consolation with us,
that the harder the conflict,
the more glorious the triumph.
What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly.
Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods;
and it would be strange indeed,
if so celestial an article as Freedom
should not be highly rated."

~ Thomas Paine  

"The true danger is when liberty
is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts."

~ Edmund Burke  

"The Republic was not established by cowards;
and cowards will not preserve it ...
This will remain the land of the free
only so long as it is the home of the brave."

~ Elmer Davis  

"No one can read our Constitution without concluding that the
people who wrote it wanted their government severely limited;
the words 'no' and 'not' employed in restraint of government
power occur 24 times in the first seven articles of the
Constitution and 22 more times in the Bill of Rights."

~ Rev. Edmund A. Opitz  

"The shepherd always tries
to persuade the sheep
that their interests
and his own
are the same."

~ Stendhal  

"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance."

~ Thomas Jefferson  

"That distinct sovereignties could exist under one government, emanating from the same people, was a phenomenon in the political world, which the wisest statesmen in Europe could not comprehend; and of its practicability many in our own country entertained the most serious doubts. Thus far the friends of liberty have had great cause of triumph in the success of the principles upon which our government rests. But all must admit that the purity and permanency of this system depend on its faithful administration. The states and the federal government have their respective orbits, within which each must revolve. If either cross the sphere of the other, the harmony of the system is destroyed, and its strength is impaired. It would be as gross usurpation on the part of the federal government, to interfere with state rights, by an exercise of powers not delegated; as it would be for a state to interpose its authority against a law of the union."

~ Justice John McLean  

The notion that a radical is one who hates his country
is naive and usually idiotic. He is, more likely,
one who likes his country more than the rest of us,
and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us
when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime;
he is a good citizen driven to despair.

~ H. L. Mencken  

"The evils of tyranny are rarely seen
but by him who resists it."

~ John Hay  

"In times of universal deceit,
telling the truth will be a revolutionary act."

~ George Orwell  

"We think ourselves possessed, or, at least, we boast that we are so, of liberty of conscience on all subjects, and of the right of free inquiry and private judgment in all cases, and yet how far are we from these exalted privileges in fact! There exists, I believe, throughout the whole Christian world, a law which makes it blasphemy to deny or doubt the divine inspiration of all the books of the Old and New Testaments, from Genesis to Revelations. In most countries of Europe it is punished by fire at the stake, or the rack, or the wheel. In England itself it is punished by boring through the tongue with a red-hot poker. In America it is not better; even in our own Massachusetts, which I believe, upon the whole, is as temperate and moderate in religious zeal as most of the States, a law was made in the latter end of the last century, repealing the cruel punishments of the former laws, but substituting fine and imprisonment upon all those blasphemers upon any book of the Old Testament or New. Now, what free inquiry, when a writer must surely encounter the risk of fine or imprisonment for adducing any argument for investigating into the divine authority of those books? Who would run the risk of translating Dupuis? But I cannot enlarge upon this subject, though I have it much at heart. I think such laws a great embarrassment, great obstructions to the improvement of the human mind. Books that cannot bear examination, certainly ought not to be established as divine inspiration by penal laws. It is true, few persons appear desirous to put such laws in execution, and it is also true that some few persons are hardy enough to venture to depart from them. But as long as they continue in force as laws, the human mind must make an awkward and clumsy progress in its investigations. I wish they were repealed. The substance and essence of Christianity, as I understand it, is eternal and unchangeable, and will bear examination forever, but it has been mixed with extraneous ingredients, which I think will not bear examination, and they ought to be separated. Adieu."

~ John Adams