Liberty Quotes - Daily Email History

"If there is a bedrock principle of the First Amendment,
it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea
simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable."

~ Justice William J. Brennan  

"The First Amendment was designed to protect offensive speech,
because nobody ever tries to ban the other kind."

~ Mike Godwin  

"Everybody is in favor of free speech.
Hardly a day passes without its being extolled,
but some people's idea of it is that
they are free to say what they like,
but if anyone says anything back,
that is an outrage."

~ Sir Winston Churchill  

"The dominant purpose of the First Amendment
was to prohibit the widespread practice
of government suppression of embarrassing information."

~ Justice William O. Douglas  

"Avoid any specific discussion of public policy at public meetings."

~ Quintus Tullius Cicero  

"The idea that political speech had to be protected at any cost dates to Colonial days, during which the press and the public were not allowed to express themselves freely on matters of public concern. The King and his government often used restrictive measures, such as licensing of printing presses and the doctrine of seditious libel, to silence unfavorable public comment."

~ Craig R. Smith  

"Just as there is a very short distance between the U.S. and Cuba, there is a very short distance between a democracy and a dictatorship where the government gets to decide what to do, how to think, and how to live. And sometimes your freedom is not taken away at gunpoint, but instead it is done one piece of paper at a time, one seemingly meaningless rule at a time, one small silencing at a time. Never allow the government -- or anyone else -- to tell you what you can or cannot believe or what you can and cannot say or what your conscience tells you to have to do or not do."

~ Armando Valladares  

"Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it."

~ Milton Friedman  

"It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong."

~ Thomas Sowell  

"I don't want my children fed or clothed by the state, but if I had to choose, I would prefer that to their being educated by the state."

~ Max Victor Belz  

"Government schools can't teach reading, writing, and arithmetic -- why should we trust them to teach morality, respect, and character? If public education does for ethics what it's done for learning, we'll end up with a generation of immoral, disrespectful, and characterless students."

~ Steve Dasbach  

"Men had better be without education than be educated by their rulers;
for their education is but the mere breaking in of the steer to the yoke;
the mere discipline of the hunting dog, which, by dint of severity,
is made to forego the strongest impulse of his nature, and instead of
devouring his prey, to hasten with it to the feet of his master."

~ Thomas Hodgskin  

"They have gun control in Cuba.
They have universal health care in Cuba.
So why do they want to come here?"

~ Paul Harvey  

"Schools have not necessarily much to do with education...
they are mainly institutions of control,
where basic habits must be inculcated in the young.
Education is quite different and has little place in school."

~ Sir Winston Churchill  

"Government will not fail to employ education
to strengthen its hands and perpetuate its institutions."

~ William Godwin