Liberty Quotes - Daily Email History

"Once the government can demand of a publisher the names of the purchasers of his publication, the free press as we know it disappears. Then the spectre of a government agent will look over the shoulder of everyone who reads. ... Fear of criticism goes with every person into the bookstall. The subtle, imponderable pressures of the orthodox lay hold. Some will fear to read what is unpopular, what the powers-that-be dislike. ... fear will take the place of freedom in the libraries, book stores, and homes in the land."

~ Justice William O. Douglas  

"Whatever power you give to the good cops, goes to the bad ones, too. Never forget that."

~ Phillip J. Birmingham  

"If ye love wealth better than liberty,
the tranquility of servitude
better than the animating contest of freedom,
go home from us in peace.
We ask not your counsels or your arms.
Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you.
May your chains set lightly upon you,
and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen."

~ Samuel Adams  

"The majority is never right. Never, I tell you! That's one of these lies in society that no free and intelligent man can ever help rebelling against. Who are the people that make up the biggest proportion of the population -- the intelligent ones or the fools? I think we can agree it's the fools, no matter where you go in this world, it's the fools that form the overwhelming majority."

~ Henrik Ibsen  

"Those who have ever valued liberty for its own sake believed that to be free to choose, and not to be chosen for, is an unalienable ingredient in what makes human beings human."

~ Isaiah Berlin  

"When we lose
the right to be different,
we lose
the privilege to be free."

~ Justice Charles Evans Hughes  

"The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern."

~ Lord Acton  

~ Marvin Johnson  

"Government power must be dispersed. If government is to exercise power, better in the county than in the state, better in the state than in Washington. If I do not like what my local community does, be it in sewage disposal, or zoning, or schools, I can move to another local community, and though few may take this step, the mere possibility acts as a check. If I do not like what Washington imposes, I have few alternatives in this world of jealous nations."

~ Milton Friedman  

"Government has within it a tendency to abuse its powers."

~ John C. Calhoun  

"By far the most numerous and most flagrant violations of personal liberty and individual rights are performed by governments. The major crimes throughout history, the ones executed on the largest scale, have been committed not by individuals or bands of individuals but by governments, as a deliberate policy of those governments, that is, by the official representatives of governments, acting in their official capacity."

~ John Hospers  

"It is the common fate of the indolent
to see their rights become prey to the active.
The conditions upon which God
hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance;
which condition if he break, servitude is at once the
consequence of his crime, and the punishment of his guilt."

~ John Philpot Curran  

“A national government is a government of the people of a single state or nation, united as a community by what is termed the 'social compact,’ and possessing complete and perfect supremacy over persons and things, so far as they can be made the lawful objects of civil government. A federal government is distinguished from a national government by its being the government of a community of independent and sovereign states, united by compact."

~ Black's Law Dictionary  

"What is the best government? That which teaches us to govern ourselves."

~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe  

"And so, my fellow Americans:
Ask not what your country can do for you --
ask what you can do for your country.
My fellow citizens of the world:
Ask not what America will do for you,
but what together we can do for the freedom of man."

~ John F. Kennedy