Liberty Quotes - Daily Email History

"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God
  who has endowed us with sense, reason, and
  intellect has intended us to forgo their use."

~ Galileo Galilei  

"It is within the police power of the state to prohibit public use of fighting words that create a danger of breach of the peace, but simply to prohibit public use of fighting words is too broad. Those words may sometimes be used in situations where there is no danger."

~ Ithiel De Sola Pool  

"No man shall rule over me with my consent.
I will rule over no man."

~ William Lloyd Garrison  

"Any power must be an enemy of mankind which
enslaves the individual by power and by force,
whether it arises under the Fascist or the Communist flag.
All that is valuable in human society
depends upon the opportunity for development
accorded to the individual."

~ Albert Einstein  

"There have existed,
in every age and every country,
two distinct orders of men --
the lovers of freedom and
the devoted advocates of power."

~ Robert Y. Hayne  

"A free man is he that,
in those things which by his strength and wit he is able to do,
is not hindered to do what he has a will to."

~ Thomas Hobbes  

"I have always believed that government had a limited capacity
to do good and a virtually infinite capacity to do harm..."

~ Neil Hamilton  

"The doctrine of non-resistance against arbitrary power and oppression,
is absurd, slavish, and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind."

~ New Hampshire Constitution  

"The way to have good and safe government is not to trust it all to
one, but to divide it among the many, distributing to everyone exactly
the functions in which he is competent ...
- To let the National Government be entrusted with the defense of the
nation, and its foreign and federal relations ...
- The State Governments with the Civil Rights, Laws, Police and
administration of what concerns the State generally.
- The Counties with the local concerns, and each ward direct the interests
within itself.
It is by dividing and subdividing these Republics from the great
national one down through all its subordinations until it ends in the
administration of everyman's farm by himself, by placing under everyone
what his own eye may superintend, that all will be done for the best."

~ Thomas Jefferson  

"The possession of power over others is inherently destructive both to the possessor of the power and to those over whom it is exercised."

~ George D. Herron  

"To vest a few fallible men -- prosecutors, judges, jurors -- with vast powers of literary or artistic censorship, to convert them into what J.S. Mill called the "moral police" is to make them despotic arbiters of literary products... If one day they ban mediocre books as obscene, another day they may do otherwise to a work of a genius. Originality, not too plentiful, should be cherished, not stifled. An author's imagination may be cramped if he must write with an eye on prosecutors or juries…"

~ Jerome D. Frank  

"The struggle is always between the individual
and his sacred right to express himself
and... the power structure that seeks
conformity, suppression and obedience."

~ Justice William O. Douglas  

"Parties are... censors of the conduct of each other, and useful watchmen for the public.
Men by their constitutions are naturally divided into two parties:
1. Those who fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes.
2. Those who identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and safe, although not the most wise, depository of the public interests.
In every country these two parties exist, and in every one where they are free to think, speak, and write, they will declare themselves.
Call them, therefore,... Whigs and Tories, Republicans and Federalists, Aristocrats and Democrats, or by whatever name you please, they are the same parties still, and pursue the same object."

~ Thomas Jefferson