Liberty Quotes - Daily Email History

"The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking."

~ John Kenneth Galbraith  

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions."

~ Late 16th Century Proverb  

"God made the Idiot for practice,
and then He made the School Board."

~ Mark Twain  

"From my experience of hundreds of children,
I know that they have perhaps
a finer sense of honour than you or I have.
The greatest lessons in life,
if we would but stoop and humble ourselves,
we would learn not from grown-up learned men,
but from the so-called ignorant children."

~ Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi  

"The advancement and diffusion of knowledge
is the only guardian of true liberty."

~ James Madison  

"I believe that we learn best when we, not others are deciding what we are going to learn, and when we are choosing the people, materials, and experiences from which we will be learning."

~ John Holt  

"I believe much trouble and blood would be saved if we opened our hearts more. I will tell you in my way how the Indian sees things. The white man has more words to tell you how they look to him, but it does not require many words to speak the truth. If the white man wants to live in peace with the Indian... we can live in peace. There need be no trouble. Treat all men alike.... give them all the same law. Give them all an even chance to live and grow. You might as well expect the rivers to run backward as that any man who is born a free man should be contented when penned up and denied liberty to go where he pleases. We only ask an even chance to live as other men live. We ask to be recognized as men. Let me be a free man...free to travel... free to stop... free to work... free to choose my own teachers... free to follow the religion of my Fathers... free to think and talk and act for myself."

~ Chief Joseph  

"Let it [the Constitution] be taught in schools, seminaries and in colleges; let it be written in primers, in spelling books and in almanacs; let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, enforced in courts of justice. In short, let it become the political religion of the nation."

~ Abraham Lincoln  

"We must abandon
the prevalent belief
in the superior wisdom
of the ignorant."

~ Daniel Boorstin  

"Suffering is but another name for the teaching of experience, which is the parent of instruction and the schoolmaster of life."

~ Horace  

"Is it a right or a duty in society to take care of their infant members in opposition to the will of the parent? How far does this right and duty extend? --to guard the life of the infant, his property, his instruction, his morals? The Roman father was supreme in all these: we draw a line, but where? --public sentiment does not seem to have traced it precisely... It is better to tolerate the rare instance of a parent refusing to let his child be educated, than to shock the common feelings and ideas by the forcible asportation and education of the infant against the will of the father... What is proposed... is to remove the objection of expense, by offering education gratis, and to strengthen parental excitement by the disfranchisement of his child while uneducated. Society has certainly a right to disavow him whom they offer, and are permitted to qualify for the duties of a citizen. If we do not force instruction, let us at least strengthen the motives to receive it when offered."

~ Thomas Jefferson  

"It is a part of the function of 'law' to give recognition
to ideas representing the exact opposite of established conduct.
Most of the complications arise from the necessity of pretending
to do one thing, while actually doing another."

~ Thurman Arnold  

"There are only two places in the world where
time takes precedence over the job to be done.
School and prison."

~ William Glasser