Liberty Quotes - Daily Email History

"The cry has been that when war is declared, all opposition should therefore be hushed. A sentiment more unworthy of a free country could hardly be propagated. If the doctrine be admitted, rulers have only to declare war and they are screened at once from scrutiny."

~ William Ellery Channing  

"Loud speech, profusion of words, and possessing skillfulness in expounding scriptures are merely for the enjoyment of the learned. They do not lead to liberation."

~ Adi Shankaracharya  

"How I wish that somewhere there existed an island for those who are wise and of goodwill! In such a place even I would be an ardent patriot."

~ Albert Einstein  

"Surely a large part of the zealous repression of radical protest in America has its roots in the fact that millions of men who are apparently "insiders" know how vulnerable the system is because they know how ambiguous their own attachments to it are. The slightest challenge exposes the fragile foundations of legitimacy of the state."

~ John Scharr  

"When the state intervenes to insure the indoctrination of some doctrine, it does so because there is no conclusive evidence in favor of that doctrine."

~ Bertrand Russell  

"Of all the so-called natural human rights that have ever been invented, liberty is least likely to be cheap and is never free of cost."

~ Robert A. Heinlein  

"The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves."

~ William Hazlitt  

"Liberty is quite as much a moral as a political growth, -- the result of free individual action, energy, and independence."

~ Samuel Smiles  

"Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher."

~ Thomas Paine  

"There can be no truly moral choice unless that choice is made in freedom; similarly, there can be no really firmly grounded and consistent defense of freedom unless that defense is rooted in moral principle. In concentrating on the ends of choice, the conservative, by neglecting the conditions of choice, loses that very morality of conduct with which he is so concerned. And the libertarian, by concentrating only on the means, or conditions, of choice and ignoring the ends, throws away an essential moral defense of his own position."

~ Murray N. Rothbard  

"My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular."

~ Adlai E. Stevenson II  

"Personal liberty is the paramount essential to human dignity and human happiness."

~ Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton  

"Freedom of the mind requires not only, or not even especially, the absence of legal constraints but the presence of alternative thoughts. The most successful tyranny is not the one that uses force to assure uniformity, but the one that removes awareness of other possibilities."

~ Alan Bloom  

"Without freedom of thought there can be no such thing as wisdom; and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech."

~ Benjamin Franklin  

"I shall have liberty to think for myself without molesting others or being molested myself."

~ John Adams