Liberty Quotes - Daily Email History

"He who sees the truth, let him proclaim it,
without asking who is for it or who is against it."

~ Henry George  

"There is simply no escaping the fact that the fate of the Constitution is in our hands -- as voters, representatives, justices. If we allow ourselves to abuse the tradition of higher lawmaking, the very idea that the Constitution can be viewed as the culminating expression of a mobilized citizenry will disintegrate. After all, the American Republic is no more eternal than the Roman -- and it will come to an end when American citizens betray their Constitution’s fundamental ideals and aspirations so thoroughly that existing institutions merely parody the public meanings they formerly conveyed."

~ Bruce Ackerman  

"Human reason can neither predict nor deliberately shape its own future.
Its advances consist in finding out where it has been wrong."

~ Friedrich August von Hayek  

"To speak ill of others is a dishonest way of praising ourselves."

~ Will Durant  

"Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself."

~ William Faulkner  

"Pity the poor, wretched, timid soul, too faint hearted to resist his oppressors.
He sings the songs of the damned, 'I cannot resist, I have too much to lose,
they might take my property or confiscate my earnings,
what would my family do, how would they survive?'
He hides behind pretended family responsibility, failing to see that
the most glorious legacy that we can bequeath to our posterity is liberty!"

~ W. Vaughn Ellsworth  

"[W]henever the Legislators endeavor to take away, and destroy the Property of the People, or to reduce them to Slavery under Arbitrary Power, they put themselves into a state of War with the People, who are thereupon absolved from any farther Obedience, and are left to the common Refuge, which God hath provided for all Men, against Force and Violence. Whensoever therefore the Legislative shall transgress this fundamental Rule of Society; and either by Ambition, Fear, Folly or Corruption, endeavor to grasp themselves, or put into the hands of any other an Absolute Power over the Lives, Liberties, and Estates of the People; By this breach of Trust they forfeit the Power, the People had put into their hands, for quite contrary ends, and it devolves to the people, who have a Right to resume their original Liberty."

~ John Locke  

"One of the hardest things to teach a child is that
the truth is more important than the consequences."

~ O. A. Battista  

"Lying can never save us from another lie."

~ Vaclav Havel  

"Ill habits gather by unseen degrees --
As brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas."

~ John Dryden  

"Every wrong seems possible today, and is accepted.  I don't accept it."

~ Pablo Casals  

"[F]alsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good dispositions."

~ Thomas Jefferson  

"We are what we repeatedly do.
Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit."

~ Aristotle  

"There is no crime more infamous than the violation of truth. It is apparent that men can be social beings no longer than they believe each other. When speech is employed only as the vehicle of falsehood, every man must disunite himself from others, inhabit his own cave and seek prey only for himself."

~ Dr. Samuel Johnson  

"We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing,
while others judge us by what we have already done."

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow