Liberty Quotes - Daily Email History

"A machine has value only as
it produces more than it consumes --
so check your value to the community. "

~ Martin H. Fischer  

"No man will labor for himself who can make another labor for him."

~ Thomas Jefferson  

"No man shall rule over me with my consent.
I will rule over no man."

~ William Lloyd Garrison  

"There is nothing I dread So much, as a Division of the Republick into two great Parties, each arranged under its Leader, and concerting Measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble Apprehension is to be dreaded as the greatest political Evil, under our Constitution."

~ John Adams  

"If a majority are capable of preferring their own private interest, or that of their families, counties, and party, to that of the nation collectively, some provision must be made in the constitution, in favor of justice, to compel all to respect the common right, the public good, the universal law, in preference to all private and partial considerations... And that the desires of the majority of the people are often for injustice and inhumanity against the minority, is demonstrated by every page of history... To remedy the dangers attendant upon the arbitrary use of power, checks, however multiplied, will scarcely avail without an explicit admission some limitation of the right of the majority to exercise sovereign authority over the individual citizen... In popular governments [democracies], minorities [individuals] constantly run much greater risk of suffering from arbitrary power than in absolute monarchies..."

~ John Adams  

"I know of but one freedom and that is the freedom of the mind."

~ Antoine De Saint-Exupery  

"Always eyes watching you and the voice enveloping you. Asleep or awake, indoors or out of doors, in the bath or bed—no escape. Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimeters in your skull."

~ George Orwell  

"Freedom is always and exclusively freedom
for the one who thinks differently."

~ Rosa Luxemburg  

"If men use their liberty in such a way as to surrender their
liberty, are they thereafter any the less slaves? If people by
a plebiscite elect a man despot over them, do they remain free
because the despotism was of their own making?"

~ Herbert Spencer  

"The internal effects of a mutable policy are [...] calamitous.
It poisons the blessings of liberty itself. It will be of little avail
to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice,
if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read,
or so incoherent that they cannot be understood;
if they be repealed before they are promulgated,
or undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows
what the law is today can guess what it will be tomorrow."

~ James Madison  

"Taxation of earnings from labor is on a par with forced labor. Seizing the results of someone’s labor is equivalent to seizing hours from him and directing him to carry on various activities."

~ Robert Nozick  

"If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals -- if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is."

~ Ronald Reagan  

"There are many well-meaning people today who work at placing an economic floor beneath all of us so that no one shall exist below a certain level or standard of living, and certainly we don't quarrel with this. But look more closely and you may find that all too often these well-meaning people are building a ceiling above which no one shall be permitted to climb and between the two are pressing us all into conformity, into a mold of standardized mediocrity."

~ Ronald Reagan  

"You and I are told we must choose between a left or right,
but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right.
There is only an up or down. Up to man's age-old dream --
the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order --
or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism.
Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives,
those who would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on
this downward path. Plutarch warned,
'The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he
who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits.'"

~ Ronald Reagan