Liberty Quotes - Daily Email History

"When men have come to the edge of a precipice, it is the lover of life who has the spirit to leap backwards, and only the pessimist who continues to believe in progress."

~ Gilbert Keith Chesterton  

"Never trust governments absolutely
and always do what you can to prevent
them from doing too much harm."

~ John Arthur Passmore  

"We find few historians who have been diligent enough in their search
for truth; it is their common method to take on trust what they help
distribute to the public; by which means a falsehood once received from
a famed writer becomes traditional to posterity."

~ John Dryden  

"Facts are stubborn things;
and whatever may be our wishes,
our inclinations,
or the dictates of our passion,
they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence."

~ John Adams  

"We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts,
foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values.
For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and
falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people."

~ John F. Kennedy  

"We may feel genuinely concerned about world conditions, though such a concern should drive us into action and not into a depression."

~ Karen Horney  

"It is the highest impertinence and presumption, therefore, in kings and ministers to pretend to watch over the economy of private people, and to restrain their expense. ... They are themselves always, and without exception, the greatest spendthrifts in the society. Let them look well after their own expense, and they may safely trust private people with theirs."

~ Adam Smith  

"Trusting too much to others' care is the ruin of many; for, as the almanac says, in the affairs of this world men are saved not by faith, but by the want of it; but a man's own care is profitable; for, saith Poor Dick, learning is to the studious, and riches to the careful, as well as power to the bold, and Heaven to the virtuous."

~ Benjamin Franklin  

"No government ought to exist
for the purpose of checking the prosperity of its people
or to allow such a principle in its policy."

~ Edmund Burke  

"Many people never grow up.
They stay all their lives
with a passionate need for
external authority and guidance,
pretending not to trust
their own judgment."

~ Alan Watts  

"Morality is always the product of terror; its chains and
strait-waistcoats are fashioned by those who dare not trust others,
because they dare not trust themselves, to walk in liberty."

~ Aldous Huxley  

" You see what power is --
holding someone else's fear in your hand
and showing it to them!"

~ Amy Tan  

"On account of being a democracy and run by the people,
we are the only nation in the world that has to keep
a government four years, no matter what it does."

~ Will Rogers  

"There are all kinds of devices invented for the protection and
preservation of countries: defensive barriers, forts, trenches,
and the like... But prudent minds have as a natural gift one safeguard
which is the common possession of all, and this applies especially
to the dealings of democracies. What is this safeguard? Skepticism.
This you must preserve. This you must retain. If you can keep this,
you need fear no harm."

~ Demosthenes  

"Blind submission to the Administration of the government
is not devotion to the country or the Constitution.
The administration is not the government."

~ Edward G. Ryan