Liberty Quotes - Daily Email History

"The experience that was had in ... the taking away of private property, and the possession of it in community, by a commonwealth ... was found to breed much confusion and discontent; and retard much employment which would have been to the general benefit.... For the young men that were most able and fit for labor and service objected that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men's wives and children, without any recompense.... The strong man or the resourceful man had no more share of food, clothes, etc., than the weak man who was not able to do a quarter the other could; this was thought injustice. The aged and graver men, who were ranked and equalized in labor, food, clothes, etc., with the meaner and younger ones, thought it some indignity and disrespect to them."

~ William Bradford  

"There is no act, however virtuous, for which
ingenuity may not find some bad motive."

~ Thomas Jefferson  

"Toward no crimes have men
shown themselves so cold-bloodedly cruel
as in punishing differences of opinion."

~ James Russell Lowell  

"Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn't learn a lot today, at least we learned a little, and if we didn't learn a little, at least we didn't get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn't die; so, let us all be thankful."

~ Buddha  

"When I'm not thanked at all, I'm thanked enough;
I've done my duty, and I've done no more."

~ Henry Fielding  

"I thank Thee first because I was never robbed before; second, because although they took my purse they did not take my life; third, because although they took my all, it was not much; and fourth because it was I who was robbed, and not I who robbed."

~ Matthew Henry  

"The deterioration of every government
begins with the decay of the principles
on which it was founded."

~ Charles de Montesquieu  

"All bad precedents began as justifiable measures."

~ Gaius Julius Caesar  

"Never could an increase of comfort or security
be a sufficient good to be bought at the price of liberty."

~ Hilaire Belloc  

"The least initial deviation from the truth
is multiplied later a thousandfold."

~ Aristotle  

"Power corrupts. But it does more than that.
Power attracts the corrupt, then corrupts them further."

~ Don Matthews  

"The first sign of corruption
in a society that is still alive
is that the end justifies the means."

~ Georges Bernanos  

"Those who have been intoxicated with power... can never willingly abandon it."

~ Edmund Burke  

"A lawyer with a briefcase can steal more
than a hundred men with guns."

~ Mario Puzo  

"No people is wholly civilized where a distinction is
drawn between stealing an office and stealing a purse."

~ Theodore Roosevelt