Liberty Quotes - Daily Email History

"Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain
characteristics of a vigorous intelligence."

~ Dr. Samuel Johnson  

"The first and simplest emotion
which we discover in the human mind,
is curiosity."

~ Edmund Burke  

"Within seven centuries, [the ancient Greeks] invented for itself, epic, elegy, lyric, tragedy, novel, democratic government, political and economic science, history, geography, philosophy, physics and biology; and made revolutionary advances in architecture, sculpture, painting, music, oratory, mathematics, astronomy, medicine, anatomy, engineering, law and war... a stupendous feat for whose most brilliant state Attica was the size of Hertfordshire, with a free population (including children) of perhaps 160,000."

~ F. J. Lucas  

"The skeptic does not mean him who doubts,
but him who investigates or researches,
as opposed to him who asserts and thinks he has found."

~ Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo  

"[When] Men are not allowed to think freely
about chemistry and biology,
why should they be allowed to think freely
about political philosophy?"

~ Auguste Comte  

"One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been
bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle.
We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has
captured us. It is simply too painful to acknowledge -- even to
ourselves -- that we've been so credulous. (So the old bamboozles tend
to persist as the new bamboozles rise.)"

~ Carl Sagan  

"As long as men are free to ask what they must,
free to say what they think, free to think what they will,
freedom can never be lost and science can never regress."

~ J. Robert Oppenheimer  

"The science of government it is my duty to study, more than all other
sciences; the arts of legislation and administration and negotiation
ought to take the place of, indeed exclude, in a manner, all other arts.
I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study
mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and
philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture,
navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children
a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary,
tapestry and porcelain."

~ John Adams  

"Science without religion is lame,
religion without science is blind."

~ Albert Einstein  

"I am really mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, a fact like this can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too, as an offence against religion; that a question about the sale of a book can be carried before the civil magistrate. Is this then our freedom of religion? and are we to have a censor whose imprimatur shall say what books may be sold, and what we may buy? And who is thus to dogmatize religious opinions for our citizens? Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched? Is a priest to be our inquisitor, or shall a layman, simple as ourselves, set up his reason as the rule for what we are to read, and what we must believe? It is an insult to our citizens to question whether they are rational beings or not, and blasphemy against religion to suppose it cannot stand the test of truth and reason."

~ Thomas Jefferson  

"Rogues are preferable to imbeciles
because they sometimes take a rest."

~ Alexandre Dumas  

"I can scarcely contemplate a greater calamity that could befall this country, than be loaded with a debt exceeding their ability ever to discharge. If this be a just remark, it is unwise and improvident to vest in the general government a power to borrow at discretion, without any limitation or restriction."

~ Brutus  

"Growth is slow but collapse is rapid."

~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca