Liberty Quotes - Daily Email History

"[There can be no] rational administration of government
when good men are held in the same esteem as bad ones."

~ Polybius  

"A man must first govern himself
ere he is fit to govern a family;
and his family ere he be fit to bear
the government of the commonwealth."

~ Sir Walter Raleigh  

"When the leader is morally weak and his discipline not strict,
when his instructions and guidance are not enlightened,
when there are no consistent rules,
neighboring rulers will take advantage of this."

~ Sun Tzu  

"Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn't.  You cannot shirk this and be a man.  To decide against your conviction is to be an unqualified and excusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let me label you as they may."

~ Mark Twain  

"If everyone were clothed with integrity, if every heart were just, frank, kindly, the other virtues would be well-nigh useless, since their chief purpose is to make us bear with patience the injustice of our fellows."

~ Molière  

"The problem of power is how to achieve its responsible use
rather than its irresponsible and indulgent use --
of how to get men of power to live for the public
rather than off the public."

~ Robert F. Kennedy  

"I sometimes wish that people would put a little more emphasis upon the observance of the law than they do upon its enforcement."

~ Calvin Coolidge  

"It is not the fact of liberty but the way in which liberty is exercised
that ultimately determines whether liberty itself survives."

~ Dorothy Thompson  

"The means prepare the end, and
the end is what the means have made of it."

~ John Viscount Morley  

"If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens,
you can never regain their respect and esteem.
It is true that you may fool all the people some of the time;
you can even fool some of the people all of the time;
but you can't fool all of the people all the time."

~ Abraham Lincoln  

"I do not like the pretensions of Government -- the grounds on which it demands my obedience -- to be pitched too high. I don't like the medicine-man's magical pretensions nor the Bourbon's Divine Right. This is not solely because I disbelieve in magic and in Bossuet's Politique. I believe in God, but I detest theocracy. For every Government consists of mere men and is, strictly viewed, a makeshift; if it adds to its commands 'Thus saith the Lord', it lies, and lies dangerously.

On just the same ground I dread government in the name of science. That is how tyrannies come in. In every age the men who want us under their thumb, if they have any sense, will put forward the particular pretension which the hopes and fears of that age render most potent. They 'cash in'. It has been magic, it has been Christianity. Now it will certainly be science. Perhaps the real scientists may not think much of the tyrants' 'science'-- they didn't think much of Hitler's racial theories or Stalin's biology. But they can be muzzled."

~ C. S. Lewis  

"No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, because his interest would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity."

~ James Madison  

"Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself."

~ Ludwig Wittgenstein  

"Truth does not become more true by virtue of the fact
that the entire world agrees with it,
nor less so even if the whole world disagrees with it."

~ Maimonides