Liberty Quotes - Daily Email History

"Justice without force is impotent,
force without justice is tyranny.
Unable to make what is just strong,
we have made what is strong just."

~ Blaise Pascal  

"Goodness without wisdom always accomplished evil."

~ Robert A. Heinlein  

"Courage without conscience is a wild beast."

~ Robert G. Ingersoll  

"[I]t is a truth which the experience of all ages has attested,
that the people are always most in danger, when the means of injuring
their rights are in the possession of those of whom
they entertain the least suspicion."

~ Alexander Hamilton  

"Freedom means freedom from forces and circumstances
which would turn man into a thing, which would impose
on man the passivity and predictability of matter.
By this test, absolute power is the
manifestation most inimical to human uniqueness.
Absolute power wants to turn people into malleable clay."

~ Eric Hoffer  

"The successful politician owes his power to the fact that he moves within the accepted framework of thought, that he thinks and talks conventionally. It would be almost a contradiction in terms for a politician to be a leader in the field of ideas. His task in a democracy is to find out what the opinions held by the largest number are, not to give currency to new opinions which may become the majority view in some distant future."

~ Friedrich August von Hayek  

"Throughout the history of the United States, war has been the primary impetus behind the growth and development of the central state. It has been the lever by which presidents and other national officials have bolstered the power of the state in the face of tenacious popular resistance."

~ Bruce D. Porter  

"We recognize the force of the argument that the effects of war under modern conditions may be felt in the economy for years and years, and that if the war power can be used in days of peace to treat all the wounds which war inflicts on our society, it may not only swallow up all other powers of Congress but largely obliterate the Ninth and the Tenth Amendments as well."

~ Justice William O. Douglas  

"Experience hath shewn,
that even under the best forms [of government]
those entrusted with power have, in time,
and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny."

~ Thomas Jefferson  

"People demand freedom only when they have no power."

~ Friedrich Nietzsche  

"In the general course of human nature, A power over a man's subsistence amounts to a power over his will."

~ Alexander Hamilton  

"Forcing people to be more 'unselfish' creates animosity instead of good will. Trying to control selfish others is a cure worse than the disease. ... In trying to control others, we find ourselves controlled. We point fingers at the dictators, the Communists, the politicians, and the international cartels. We are blithely unaware that our desire to control selfish others creates and sustains them. Like a stone thrown in a quiet pond, our desire to control our neighbors ripples outward, affecting the political course of our community, state, nation, and world. Yet we know not what we do. We attempt to bend our neighbors to our will, sincere in our belief that we are benevolently protecting the world from their folly and short-sightedness. We seek control to create peace and prosperity, not realizing that this is the very means by which war and poverty are propagated. In fighting for our dream without awareness, we become the instruments of its destruction. If we could only see the pattern!"

~ Dr. Mary J. Ruwart  

"It is maintained that a society is free only when dissenting minorities have room to throw their weight around. As a matter of fact, a dissenting minority feels free only when it can impose its will on the majority: what it abominates most is the dissent of the majority."

~ Eric Hoffer  

"History has taught us time and again that political power always raises its angry fist when timeless principles are lost. We know that without the scale of "self-evident truths" grounded in the "laws of nature and nature's God," every culture eventually finds itself subject to the rule of the gang or the tyranny of the individual. Recognizing this, scholars of all ages have confidently given their hearts and minds to the words, "You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free." "

~ Everett Piper  

"The Greeks... labored under the delusion that their democracy was a guarantee of peace and plenty, not realizing that unrestrained majority rule always destroys freedom, puts the minority at the mercy of the mob, and works at cross-purposes to the effective use of human energy and individual initiative."

~ Henry Grady Weaver