Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)
Context: No one ever seriously affirmed the literal freedom of will. Absolute liberty is absence of restraint; responsibility is restraint; therefore the ideally free individual is responsible only to himself. This principle is the philosophical foundation of anarchism, and, for anything that science has yet proved, may be the philosophical foundation of the Universe; but it is fatal to all society and is especially hostile to the State. Perhaps the Church of the thirteenth century might have found a way to use even this principle for a good purpose; certainly the influence of Saint Bernard was sufficiently unsocial and that of Saint Francis was sufficiently unselfish to conciliate even anarchists of the militant class.
“Liberty, as such, is only the negative of duty, the absence of restraint or compulsion.”
Source: Legal foundations of capitalism. 1924, p. 118
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John R. Commons 26
United States institutional economist and labor historian 1862–1945Related quotes
“Liberty is absence of restraint. Freedom is participation in government.”
Source: Legal foundations of capitalism. 1924, p. 111
p, 125
Other writings, The Paradoxes of Legal Science (1928)
“Legally, the term liberty means absence of duty, or rather the limit of duty.”
Source: Legal foundations of capitalism. 1924, p. 53
"On Syria (And All Else), It's 'Us' Against 'Them'" http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2013/09/on-syria-and-all-else-its-us-against.html Economic Policy Journal, September 7, 2013.
2010s, 2013
Source: Legal foundations of capitalism. 1924, p. 95
Political Disquisitions (1774)
Context: That government only can be pronounced consistent with the design of all government, which allows to the governed the liberty of doing what, consistently with the general good, they may desire to do, and which only forbids their doing the contrary. Liberty does not exclude restraint; it only excludes unreasonable restraint. To determine precisely how far personal liberty is compatible with the general good, and of the propriety of social conduct in all cases, is a matter of great extent, and demands the united wisdom of a whole people. And the consent of the whole people, as far as it can be obtained, is indispensably necessary to every law, by which the whole people are to be bound; else the whole people are enslaved to the one, or the few, who frame the laws for them.
“Liberty has restraints but no frontiers.”
International Liberal Conference (July 1928)
Later life
“Liberty exists in proportion to wholesome restraint.”
Speech at the Charleston Bar Dinner (May 10, 1847); reported in Edward Everett, ed., The Works of Daniel Webster (1851), Vol. II, p. 393
General Survey
The Function of the Orgasm (1927)