Liberty Quotes - Daily Email History

"In short, is not liberty the freedom of every person to make full use of his faculties, so long as he does not harm other persons while doing so? Is not liberty the destruction of all despotism -- including, of course, legal despotism? Finally, is not liberty the restricting of the law only to its rational sphere of organizing the right of the individual to lawful self-defense; of punishing injustice?"

~ Frederic Bastiat  

"Liberty ... was a two-headed boon.
There was first, the liberty of the people as a whole
to determine the forms of their own government,
to levy their own taxes, and to make their own laws....
There was second, the liberty of the individual man
to live his own life, within the limits of decency and decorum,
as he pleased -- freedom from the despotism of the majority."

~ H. L. Mencken  

"Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation;
and a house divided against a house falleth."

~ Jesus of Nazareth  

"It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do;
but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do."

~ Edmund Burke  

"Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed."

~ Étienne de la Boétie  

"The truth of the matter is that
you always know the right thing to do.
The hard part is doing it."

~ General H. Norman Schwarzkopf  

"It is easier to find a score of men wise enough to discover the truth than to find one intrepid enough, in the face of opposition, to stand up for it."

~ A. A. Hodge  

"Our own heart,
and not other men's opinions
form our true honor."

~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge  

"All our liberties are due to men who,
when their conscience has compelled them,
have broken the laws of the land."

~ William Kingdon Clifford  

"When a man who is honestly mistaken hears the truth,
he will either quit being mistaken or cease to be honest."

~ Abraham Lincoln  

"Although the legal and ethical definitions of right are the antithesis of each other, most writers use them as synonyms.  They confuse power with goodness, and mistake law for justice."

~ Charles T. Sprading  

"If language is not correct,
then what is said is not what is meant;
if what is said is not what is meant,
then what must be done remains undone;
if this remains undone,
morals and art will deteriorate;
if justice goes astray,
the people will stand about in helpless confusion.
Hence there must be no arbitrariness in what is said.
This matters above everything."

~ Confucius  

"I can find no warrant for such appropriation in the Constitution."

~ Grover Cleveland  

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

~ Lord Acton  

"Shame on the men who can court exemption from present trouble
and expense at the price of their own posterity's liberty!"

~ Samuel Adams