Liberty Quotes - Daily Email History

"From a 'pragmatic' point of view,
political philosophy is a monster,
and whenever it has been taken seriously,
the consequence, almost invariably, has been revolution,
war, and eventually, the police state."

~ Henry David Aiken  

"Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have, in general, been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths."

~ James Madison  

"Democracy, with its promise of international peace, has been
no better guarantee against war than the old dynastic rule of kings."

~ Jan C. Smuts  

"Censorship reflects a society’s lack of confidence in itself.
It is the landmark of an authoritarian regime..."

~ Justice Potter Stewart  

"The people have always some champion
whom they set over them and nurse into greatness...
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs,
when he first appears he is a protector."

~ Plato  

"Authority has always attracted the lowest elements in the human race. All through history, mankind has been bullied by scum. Those who lord it over their fellows and toss commands in every direction and would boss the grass in the meadow about which way to bend in the wind are the most depraved kind of prostitutes. They will submit to any indignity, perform any vile act, do anything to achieve power. The worst off-sloughings of the planet are the ingredients of sovereignty. Every  government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy the whores are us."

~ P. J. O'Rourke  

"[America] goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom."

~ John Quincy Adams  

"History teaches us
that men and nations
only behave wisely
once they have exhausted
all other alternatives."

~ Abba Eban  

"The Shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat,
for which the sheep thanks the shephard as a liberator, while
the wolf denounces him for the same act as a destroyer of liberty.
Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of liberty."

~ Abraham Lincoln  

"Be convinced that to be happy means to be free
and that to be free means to be brave.
Therefore do not take lightly the perils of war."

~ Thucydides  

"If you want a Big Brother,
you get all that comes with it."

~ Erich Fromm  

"The strongest passions and most dangerous weaknesses of the human breast;
ambition, avarice, vanity, the honorable or venal love of fame,
are all in conspiracy against the desire and duty of peace."

~ James Madison  

"Republicanism and ignorance are in bitter antagonism."

~ Alphonse de Lamartine  

"If you establish a democracy, you must in due time reap the fruits of a democracy. You will in due season have great impatience of the public burdens, combined in due season with great increase of the public expenditure. You will in due season have wars entered into from passion and not from reason; and you will in due season submit to peace ignominiously sought and ignominiously obtained, which will diminish your authority and perhaps endanger your independence. You will in due season find your property is less valueable, and your freedom less complete."

~ Benjamin Disraeli  

"Convinced that the republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind, my prayers & efforts shall be cordially distributed to the support of that we have so happily established. It is indeed an animating thought that, while we are securing the rights of ourselves & our posterity, we are pointing out the way to struggling nations who wish, like us, to emerge from their tyrannies also. Heaven help their struggles, and lead them, as it has done us, triumphantly thro' them."

~ Thomas Jefferson