Liberty Quotes - Daily Email History

"If knowledge can create problems,
it is not through ignorance that we can solve them."

~ Isaac Asimov  

"All truly wise thoughts have been thought already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience."

~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe  

"The dichotomy between personal liberties
and property rights is a false one.
Property does not have rights. People have rights...
In fact, a fundamental interdependence exists
between the personal right to liberty
and the personal right in property."

~ Justice Potter Stewart  

"To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he's doing is good... Ideology - that is what gives devildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others' eyes, so that he won't hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors."

~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn  

"[Socialism] is a creed even more denigrating than Catholicism,
but it offers more tangible bribes for its acceptance."

~ Auberon Herbert  

"The grand paradox of our society is this:
we magnify man’s right but we minimize his capacities."

~ Joseph Wood Krutch  

"[J]ust because you have an individual right does not mean that the state or local government can't constrain the exercise of that right..."

~ Barack Hussein Obama  

"If the personal freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution
inhibit the government's ability to govern the people,
we should look to limit those guarantees."

~ Bill Clinton  

"Individual rights must take a back-seat to the collective."

~ Harvey Ruvin  

"All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it."

~ H. L. Mencken  

"Observe, I do not mean to suggest that the custom of lying has suffered any decay or interruption -- no, for the Lie, as Virtue, as Principle, is eternal; the Lie, as a recreation, a solace, a refuge in time of need, the fourth Grace, the tenth Muse, man's best and surest friend, is immortal, and cannot perish from the earth while this club remains.

My complaint, simply concerns the decay of the art of lying. No high-minded man, no man of right feeling, can contemplate the lumbering and slovenly lying of the present day without grieving to see a noble art so prostituted. ... If this finest of the fine art arts had everywhere received the attention, encouragement, and conscientious practice and development which this club has devoted to it, I should not need to utter this lament, or cry a single tear. I do not say this to flatter. I say it in a spirit of just and appreciative recognition."

~ Mark Twain

"The world wishes to be deceived."

~ Sebastian Franck  

"One who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived."

~ Niccolo Machiavelli  

"[I]n the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. "

~ Adolf Hitler  

"When the government fears the people there is liberty;
when the people fear the government there is tyranny."

~ Thomas Jefferson