“Tyrants forbid citizens to do their duty as free men. Free government permits them to do it. Liberal education enables them to do it.”

— Stringfellow Barr

"Liberal Education: Enabling Citizens to do their Duty as Free Men", Report of the president of St. John's College to the Board of Visitors and Governors, May, 1941. Hanging in Buchanan Hall, St. John's College Annapolis

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 "Tyrants forbid citizens to do their duty as free men. Free government permits them to do it. Liberal education enables …" by Stringfellow Barr?

Stringfellow Barr1

American writer 1897–1982

Related quotes

“If there be any party which is more pledged than another to resist a policy of restrictive legislation, having for its object social coercion, that party is the Liberal party. (Cheers.) But liberty does not consist in making others do what you think right, (Hear, hear.) The difference between a free Government and a Government which is not free is principally this—that a Government which is not free interferes with everything it can, and a free Government interferes with nothing except what it must. A despotic Government tries to make everybody do what it wishes; a Liberal Government tries, as far as the safety of society will permit, to allow everybody to do as he wishes. It has been the tradition of the Liberal party consistently to maintain the doctrine of individual liberty. It is because they have done so that England is the place where people can do more what they please than in any other country in the world.”

William Harcourt (1827–1904) British politician

Speech in Oxford town hall (30 December 1872), quoted in The Times (31 December 1872), p. 5

“The more freedom a people have, the more unlikely the government will murder them. Democratically free governments do not murder their own people.”

Rudolph Rummel (1932–2014) American academic

Source: The Blue Book of Freedom: Ending Famine, Poverty, Democide, and War (2007), p. 14

“The policy of American government is to leave its citizens free, neither restraining them nor aiding them in their pursuits.”

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

Letter to M. L'Hommande, (1787), as quoted in The Jeffersonian Cyclopedia (1900), edited by John P. Foley, p. 500
1780s

“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.”

Frank Herbert book Dune

Source: Dune

“Men never do good unless necessity drives them to it; but when they are free to choose and can do just as they please, confusion and disorder become rampant.”

Niccolo Machiavelli book Discourses on Livy

Book 1, Ch. 3 (as translated by LJ Walker and B Crick)
Discourses on Livy (1517)

“Nobody performs her or his duties. Governments do not, because they do not know, they are not able or they do not wish, or because they are not permitted by those who effectively govern the world: The multinational and pluricontinental companies whose power — absolutely non-democratic — reduce to next to nothing what is left of the ideal of democracy. We citizens are not fulfilling our duties either. Let us think that no human rights will exist without symmetry of the duties that correspond to them. It is not to be expected that governments in the next 50 years will do it. Let us common citizens therefore speak up. With the same vehemence as when we demanded our rights, let us demand responsibility over our duties. Perhaps the world could turn a little better.”

José Saramago (1922–2010) Portuguese writer and recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature

Nobel Banquet Speech

“Untie, liberate, and do not be afraid. He who is free is disarmed.”

Alain (1868–1951) French philosopher

Poets
Alain On Happiness (1928)

“The poor themselves can create a poverty-free world — all we have to do is to free them from the chains that we have put around them.”

Muhammad Yunus (1940) Bangladeshi banker, economist and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

"Eliminating Poverty Through Market-Based Social Entrepreneurship" in Global Urban Development Magazine (May 2005) http://www.globalurban.org/Issue1PIMag05/Yunus%20article.htm

“The most basic duty of government is to defend the lives of its own citizens. Any government that fails to do so is a government unworthy to lead.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2016, July, (21 July 2016)

“This is the true liberty of Christ, when a free man binds himself in love to duty. Not in shrinking from our distasteful occupations, but in fulfilling them, do we realize our high origin.”

Frederick William Robertson (1816–1853) British writer and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 378.

“Tyrants forbid citizens to do their duty as free men. Free government permits them to do it. Liberal education enables them to do it.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Stringfellow Barr1

Related quotes

Related topics