The Farmer Refuted (1775)
Context: The fundamental source of all your errors, sophisms, and false reasonings, is a total ignorance of the natural rights of mankind. Were you once to become acquainted with these, you could never entertain a thought, that all men are not, by nature, entitled to a parity of privileges. You would be convinced, that natural liberty is a gift of the beneficent Creator, to the whole human race; and that civil liberty is founded in that; and cannot be wrested from any people, without the most manifest violation of justice. Civil liberty is only natural liberty, modified and secured by the sanctions of civil society. It is not a thing, in its own nature, precarious and dependent on human will and caprice; but it is conformable to the constitution of man, as well as necessary to the well-being of society.
“...the errors of Rome...[are] rank idolatry—a subversion of all civil as well as religious liberty, and the utter disgrace of reason and of human nature.”
Letter to the Bishop of Gloucester William Warburton (October 1762), quoted in W. S. Taylor and J. H. Pringle (eds.), Correspondence of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham: Vol. II (London: John Murray, 1838), p. 188
1760s
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William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham 36
British politician 1708–1778Related quotes
The History of Freedom in Christianity (1877)
Address The bell is ringing
Liberty-Equality-Fraternity (1942)
As quoted in His Brother's Blood: Speeches and Writings, 1838–64 https://books.google.com/books?id=qMEv8DNXVbIC&pg=PA193&lpg=PA198 (2004), edited by William Frederick Moore and Jane Ann Moore, p. 198
1860s, Speech to the U.S. House of Representatives (April 1860)
“If the true spark of religious and civil liberty be kindled, it will burn.”
Address on Laying the Cornerstone of the Bunker Hill Monument (1825)
Context: If the true spark of religious and civil liberty be kindled, it will burn. Human agency cannot extinguish it. Like the earth's central fire, it may be smothered for a time; the ocean may overwhelm it; mountains may press it down; but its inherent and unconquerable force will heave both the ocean and the land, and at some time or other, in some place or other, the volcano will break out and flame up to heaven.
Speech in the House of Commons (18 March 1829) in favour of Catholic Emancipation, quoted in George Henry Francis, Opinions and Policy of the Right Honourable Viscount Palmerston, G.C.B., M.P., &c. as Minister, Diplomatist, and Statesman, During More Than Forty Years of Public Life (London: Colburn and Co., 1852), pp. 84-85.
1820s
Context: I reverence, as much as any one can do, the memory of those great men who effected the Revolution of 1688, and who rescued themselves and us from the thraldom of religious intolerance, and the tyranny of arbitrary power; but I think we are not rendering an appropriate homage to them, when we practice that very intolerance which they successfully resisted, and when we withhold from our fellow-subjects the blessings of that Constitution, which they established with so much courage and wisdom.... that great religious radical, King William... intended to raise a goodly fabric of charity, of concord, and of peace, and upon which his admirers of the present day are endeavouring to build the dungeon of their Protestant Constitution. If the views and intentions of King William had been such as are now imputed to him, instead of blessing his arrival as an epoch of glory and happiness to England, we should have had reason to curse the hour when first he printed his footstep on our strand. But he came not here a bigoted polemic, with religious tracts in one hand, and civil persecution in the other; he came to regenerate and avenge the prostrate and insulted liberties of England; he came with peace and toleration on his lips, and with civil and religious liberty in his heart.
As quoted in England in the Eighteenth Century (1714 - 1815) (1964) by J. H. Plumb, p. 94
General sources
Fuggite i libri; questi
Son la vergogna dell’ umana gente,
Son gli assassin! della vita umana.
Credete a me : la vera
Filosofia è quella d’ingrassare.
Socrate Immaginario, Act I., Sc. XIII. — (Tammaro.). Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 303.
As quoted in The Great Quotations on Religious Freedom (1991) edited by Albert J. Menendez and Edd Doerr