Liberty Quotes - Daily Email History

"Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow-citizens,) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake; since history and experience prove, that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of Republican Government. But that jealousy, to be useful, must be impartial; else it becomes the instrument of the very influence to be avoided, instead of a defence against it. Excessive partiality for one foreign nation, and excessive dislike of another, cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side, and serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other. Real patriots, who may resist the intrigues of the favorite, are liable to become suspected and odious; while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people, to surrender their interests."

~ George Washington  

"Good government is the most dangerous government,
because it deprives people of the need to look after themselves."

~ Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi  

"Self-reliance is the only road to true freedom,
and being one's own person is its ultimate reward."

~ Patricia Sampson  

"Resistance to the organized mass can be effected only by the man
who is as well organized in his individuality as the mass itself."

~ Carl Gustav Jung  

"Democracy and liberty are not the same.
Democracy is little more than mob rule,
while liberty refers to the sovereignty of the individual."

~ Walter E. Williams  

"It has been thought a considerable advance towards establishing
the principles of Freedom, to say, that government is a compact
between those who govern and those that are governed:
but this cannot be true, because it is putting the effect before
the cause; for as man must have existed before governments existed,
there necessarily was a time when governments did not exist,
and consequently there could originally exist no governors
to form such a compact with. The fact therefore must be, that the
individuals themselves, each in his own personal and sovereign right,
entered into a compact with each other to produce a government:
and this is the only mode in which governments have a right to arise,
and the only principle on which they have a right to exist."

~ Thomas Paine  

"It is not uncommon for ignorant and corrupt men to falsely charge others with doing what they imagine they themselves, in their narrow minds and experience, would have done under the circumstances."

~ John Hessin Clarke  

"I have seen gross intolerance show in support of tolerance."

~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge  

"Where the principle of difference [between political parties] is as substantial and as strongly pronounced as between the republicans and the monocrats of our country, I hold it as honorable to take a firm and decided part and as immoral to pursue a middle line, as between the parties of honest men and rogues, into which every country is divided."

~ Thomas Jefferson  

"The nation relies upon public discussion as one of the indispensable means to attain correct solutions to problems of social welfare. Curtailment of free speech limits this open discussion. Our whole history teaches that adjustment of social relations through reason is possible when free speech is maintained."

~ Stanley Forman Reed  

"When men can freely communicate their thoughts and their sufferings, real or imagined, their passions spend themselves in air, like gunpowder scattered upon the surface – but pent up by terrors, they work unseen, burst forth in a moment, and destroy everything in its course. Let reason be opposed to reason, and argument to argument, and every good government will be safe."

~ Thomas Erskine  

"Speech is civilization itself. The word, even the most contradictory word, preserves contact – it is silence which isolates."

~ Thomas Mann  

"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending
spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead
of diminishing evil, it multiplies it... Through violence you
may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact,
violence merely increases hate.... Returning violence for
violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a
night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out hate;
only love can do that."

~ Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  

"In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law ...
That would lead to anarchy. An individual who breaks a law
that his conscience tells him is unjust,
and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment
in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice,
is in reality expressing the highest respect for law."

~ Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  

"I firmly believe that the Gandhian philosophy of nonviolent resistance
is the only logical and moral approach to the solution
of the race problem in the United States."

~ Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.