“There are limits on liberty, as there are limits on authority. The broad principle of those limits is generally recognized and accepted; no liberties may be exercised so as to injure others or injure the community.”

—  Henry Steele Commager

Source: Freedom, Loyalty, Dissent (1954), p. 77

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "There are limits on liberty, as there are limits on authority. The broad principle of those limits is generally recogni…" by Henry Steele Commager?
Henry Steele Commager photo
Henry Steele Commager27
American historian 1902–1998

Related quotes

Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette photo

“Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else; hence the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits except those which assure to the other members of the society the enjoyment of the same rights.”

Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette (1757–1834) French general and politician

Declaration of the Rights of Man (1789)

Edmund Burke photo

“Liberty, too, must be limited in order to be possessed.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol (1777)

Herbert Spencer photo

“Limiting the liberty of each by the like liberty of all, excludes a wide range of improper actions, but does not exclude certain other improper ones.”

Herbert Spencer book Social Statics

Pt. II, Ch. 4 : Derivation of a First Principle, § 4
Social Statics (1851)

Albert Schweitzer photo

“Ethics, too, are nothing but reverence for life. That is what gives me the fundamental principle of morality, namely, that good consists in maintaining, promoting, and enhancing life, and that destroying, injuring, and limiting life are evil.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Kulturphilosophie (1923), Vol. 2 : Civilization and Ethics

“An intolerant sect has no right to complain when it is denied an equal liberty. … A person’s right to complain is limited to principles he acknowledges himself.”

John Rawls book A Theory of Justice

Source: A Theory of Justice (1971; 1975; 1999), p. 217

John R. Commons photo

“Legally, the term liberty means absence of duty, or rather the limit of duty.”

John R. Commons (1862–1945) United States institutional economist and labor historian

Source: Legal foundations of capitalism. 1924, p. 53

Thomas Jefferson photo

“Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to Dr. James Currie (28 January 1786) Lipscomb & Bergh 18:ii
1780s

Thomas Jefferson photo

“Of liberty I would say that, in the whole plenitude of its extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will. But rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add "within the limits of the law" because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to Isaac H. Tiffany (4 April 1819)
1810s

Woodrow Wilson photo

“Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of the government. The history of liberty is a history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it.”

Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American politician, 28th president of the United States (in office from 1913 to 1921)

Speech at New York Press Club (9 September 1912), in The papers of Woodrow Wilson, 25:124
1910s

Jacques Lacan photo

“Pleasure limits the scope of human possiblity-the pleasure principle is a principle of homeostasis. Desire, on the other hand, finds its boundary, its strict relation, its limit, and it is in the relation to this limit that it is sustained as such, crossing the threshold imposed by the pleasure principle.”

Jacques Lacan (1901–1981) French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist

Of The Subject of Certainty p. 31
The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho Analysis (1978)

Related topics