“Freedom has cost too much blood and agony to be relinquished at the cheap price of rhetoric.”

—  Thomas Sowell

Source: 1980s–1990s, Knowledge and Decisions (1980; 1996), Ch. 5 : Political Trade-Offs

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 "Freedom has cost too much blood and agony to be relinquished at the cheap price of rhetoric." by Thomas Sowell?
Thomas Sowell photo
Thomas Sowell 101
American economist, social theorist, political philosopher … 1930

Related quotes

Walter Cronkite photo

“Whatever the cost of our libraries, the price is cheap compared to that of an ignorant nation.”

Walter Cronkite (1916–2009) American broadcast journalist
Subhas Chandra Bose photo

“It is blood alone that can pay the price of freedom. Give me blood and I will give you freedom!”

Subhas Chandra Bose (1897–1945) Indian nationalist leader and politician

Speech in Burma (July 1944) as quoted in The Great Speeches of Modern India (2011) by Rudrangshu Mukherjee

Robert A. Heinlein photo

“The best things in life are beyond money; their price is agony and sweat and devotion… and the price demanded for the most precious of all things in life is life itself - ultimate cost for perfect value.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Starship Troopers

Source: Starship Troopers

“Eternal vigilance, as they say, is the price of freedom. Add intellectual integrity to the cost basis.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

"The Tallest Tale", p. 315
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998)

“Tis very vain for me to boast
How small a price my Bible cost,
The day of judgment will make clear
'Twas very cheap — or very dear”

Michael Bruce (1746–1767) Scottish poet and hymnist

Inscription on a Bible,Epigram- The Works of Michael Bruce ed:with memoir and notes by Andrew B Grosart, Murray And Gibb, Printers, Edinburgh (1864).

“No man can purchase his virtue too dear, for it is the only thing whose value must ever increase with the price it has cost us.”

Charles Caleb Colton (1777–1832) British priest and writer

Vol. I; XXVI
Lacon (1820)

George W. Bush photo

“My budget includes the largest increase in defense spending in two decades — because while the price of freedom and security is high, it is never too high. Whatever it costs to defend our country, we will pay.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2002, State of the Union address (January 2002)

“Your bombs and pens like swords, held high, up to my throat. You have made the cost of blood, as cheap as ink and all I think.”

Dawud Wharnsby (1972) Canadian musician

"What Has Become"
For Whom The Troubadour Sings (2010)

Dietrich Bonhoeffer photo

“Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church. We are fighting to-day for costly grace. Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like cheapjacks’ wares. The sacraments, the forgiveness of sin, and the consolations of religion are thrown away at cut prices. Grace is represented as the Church’s inexhaustible treasury, from which she showers blessings with generous hands, without asking questions or fixing limits. Grace without price; grace without cost! The essence of grace, we suppose, is that the account has been paid in advance; and, because it has been paid, everything can be had for nothing. Since the cost was infinite, the possibilities of using and spending it are infinite. What would grace be if it were not cheap?”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

p 43
Costly Grace (1937)

Enoch Powell photo

“Independence, the freedom of a self-governing nation, is in my estimation the highest political good, for which any disadvantage, if need be, and any sacrifice are a cheap price.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech at Stockport (8 June 1973), from Simon Heffer, Like the Roman. The Life of Enoch Powell (Phoenix, 1999), p. 669.

Related topics