Thomas Clarkson (1760–1846) English abolitionist
An essay on the slavery and commerce of the human species, particularly the African, translated from a Latin Dissertation, p. 54 (1788) https://books.google.com/books?id=pBOe7105MhMC&pg=PA54
Legislative Assembly, February 9, 1865
Context: The two greatest things that all men aim at in any free government are liberty and permanency. We have had liberty enough - too much perhaps in some respects - but at all events, liberty to our hearts content.
Thomas Clarkson (1760–1846) English abolitionist
An essay on the slavery and commerce of the human species, particularly the African, translated from a Latin Dissertation, p. 54 (1788) https://books.google.com/books?id=pBOe7105MhMC&pg=PA54
H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer
"Why Liberty?”, in the Chicago Tribune (30 January 1927)
1920s
John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States
Notes for an oration at Braintree (Spring 1772)
1770s
Aldous Huxley book Brave New World Revisited
Source: Brave New World Revisited (1958), Chapter 1 (p. 14)
John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States
1760s, A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law (1765)
Louis Brandeis (1856–1941) American Supreme Court Justice
Dissenting, Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438, 479 (1928). The last sentence is one of many quotations inscribed on Cox Corridor II, a first floor House corridor, U.S. Capitol.
Judicial opinions
Context: The defendants' objections to the evidence obtained by wire-tapping must, in my opinion, be sustained. It is, of course, immaterial where the physical connection with the telephone wires leading into the defendants' premises was made. And it is also immaterial that the intrusion was in aid of law enforcement. Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.
Henry Steele Commager (1902–1998) American historian
Source: Freedom, Loyalty, Dissent (1954), p. 5
“Therefore since all men are free by nature, every government”
Nicholas of Cusa book De concordantia catholica
De concordantia catholica (The Catholic Concordance) (1434)
Context: Therefore since all men are free by nature, every government that restrains its subjects from evils and uses the fear of punishment to orient their freedom towards the good, whether it consists of written laws or of a living law in the person of the prince, is constituted only by the agreement and consent of the subjects. For if by nature men are equally powerful and equally free, then the true and well-ordered authority of one who is a fellow and equal in power can only be established by the choice and consent of others, just as laws are established by consent