“May we think of freedom not as the right to do as we please but as the opportunity to do what is right.”

— Peter Marshall

Last update Nov. 22, 2023. History

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Peter Marshall 3

American preacher 1902–1949

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“We do, to what extent of freedom we have earned or are allowed by others and ourselves, what we most want to do. We say - speak, paint, carve, write, express ourselves… as we damn please. And in both the doing of things and the talking about them - which together seem to me to sum up life - we so crave freedom or liberty or whatever one may choose to call it as to justify our Declaration's romantically terming it an unalienable right of Man, bestowed on Man by his Creator.”

Rockwell Kent (1882–1971) American artist

This Is My Own, p. 130 (1940)

“Please be peaceful. We believe in law and order. We are not advocating violence, I want you to love your enemies… for what we are doing is right, what we are doing is just -- and God is with us.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

“The effect of liberty to individuals is, that they may do what they please: we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations.”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

“Those of us who believe in freedom must believe also in the freedom of individuals to make their own mistakes. If a man knowingly prefers to live for today, to use his resources for current enjoyment, deliberately choosing a penurious old age, by what right do we prevent him from doing so? We may argue with him, seek to persuade him that he is wrong, but are we entitled to use coercion to prevent him from doing what he chooses to do? Is there not always the possibility that he is right and that we are wrong? Humility is the distinguishing virtue of the believer in freedom; arrogance, of the paternalist.”

Milton Friedman book Capitalism and Freedom

Source: Capitalism and Freedom (1962), Ch. 11, Social Welfare Measures, p. 187

“Here in Boston, in Massachusetts, we will do what we do best: We will fight back, fiercely—for our freedoms and for each other. This moment does not belong to the far right. It belongs to us, like our bodies. And we decide what to do with it.”

Michelle Wu (1985) City Councilor in Boston, Massachusetts

24 June 2022 "Boston Mayor Michelle Wu says overturning Roe v. Wade will 'ruin lives'" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrmQGDRoWCY

“We're not doing what we do because of sanctions. We're doing what we do because we believe it is right.”

F. W. de Klerk (1936) South African politician

As quoted in Freedom in the World: Political Rights & Civil Liberties, 1990-1991 https://web.archive.org/web/20180917224837/https://freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/Freedom_in_the_World_1990-1991_complete_book.pdf (1991), New York: Freedom House, p. 16
1990s

“Freedom does not mean doing what you can get away with, doing what you please. It means, instead, having the opportunity to do what you ought to do--for family and for community and for humanity as a whole.”

Alan Keyes (1950) American politician

Speech at Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco, March 4, 2000. http://renewamerica.us/archives/speeches/00_03_04fairmont.htm.
2000

“I think what we did in Iraq was the right thing to do. I still believe that.”

Dick Cheney (1941) American politician and businessman

At the Ringling College Library Association Town Hall Lecture Series in Sarasota https://www.sarasotamagazine.com/articles/2017/1/23/dick-cheney-sarasota (January 2017)
2010s, 2017

“Surely it is important for America that the moral truths which make freedom possible should be passed on to each new generation. Every generation of Americans needs to know that freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought.”

Pope John Paul II (1920–2005) 264th Pope of the Catholic Church, saint

Source http://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/homilies/1995/documents/hf_jp-ii_hom_19951008_baltimore.html Oriole Park at Camden Yards, Baltimore, Sunday, 8 October 1995
Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20220416100400/https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/homilies/1995/documents/hf_jp-ii_hom_19951008_baltimore.html Archived] from [https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/homilies/1995/documents/hf_jp-ii_hom_19951008_baltimore.html the original

“Right action is better than knowledge; but in order to do what is right, we must know what is right.”

Charlemagne (748–814) King of the Franks, King of Italy, and Holy Roman Emperor

"De Litteris Colendis", in Jean-Barthélemy Hauréau De la philosophie scolastique (1850) p. 10; translation from T. H. Huxley Science and Education ([1893] 2007) p. 132; in Latin, Quamvis enim melius sit benefacere quam nosse, prius tamen est nosse quam facere.

“May we think of freedom not as the right to do as we please but as the opportunity to do what is right.”

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Peter Marshall 3

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