Quotes about liberty
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“The American death penalty exists and it withstands in America because it was a basic and constitutive element of its birth and development. Of the famous 102 «Wandering Fathers» that for first they disembarked from the «Mayflower» in that Continent not to ransack the wealths as they made Spaniards and Portuguese in Mexico and in America of the South, but to build you a new and free society, around the two bystanders they were leftovers of jail that ran away the Justice and the jails of Europe, and a bystander they were men that liberty looked for, and above all that religious. The first ones had in pocket the gun, the seconds the Bible, but in his/her Calvinist version that of the retaliation, based on the conception of a God executioner that demands the death of whom without correct motive it gives it.”

Indro Montanelli (1909–2001) Italian journalist

Corriere della Sera, 9 July 2000.
2000s - 2010s

Death, Men, God, Justice

“The Freedom Bell in Berlin is, like the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, a symbol which reminds us that freedom does not come about of itself. It must be struggled for and then defended anew every day of our lives.”

Angela Merkel (1954) Chancellor of Germany

Remarks by German Chancellor Angela Merkel before a joint session of Congress on November 04, 2009. http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,659196,00.html Dokumentation: Angela Merkels Rede im US-Kongress im Wortlaut http://www.welt.de/politik/ausland/article5079678/Angela-Merkels-Rede-im-US-Kongress-im-Wortlaut.html 2009

Freedom

“I desire not to keep my place in this government an hour longer than I may preserve England in its just rights, and may protect the people of God in such a just liberty of their consciences…”

Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658) English military and political leader

Speech dissolving the First Protectorate Parliament (22 January 1655)

God, People

“In the name of liberty you have done what liberty disowns. In the name of theoretical progress, you have opened the door to practical retrogression. In the name of appeasement and the popular will, you have prescribed a course of endless irritation. … He has won his victory; he has won the victory for which he has fought hard, and long, and adroitly; but it is not a victory, in our opinion, for the interests of this country, nor a victory for the welfare of the peoples of India, and in the crashing cheers which no doubt will hail his majority to-night, we pray there may not mingle the knell of the British Empire in the East.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1935/jun/05/government-of-india-bill#column_1920 in the House of Commons (5 June 1935) addressing the Secretary of State for India Samuel Hoare The 1930s

People, Victory, Night, Country

“One of the most clearly marked trends for over twenty years has been the decline in civil liberties.”

Charles A. Reich book The Greening of America

Source: The Greening of America (1970), Chapter XI : Revolution By Consciousness, p. 301

“Do we not all know that the cause of our casualties is the vicious intermeddling of too many of the citizens of the Northern States with the constitutional rights of the Southern States, cooperating with the discontents of the people of those states? Do we not know that the disregard of the Constitution, and of the security that it affords to the rights of States and of individuals, has been the cause of the calamity which our country is called to undergo? And now, war! war, in its direst shape — war, such as it makes the blood run cold to read of in the history of other nations and of other times — war, on a scale of a million of men in arms — war, horrid as that of barbaric ages, rages in several of the States of the Union, as its more immediate field, and casts the lurid shadow of its death and lamentation athwart the whole expanse, and into every nook and corner of our vast domain.

Nor is that all; for in those of the States which are exempt from the actual ravages of war, in which the roar of the cannon, and the rattle of the musketry, and the groans of the dying, are heard but as a faint echo of terror from other lands, even here in the loyal States, the mailed hand of military usurpation strikes down the liberties of the people, and its foot tramples on a desecrated Constitution.”

Franklin Pierce (1804–1869) American politician, 14th President of the United States (in office from 1853 to 1857)

Address to the Citizens of Concord, New Hampshire (4 July 1863).

Death, Men, War, People

“Liberty is a duty, not a right.”

Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) Duce and President of the Council of Ministers of Italy. Leader of the National Fascist Party and subsequen…

Speech on the 5th anniversary of the Combat Leagues (24 March 1924) quoted in Ezra Pound and Italian Fascism (1991) by Tim Redman, p. 114.
1920s

“Liberty of the press, liberty of speech, freedom of religion, or rather freedom from religion, and the unlimited right of private judgement have borne no good fruit, and many bad ones.”

George Fitzhugh (1806–1881) American activist

Source: Cannibals All!, or Slaves Without Masters (1857), p. 195

Religion, Freedom

“The present government of Quebec is the most financially and intellectually corrupt in the history of the province. There are the shady deals, brazenly conducted, and the broken promises, most conspicuously that of last October to retain Bill 63… The government dragged out the ancient and totally fictitious spectre of assimilation to justify Bill 22 and its rejection of the right of free choice in education, its its reduction of English education to the lowest echelon of ministerial whim, its assault upon freedom of expression through the regulation of the internal and external language of businesses and other organizations, and its creation of a fatuous new linguistic bureaucracy that will conduct a system of organized denunciation, harassment, and patronage… There is a paralytic social sickness in Quebec. In all this debate, not a single French Quebecker has objected to Bill 22 on the grounds that it was undemocratic or a reduction of liberties exercised in the province. The Quebec Civil Liberties Union, founded by Pierre Trudeau, from which one might have expected such sentiments, has instead demanded the abolition of English education, and this through the spokemanship of Jean-Louis Roy, who derives his income from McGill University…. It is clear that Mr. Bourassa… is now going to try to eliminate the Parti Quebecois by a policy of gradual scapegoatism directed against the non-French elements in the province… The English community here, still deluding itself with the illusion of Montreal as an incomparably fine place to live, is leaderless and irrelevant, except as the hostage of a dishonest government. Last month one of the most moderate ministers, Guy St-Pierre, told an English businessman's group, 'If you don't like Quebec, you can leave it.”

Conrad Black (1944) Canadian-born newspaper publisher

With sadness but with certitude, I accept that choice.
radio broadcast on 26 July 1974, the day Black left Quebec for good
The Establishment Man by Peter Newman

Education, Sadness, Guy, Exercises

“Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of the government. The history of liberty is a history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it.”

Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American politician, 28th president of the United States (in office from 1913 to 1921)

Speech at New York Press Club (9 September 1912), in The papers of Woodrow Wilson, 25:124
1910s

History

“Human rights and individual liberties, including religious freedom, will be at the heart of the new Iraq.”

Jalal Talabani (1933–2017) Iraqi politician

Michael Howard (July 25, 2005) "Freedom at heart of new Iraq, says Talabani : Suicide bomb kills 40 as president calls for calm", The Guardian.

Freedom, Heart

“Before Christianity suicide was not in any way troubling. Our lives were our own, and when we tired of them we were at liberty to end them. One might think that as Christianity has declined, this freedom would be reclaimed. Instead secular creeds have sprung up, in which each person’s life belongs to everyone else. To hand back the gift of life because it does not please is still condemned as a kind of blasphemy, though the offended deity is now humanity instead of God.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

Sweet Morality (p. 231-2)
The Immortalization Commission: The Strange Quest to Cheat Death (2011)

Life, God, Way, Thinking

“Liberty and equality are not only destructive to the morals, but to the happiness of society.”

George Fitzhugh (1806–1881) American activist

Source: Sociology For The South: Or The Failure Of A Free Society (1854), p. 236

Happiness

“Even while acknowledging that Washington is broken and that Americans have lost faith and trust in government, all President Obama could offer was more interference and government mandates as solutions to the problems government itself has created. His latest gem: “smart regulations to prevent irresponsible behavior.” Government is not just broken. It is running out of control, destroying our lives, our liberty, our security and our livelihood.”

R. Lee Wrights (1958–2017) American gubernatorial candidate

2012, " The State of the Union is Still a State of War http://www.libertyforall.net/?p=7189"

Faith, Behavior, Problem

“What America needs is to hold to its ancient and well-charted course. Our country was conceived in the theory of local self-government. It has been dedicated by long practice to that wise and beneficent policy. It is the foundation principle of our system of liberty. It makes the largest promise to the freedom and development of the individual. Its preservation is worth all the effort and all the sacrifice that it may cost.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, The Reign of Law (1925)

Effort, Freedom, Country

“Scotland and Ireland were virtually disfranchised; Edinburgh and Glasgow, the two largest cities of Scotland, had each a constituency of only thirty-three members. A majority of the members of the House of Commons were elected by six thousand voters. This state of affairs afforded ready opportunities for the moneyed aristocracy to buy seats in Parliament, by the purchase of a few voters in rotten boroughs; and also enabled the ministry to secure a servile majority in the Commons. The corruption resulting from these conditions, as exhibited in the latter half of the eighteenth century, can hardly be realized by the present generation. They afford, however, an illustration of the universal truth, that a government which does not draw its inspiration of liberty, justice, and morality from the people will soon become both tyrannical and corrupt.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

1860s, Oration at Ravenna, Ohio (1865)

Money, People, Truth, Justice

“American doesn’t need any more professional political punks in D. C., unless you believe sticking a red hot crowbar in your eye is an excellent treatment for cataracts. It’s professional political punks who have created the pus-filled infected wound of fundamental transformation, not Donald Trump. They are the ones calling for a bigger bureaucratic shovel for the hole they have already dug, not Donald Trump. They are the ones who have lied to Americans or intentionally hidden the truth from us, not Donald Trump. It’s professional politicians who are the enemy of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, not Donald Trump.”

Ted Nugent (1948) American rock musician

Give Trump the Medal of Freedom (August 7, 2015)

Life, Truth, Happiness

“VII. Let me call your attention to the recent tragedy in New Orleans, whereof the facts are obtained entirely through Pro-Slavery channels. A considerable body of resolute, able-bodied men, held in Slavery by two Rebel sugar-planters in defiance of the Confiscation Act which you have approved, left plantations thirty miles distant and made their way to the great mart of the South-West, which they knew to be the indisputed possession of the Union forces. They made their way safely and quietly through thirty miles of Rebel territory, expecting to find freedom under the protection of our flag. Whether they had or had not heard of the passage of the Confiscation Act, they reasoned logically that we could not kill them for deserting the service of their lifelong oppressors, who had through treason become our implacable enemies. They came to us for liberty and protection, for which they were willing render their best service: they met with hostility, captivity, and murder. The barking of the base curs of Slavery in this quarter deceives no one--not even themselves. They say, indeed, that the negroes had no right to appear in New Orleans armed (with their implements of daily labor in the cane-field); but no one doubts that they would gladly have laid these down if assured that they should be free. They were set upon and maimed, captured and killed, because they sought the benefit of that act of Congress which they may not specifically have heard of, but which was none the less the law of the land which they had a clear right to the benefit of--which it was somebody's duty to publish far and wide, in order that so many as possible should be impelled to desist from serving Rebels and the Rebellion and come over to the side of the Union, They sought their liberty in strict accordance with the law of the land--they were butchered or re-enslaved for so doing by the help of Union soldiers enlisted to fight against slaveholding Treason. It was somebody's fault that they were so murdered--if others shall hereafter stuffer in like manner, in default of explicit and public directions to your generals that they are to recognize and obey the Confiscation Act, the world will lay the blame on you. Whether you will choose to hear it through future History and 'at the bar of God, I will not judge. I can only hope.”

Horace Greeley (1811–1872) American politician and publisher

1860s, The Prayer of the Twenty Millions (1862)

Men, God, Hostility, World

“Law, Legislation and Liberty was written and published during a different period from The Constitution of Liberty. The earlier work was a product of the late 1950s—a generally optimistic and socially cohesive time when Hayek himself was in his late fifties, at the University of Chicago. Law, Legislation and Liberty, on the other hand, was a product of the 1960s and 1970s, a far more turbulent time, as he became an old man, was somewhat intellectually isolated in Freiburg and Salzburg, and experienced depression. That the later work has a different feel from the former is hardly to be unexpected. The relationship between the two works might be considered to be something like that between Plato’s Republic, a product of his prime, and Plato’s Laws, a product of his old age.”

Alan O. Ebenstein (1959) American political scientist, educator and author

Hayek's Journey: The Mind of Friedrich Hayek (2003)

Age, Law, Feeling, Universe

“So hopeless is the world without;
The world within I doubly prize;
Thy world, where guile, and hate, and doubt,
And cold suspicion never rise;
Where thou, and I, and Liberty,
Have undisputed sovereignty.”

Emily Brontë (1818–1848) English novelist and poet

To Imagination (1846)

Hate, World

“Several decisions of this Court make clear that freedom of personal choice in matters of marriage and family life is one of the liberties protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.... That right necessarily includes the right of a woman to decide whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.”

Potter Stewart (1915–1985) American judge

Concurring, Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 169-170 (1973).

Life, Marriage, Family, Decision

“If there is one law for the Government and another for it's subjects, one for noble and another for commoner, one for rich and another for poor, the law does not guarantee liberty for all.”

Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse (1864–1929) British sociologist

Source: Liberalism (1911), Chapter II, The Elements of Liberalism, p. 17.

Law

“The ideas of liberty and equality have been an irresistible force in motivating leaders like Patrick Henry, Susan B. Anthony, and Abraham Lincoln, schoolteachers like Nathan Hale and Booker T. Washington, the Philippine Scouts who fought at Bataan, and the soldiers who scaled the bluff at Omaha Beach. If those ideas are worth fighting for -- and our history demonstrates that they are -- it cannot be true that the flag that uniquely symbolizes their power is not itself worthy of protection from unnecessary desecration.”

John Paul Stevens (1920–2019) Former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Dissenting, Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397 (1989).

History, Motivation, Idea, Fight

“The end of the government being the good of mankind points out its great duties: it is above all things to provide for the security, the quiet, the happy enjoyment of life, liberty, and property.”

James Otis Jr. (1725–1783) Lawyer in colonial Massachusetts

Argument Against the Writs of Assistance (1761)

Life, Happiness

“They say women are more constant than men : it is the constancy of circumstance; the enterprise, the exertion required of men continually force them out of themselves, and that which was at first necessity soon becomes habit — whereas the constant round of employments in which a woman is engaged requires no fatigue of mind or body; the needle is, generally speaking, both her occupation and amusement, and this kind of work leaves the ideas full play; hence the imagination is left at liberty to dwell upon one subject, and hence habit, which is an advantage on the one side, becomes to her an additional rivet.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Other Gift Books

Women, Men, Imagination, Idea

“Every time the Secretary of Defense tries to get a hand on his many intelligence programs, we hear warnings about the dire consequences to liberty. When you look behind those warnings, what you really see is the CIA trying to preserve its perks.”

Mark Riebling (1963) American writer

Rumsfeld’s New Spy Unit (2002)

Intelligence, Time

“One is immediately struck with the obstinacy and rigid consistency with which Lenin and his comrades stuck to this slogan, a slogan which is in sharp contradiction to their otherwise outspoken centralism in politics as well as to the attitude they have assumed towards other democratic principles. Wile they showed a quite cool contempt for the Constituent Assembly, universal suffrage, freedom of press and assemblage, in short for the whole apparatus of basic democratic liberties of the people which, taken all together, constituted the "right of self-determination" inside Russia, they treated the right of self-determination of peoples as a jewel of democratic policy for the sake of which all practical considerations of real criticism had to be stilled.”

Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919) Polish Marxist theorist, socialist philosopher, and revolutionary

Source: The Russian Revolution (1918), Chapter Three, "Nationalities Question"

People, Freedom, Universe

“Well, Aimee Semple McPherson has written a book. And were you to call it a little peach, you would not be so much as scratching its surface. It is the story of her life, and it is called In the Service of the King, which title is perhaps a bit dangerously suggestive of a romantic novel. It may be that this autobiography is set down in sincerity, frankness and simple effort. It may be, too, that the Statue of Liberty is situated in Lake Ontario.”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

"Our Lady of the Loudspeaker" in The New Yorker (25 February 1928)

Life, Books, Effort, Sincerity

“I saw you then not only as the symbol of your people and its greatness, but as the voice of the invincible and uncompromising conscience of the human race at a time of danger to the dignity of man, created in the image of God. It was not only the liberties and the honor of your own people that you saved.”

David Ben-Gurion (1886–1973) Israeli politician, Zionist leader, prime minister of Israel

Letter to Winston Churchill on his leadership during World War II (1961), as quoted in "Churchill and the Jewish state" by Colin Shindle in The Jerusalem Post (27 December 2007) http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1198517221673&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

God, People, Time

“During the summer of 1765 the happy phrase of Isaac Barré—"these sons of liberty"—was everywhere repeated, and was put on as a kind of protective coloring by strong patriots, who henceforth thought of themselves as Sons of Liberty and no traitors at all. Rather were they traitors who would in any way justify an act of tyranny; most of all those so-called Americans, accepting the office of Stamp Master, who cunningly aspired to make a farthing profit out of the hateful business of enslaving their own countrymen.”

Carl L. Becker (1873–1945) American historian

The Eve of the Revolution (1918)

Hate, Color, Way, Business

“America will not die. As the time demands them, great men will appear, and by their combined efforts render liberty and happiness more secure. The people will be ready and answer in every emergency that may arise.”

Charles E. Nash (1844–1913) American politician

As quoted in Congressional Record https://web.archive.org/web/20160528155427/http://history.house.gov/People/Detail/18846, House, 44th Cong., 1st sess. (7 June 1876): p. 3,669 Speech to the U.S. House of Representatives (1876)

Men, People, Effort, Appearance

“A day, an hour, of virtuous liberty
Is worth a whole eternity in bondage.”

Joseph Addison book Cato

Act II, scene i.
Cato, A Tragedy (1713)

“We're going to protect Christianity, and I can say that. I don't have to be politically correct. We're going to protect it. I hear this is a major theme right here, but two Corinthians, 3:17, that's the whole ball game. "Where the Spirit of the Lord", right, "where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty", and here there is Liberty College, but Liberty University, but it is so true. You know, when you think -- and that's really -- is that the one? Is that the one you like? I think that's the one you like because I loved it, and it's so representative of what's taken place. But we are going to protect Christianity. And if you look what's going on throughout the world, you look at Syria where if you're Christian, they're chopping off heads. You look at the different places, and Christianity, it's under siege.”

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

2010s, 2016, January, Speech at Liberty University (18 January 2016)

Love, World, Game, Thinking

“Everybody in Palma knew that my son was a lieutenant in the Phalange, and I was often seen at mass. For months I had been friendly with insurgent leaders who were feared by all the suspects. And yet people I hardly knew spoke freely to me, when the slightest indiscretion on my part would have cost their liberty, or their lives. I'll tell you why it was. It was because it is still known in the world that a Frenchman doesn't let himself become a policeman's pawn - that's why. Because a Frenchman is a free man.”

Georges Bernanos book Les grands cimetières sous la lune

Source: Les grands cimetieres sous la lune (A Diary of My Times) 1938, p.109

People, World, Fear, Parting

“But freedom without law is freedom only for the strong at the expense of the weak. Freedom without law is therefore no freedom, but rather anarchy or tyranny. Law is the bond of all civil society. We are not asking a favour of a man when we ask him to obey the law. Obedience of the rule of law is necessary for the continuance of liberty itself. Doubtless you will point out that laws have not always been just—indeed they have been very unjust. In South Africa that certainly has been the case. Thankfully, that is now being remedied. And alongside that, democracy has yet to be achieved.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech in South Africa (20 May 1991) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/108268 Post-Prime Ministerial

Law, Democracy, Freedom, Strong

“Hypothetical liberty is allowed to everyone who is not a prisoner and in chains”

David Hume book An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

§ 8.23
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748)

“Is there any death here in our camp? Yes, yes! Three hundred and fifty thousand soldiers, the noblest band that ever trod the earth, died to make this camp a camp of glory and of liberty forever. But there are no dead issues here. There are no dead ideas here. Hang out our banner from under the blue sky this night, until it shall sweep the green turf under your feet. It hangs over our camp. Read away up under the stars the inscription we have written on it, lo these twenty-five years.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

1870s, An Appeal to Young Men (1879)

Death, Star, Idea, Reading

“This approach emphasizes what was once familiar enough to all Americans—and what we are now in danger of forgetting—that government derives its power from men; that rights of life and liberty are inalienable; that these rights are not something that government graciously confers upon men, but things no government can take away from men.”

Henry Steele Commager (1902–1998) American historian

Source: Freedom, Loyalty, Dissent (1954), p. 5

Life, Men, Forgetting

“The abhorrence of society to the use of involuntary confessions does not turn alone on their inherent untrustworthiness. It also turns on the deep-rooted feeling that the police must obey the law while enforcing the law; that, in the end, life and liberty can be as much endangered from illegal methods used to convict those thought to be criminals as from the actual criminals themselves.”

Earl Warren (1891–1974) United States federal judge

Writing for the court, Spano v. New York 360 U.S. 321 (1959)
1950s

Life, Law, Feeling

“Under the rule of free competition, war between the producers of security entirely loses its justification. Why would they make war? To conquer consumers? But the consumers would not allow themselves to be conquered. They would be careful not to allow themselves to be protected by men who would unscrupulously attack the persons and property of their rivals. If some audacious conqueror tried to become dictator, they would immediately call to their aid all the free consumers menaced by this aggression, and they would treat him as he deserved. Just as war is the natural consequence of monopoly, peace is the natural consequence of liberty.”

Gustave de Molinari (1819–1912) Belgian political economist and classical liberal theorist

Source: The Production of Security (1849), p. 34-35

Men, War, Peace, Nature

“Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for an hermitage;
If I have freedom in my love,
And in my soul am free,
Angels alone that soar above
Enjoy such liberty.”

Richard Lovelace (1617–1658) English writer and poet

To Althea: From Prison, st. 4.
Lucasta (1649)

Love, Angels, Soul, Freedom

“Witness the tragic condition of Russia. The methods of State centralization have paralysed individual initiative and effort; the tyranny of the dictatorship has cowed the people into slavish submission and all but extinguished the fires of liberty; organized terrorism has depraved and brutalized the masses and stifled every idealistic aspiration; institutionalized murder has cheapened human life, and all sense of the dignity of man and the value of life has been eliminated; coercion at every step has made effort bitter, labour a punishment, has turned the whole of existence into a scheme of mutual deceit, and has revived the lowest and most brutal instincts of man. A sorry heritage to begin a new life of freedom and brotherhood.”

Emma Goldman book My Disillusionment in Russia

My Disillusionment in Russia (1923)

Life, People, Sense, Effort

“Sin must be called by its name. Communism is one of the most dangerous sins in the world today. Every gospel that does not denounce it is not the pure gospel. The Underground Church denounces it, risking liberty and life. The less have we to be silent in the West.”

Richard Wurmbrand (1909–2001) Romanian Christian minister of Jewish descent

Source: Tortured For Christ (1967), p. 75.

Life, World, Communication

“I know that any discussion of the relation of this poem to its historical materials is, in one perspective, irrelevant to its value; and it could be totally accurate as history and still not worth a dime as a poem. I am trying to write a poem, not a history, and therefore have no compunction about tampering with non-essential facts. But poetry is more than fantasy and is committed to the obligation of trying to say something, however obliquely, about the human condition. Therefore, a poem dealing with history is no more at liberty to violate what the writer takes to be the spirit of his history than it is at liberty to violate what he takes to be the nature of the human heart. What he takes those things to be is, of course, his ultimate gamble.”

Robert Penn Warren (1905–1989) American poet, novelist, and literary critic

Foreword, Brother to Dragons: A Tale in Verse and Voices — A New Version (1979)

History, Nature, Heart

“The good of the people must be the great purpose of government. By the laws of nature and of reason, the governors are invested with power to that end. And the greatest good of the people is liberty. It is to the state what health is to the individual.”

Denis Diderot (1713–1784) French Enlightenment philosopher and encyclopædist

Article on Government
L'Encyclopédie (1751-1766)

People, Health, Law, Nature

“II. We think you are strangely and disastrously remiss in the discharge of your official and imperative duty with regard to the emancipating provisions of the new Confiscation Act. Those provisions were designed to fight Slavery with Liberty. They prescribe that men loyal to the Union, and willing to shed their blood in her behalf, shall no longer be held, with the Nations consent, in bondage to persistent, malignant traitors, who for twenty years have been plotting and for sixteen months have been fighting to divide and destroy our country. Why these traitors should be treated with tenderness by you, to the prejudice of the dearest rights of loyal men, We cannot conceive.”

Horace Greeley (1811–1872) American politician and publisher

1860s, The Prayer of the Twenty Millions (1862)

Men, Thinking, Fight, Country

“Liberty … is one of the most valuable blessings that Heaven has bestowed upon mankind.”

Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright

Source: Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Part II (1615), Book III, Ch. 58.

“You cannot extend the mastery of government over the daily life of a people without somewhere making it master of people's souls and thoughts.… Every step in that direction poisons the very roots of liberalism. It poisons political equality, free speech, free press, and equality of opportunity. It is the road not to more liberty but to less liberty.”

Herbert Hoover (1874–1964) 31st President of the United States of America

Campaign speech at Madison Square Garden (31 October 1932)

Life, People, Soul

“When you couple this militarization of law enforcement with an erosion of civil liberties and due process that allows the police to become judge and jury—national security letters, no-knock searches, broad general warrants, pre-conviction forfeiture—we begin to have a very serious problem on our hands.Given these developments, it is almost impossible for many Americans not to feel like their government is targeting them. Given the racial disparities in our criminal justice system, it is impossible for African-Americans not to feel like their government is particularly targeting them.”

Rand Paul (1963) American politician, ophthalmologist, and United States Senator from Kentucky

2010s

Justice, Law, Feeling, Search

“Aegistheus, the kings have another secret…. Once liberty has exploded in the soul of a man, the Gods can do nothing against that man. It is a matter for men to handle amongst themselves, and it is up to other men — and to them alone — to let him flee or to destroy him.”

Jean Paul Sartre The Flies

Jupiter, Act 2
The Flies (1943)

Men, God, Secret, Soul

“I say, embrace fear as a friend. It is nature's gift to us. It is the best weapon for liberty. We do not give our permission to be enslaved by acknowledging its presence. Instead, it permits us to escape into the forest if we must. But it does not prevent the boy from rising off the ground one more time to defeat the bully. Fear is presented to us as a signal of danger. It permits us to escape or to fight with power beyond our ability.”

Gerry Spence (1929) American lawyer

Source: Give Me Liberty! (1998), Ch. 14 : The Magical Weapon : Withholding Permission to Be Defeated, p. 163

Fear, Boy, Nature, Time

“To say that I did not support the candidacy of Mr. Trump is the understatement of the year. I fiercely opposed it… I have criticized as unnecessary his policy on pausing immigration from certain countries, and I have criticized as weak to the point of meaningless his executive order on religious freedom. Indeed, I characterized it as a betrayal of his promise to reverse Obama era anti-religious-liberty policies. Donald Trump is not, and usually doesn't pretend to be, a man of strict or high principles… As a pragmatist, he doesn't have a governing philosophy — he's neither a conservative nor a liberal. On one day he'll give a speech to some evangelical pastors that makes him sound like a religious conservative, but the next day he'll lavishly praise Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who is waging an all-out war on those who stand up for traditional moral values in Canada.”

Robert P. George (1955) American legal scholar

2017, Interview with Matthew Bunson (2017)

War, Support, Freedom, Betrayal

“Life without Liberty is like a body without spirit. Liberty without thought is like a disturbed spirit … Life, liberty, and thought — three persons in one substance, eternal, never-ending, and unceasing.”

Khalil Gibran (1883–1931) Lebanese artist, poet, and writer

The Vision
The Vision: Reflections on the Way of the Soul (1994)

Life, Personality

“For decades, the circle of liberty and security and development has been expanding in our world. This progress has brought unity to Europe, self-government to Latin America and Asia, and new hope to Africa. Now we have the historic chance to widen the circle even further, to fight radicalism and terror with justice and dignity, to achieve a true peace, founded on human freedom.”

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

2000s, 2004, Speech to United Nations General Assembly (September 2004)

World, Peace, Justice, Hope

“The government in a revolution is the despotism of liberty against tyranny.”

Maximilien Robespierre (1758–1794) French revolutionary lawyer and politician

Original: (fr) Le gouvernement de la révolution est le despotisme de la liberté contre la tyrannie. Source: Speech to the National Convention http://www.royet.org/nea1789-1794/archives/discours/robespierre_principes_morale_politique_05_02_94.htm (5 February 1794)

“The time to stop those who would loosen and weaken the fabric of our government is before they begin. The time for Americans to range themselves firmly, squarely and uncompromisingly behind American ideals is now. The great body of our people have an abiding faith in their own country. The time has come when they should supplement that faith with action. The question is whether America will allow itself to be degraded into a communistic and socialistic state, or whether it will remain American. Those who want to continue to enjoy the high estate of American citizenship will resist all attempts to encroach upon their liberties by encroachment upon the power of the courts.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Ordered Liberty and World Peace (1924)

People, Faith, Question, Time

“Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty.”

Henry Martyn Robert (1837–1923) United States Army general and Chief of Engineers

Robert's Rules of Order Revised, 1915, preface http://www.paulmcclintock.com/quotes.htm

Law

“The art is French, but the ideas may have come from anywhere, like the game of chess which the pilgrims or crusaders brought home from Syria. In the oriental game, the King was followed step by step by a Minister whose functions were personal. The crusaders freed the piece from control; gave it liberty to move up or down or diagonally, forwards and backwards; made it the most arbitrary and formidable champion on the board, while the King and the Knight were the most restricted in movement; and this piece they named Queen and called the Virgin.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

An early French name for the chesspiece known as the Queen was Fierge or Vierge, meaning "Virgin".
Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)

Art, Home, Game, Idea

“In fact, the Church never admitted free-will, or used the word when it could be avoided. In Latin, the term used was liberum arbitrium,— free choice,— and in French to this day it remains in strictness libre arbitre still. From Saint Augustine downwards the Church was never so unscientific as to admit of liberty beyond the faculty of choosing between paths, some leading through the Church and some not, but all leading to the next world.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)

World

“suppose the kind-hearted man decided to ask the mayor and city council to force the man with two cars to give one to his pedestrian neighbor. Does that make it any more legitimate? Obviously, this makes it even worse because if the mayor and city council do it in the name of the law, the man who has lost his car has not only lost the rights to his property, but (since it is the "law") he has lost all right to appeal for help in protecting his property. The American Founders recognized that the moment the government is authorized to start leveling the material possessions of the rich in order to have an "equal distribution of goods," the government thereafter has the power to deprive any of the people of their "equal" rights to enjoy their lives, liberties, and property.”

W. Cleon Skousen (1913–2006) ex FBI agent, conservative United States author and faith-based political theorist

The 5,000 Year Leap (1981)

People, Law, Cars, Help

“Why, the very first act of the State, the compulsory assessment and collection of taxes, is itself an aggression, a violation of equal liberty, and, as such, initiates every subsequent act, even those acts which would be purely defensive if paid out of a treasury filled by voluntary contributions. How is it possible to sanction, under the law of equal liberty, the confiscation of a man's earnings to pay for protection which he has not sought and does not desire? And, if this is an outrage, what name shall we give to such confiscation when the victim is given, instead of bread, a stone, instead of protection, oppression? To force a man to pay for the violation of his own liberty is indeed an addition of insult to injury. But that is exactly what the State is doing.”

Benjamin Ricketson Tucker (1854–1939) American journalist and anarchist

The Relation of the State to the Invididual (1890)

Law

“Mr. Khan, paid the ultimate sacrifice in his family, didn't he. And what has he heard from Donald Trump? Nothing but insults, degrading comments about Muslims, a total misunderstanding of what made our country great, religious freedom, religious liberty. It's enshrined in our Constitution, as Mr. Khan knows, because he's actually read it.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

At a church in Cleveland. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/07/31/khizr-khan-calls-trump-a-black-soul-says-mcconnell-ryan-have-moral-obligation-to-repudiate-him/ The Washington Post (July 31, 2016) Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016)

Family, Freedom, Reading, Country

“The Truth Apparent, apparent to everyone's eyes who are not blinded by dogmatism, is that men are perhaps weary of liberty. They have a surfeit of it. Liberty is no longer the virgin, chaste and severe, to be fought for … we have buried the putrid corpse of liberty … the Italian people are a race of sheep.”

Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) Duce and President of the Council of Ministers of Italy. Leader of the National Fascist Party and subsequen…

Written statement (1934), quoted in Fascism and Democracy in the Human Mind : A Bridge Between Mind and Society (2006) by Israel W. Charny, p. 23 Variant translation: The truth is that men are tired of liberty. Attributed to Mussolini in Crash Gordon and the Mysteries of Kingsburg (2007) by Derek Swannson, p. 507; similar remarks are also attributed to Adolf Hitler A similar statement appears in "Forza e Consenso" Gerarchia magazine (March 1923), excerpted in Cos'è il fascismo https://www.liberliber.it/online/autori/autori-m/benito-mussolini/cose-il-fascismo/ (1983) 1930s

Men, People, Truth

“George Washington's long struggle for freedom has also inspired generations of Americans to stand for freedom in their own time. Today, we're fighting a new war to defend our liberty and our people and our way of life. And as we work to advance the cause of freedom around the world, we remember that the father of our country believed that the freedoms we secured in our revolution were not meant for Americans alone. He once wrote, "My best wishes are irresistibly excited whensoever in any country I see an oppressed nation unfurl the banners of freedom." President Washington believed that the success of our democracy would also depend on the virtue of our citizens. In his farewell address to the American people, he said, "Morality is a necessary spring of popular government." Over the centuries, America has succeeded because we have always tried to maintain the decency and the honor of our first President. His example guided us in his time; it guides us in our time, and it will guide us for all time.”

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

President Bush Visits Mount Vernon, Honors President Washington's 275th Birthday on President's Day http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2007/02/20070219.html (February 19, 2007) 2000s, 2007

Life, War, People, World

“A social aggregate which has chosen the fatal path of organic evolution must succumb to the same law of organic development to which all organisms are subject, namely greater and greater organization, increase of structure, greater differentiation, decrease of critical, personal, consciousness, loss of individual liberty, increased activity of the subconscious forces, falling into a state of somnambulism which can only be redeemed by revolution or by death.”

Boris Sidis The Source and Aim of Human Progress

The Source and Aim of Human Progress (1919)

Death, Law, Loss, Personality

“The United States State Department will tell you that American aid is given to preserve the things for which we stand, to promote the basic freedoms of mankind, not necessarily to promote individual governments. That is our justification for sending help to a Greek government that, for a time at least, could by no means be called democratic. In the case of Britain, the nation is marching on the road towards Socialism. But the ingrained liberty and freedom of the individual has been proved by men like Churchill who still speak out against the government and by the men like the transport workers and miners who tell the government which they voted for to go to blazes. And between these fires, the British government--no matter what its political shadings--has the job of getting the country back on its feet.”

Bill Downs (1914–1978) American journalist

The British Crisis (1948)

Men, Freedom, Time, Help

“The liberty of the individual to do as he pleases, even in innocent matters, is not absolute. It must frequently yield to the common good.”

George Sutherland (1862–1942) Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, United States Senator, member of the United States House of Re…

Adkins v. Children's Hospital, 261 U.S. 560 (1923)

“This liberalism says, in other words, that what makes the just society just is not the telos or purpose or end at which it aims, but precisely its refusal to choose in advance among competing purposes and ends. In its constitution and its laws, the just society seeks to provide a framework within which its citizens can pursue their own values and ends, consistent with a similar liberty for others”

Michael J. Sandel (1953) American political philosopher

The Procedural Republic and the Unencumbered Self, 1984

Law

“When we say 'This flag (Muslim League's flag) is the flag of Islam' they think we are introducing religion into politics - a fact of which we are proud. Islam gives us a complete code. It is not only religion but it contains laws, philosophy and politics. In fact, it contains everything that matters to a man from morning to night. When we talk of Islam we take it as all embracing word. We do not mean any ill. The foundation of our Islamic code is that we stand for liberty, equality and fraternity.”

Muhammad Ali Jinnah (1876–1948) Founder and 1st Governor General of Pakistan

Address to the Gaya Muslim League Conference in January 1938

Religion, Law, Thinking, Night

“The inhabitants of the ceded territory shall be incorporated in the Union of the United States, and admitted as soon as possible, according to the principles of the Federal constitution, to the enjoyment of all the rights, advantages, and immunities, of citizens of the United States; and, in the mean time, they shall be maintained and protected in the free enjoyment of their liberty, property, and the religion which they profess.”

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

Louisiana Treaty of Cession, Art. III (30 April 1803)
1800s, First Presidential Administration (1801–1805)

Religion, Time

“The Declaration of Independence proclaimed to a world, organized politically and spiritually around the concept of the inequality of man, that the dignity of human personality was inherent in man as a living being. The Emancipation Proclamation was the offspring of the Declaration of Independence. It was a constructive use of the force of law to uproot a social order which sought to separate liberty from a segment of humanity.”

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

1960s, Emancipation Proclamation Centennial Address (1962)

World, Law, Personality

“Behold you, then, my dear friend, at the head of a great army, establishing the liberties of your country against a foreign enemy. May heaven favor your cause, and make you the channel through which it may pour its favors. While you are exterminating the monster aristocracy, and pulling out the teeth and fangs of its associate, monarchy, a contrary tendency is discovered in some here. A sect has shown itself among us, who declare they espoused our new Constitution, not as a good and sufficient thing in itself, but only as a step to an English constitution, the only thing good and sufficient in itself, in their eye. It is happy for us that these are preachers without followers, and that our people are firm and constant in their republican purity. You will wonder to be told that it is from the eastward chiefly that these champions for a king, lords and commons come. They get some important associates from New York, and are puffed up by a tribe of agitators which have been hatched in a bed of corruption made up after the model of their beloved England. Too many of these stock-jobbers and king-jobbers have come into our legislature, or rather too many of our legislature have become stock-jobbers and king-jobbers. However, the voice of the people is beginning to make itself heard, and will probably cleanse their seats at the ensuing election.”

James Madison (1751–1836) 4th president of the United States (1809 to 1817)

Letter to Gilbert du Motier, marquis de Lafayette (16 June 1792)
1790s

People, Country, Happiness

“One of the most melancholy consequences of this habit of deferring to other nations, and to other systems, is the fact that it causes us to undervalue the high blessings we so peculiarly enjoy; to render us ungrateful towards God, and to make us unjust to our fellow men, by throwing obstacles in their progress towards liberty.”

James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) American author

A Letter to His Countrymen (1834)

Men, God

“Properly understood, then, the desire to act justly derives in part from the desire to express most fully what we are or can be, namely free and equal rational beings with the liberty to choose.”

John Rawls book A Theory of Justice

Source: A Theory of Justice (1971; 1975; 1999), Chapter IV, Section 40, p. 256

Parting

“The Chinese believe that when there are too many policemen, there can be no individual liberty, when there are too many lawyers, there can be no justice, and when there are too many soldiers, there can be no peace.”

Lin Yutang (1895–1976) Chinese writer

Between Tears And Laughter (1943), p. 71. Variant: "When there are too many policemen, there can be no liberty. When there are too many soldiers, there can be no peace. When there are too many lawyers, there can be no justice.", as quoted in The World's Funniest Laws (2005) by James Alexander, ISBN 1905102100, p. 6.

Peace, Justice

“But from the beginning, this nation trusted in God, not man. Religious liberty is the first freedom in our Constitution. And whether the cause is justice for the persecuted, compassion for the needy and the sick, or mercy for the child waiting to be born, there is no greater force for good in the nation than Christian conscience in action.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

Liberty University, Lynchburg, VA, , quoted in [2012-05-13, In LU Speech, Romney Boldly Touts Faith, and Traditional American Values, Jason, Johnson, Bearing Drift, http://bearingdrift.com/2012/05/13/in-lu-speech-romney-boldly-touts-faith-and-traditional-american-values/, 2012-05-15]
2012

God, Justice, Freedom, Waiting

“By the word "liberty" they meant liberty for property, not liberty for persons.”

Lewis H. Lapham (1935) American journalist

Source: Money And Class In America (1989), Chapter 2, Protocols of Wealth, p. 33

Personality

“The political Liberty of a Citizen is the Peace of Mind arising from the Consciousness, that every Individual enjoys his peculiar Safety; and in order that the People might attain this Liberty, the Laws ought to be so framed, that no one Citizen should stand in Fear of another; but that all of them should stand in Fear of the same Laws….”

Catherine the Great (1729–1796) Empress of Russia

Proposals for a New Law Code (1768)

People, Fear, Peace, Law

“Either communistic production is superior to free production, or it is not.If it is, then it must be for all things, not just for security.If not, progress requires that it be replaced by free production.Complete communism or complete liberty: that is the alternative!”

Gustave de Molinari (1819–1912) Belgian political economist and classical liberal theorist

Source: The Production of Security (1849), p. 40

Communication

“We have come here today to honor the memory of Lafayette, because long ago he came to this country as a private citizen at his own expense and joined us in fighting for the maintenance and extension of our institutions. It was not so much to acquire new rights, as to maintain old rights, that the men of that day put their fortunes to the hazard of war. They were resisting usurpations; they were combating unlawful tyrannies. No doubt they wanted to be Americans, but they wanted most of all to be free. They believed in individual liberty, safeguarded by constitutional guarantees. This principle to them was dearer than life itself. What they fought to preserve and extend, we ought to be ready to fight to maintain.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Ordered Liberty and World Peace (1924)

Life, Men, War, Memory

“Entitle us to the Liberty of proving the Truth of the Papers, which in the Information are called false, malicious, seditious and scandalous.”

John Peter Zenger (1697–1746) American printer

"Case and Tryal of John Peter Zenger", pg. 17

Truth, Falseness

“That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot by any compact deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.”

George Mason (1725–1792) American delegate from Virginia to the U.S. Constitutional Convention

Article 1
Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776)

Life, Men, Nature, Happiness

“A mob of black demonstrators, led by the "Rev." Al Sharpton, occupied and closed the Statue of Liberty recently, demanding that New York be renamed Martin Luther King City 'to reclaim it for our people.'
Hmmm. I hate to agree with the Rev. Al, but maybe a name change is in order. Welfaria? Zooville? Rapetown? Dirtburg? Lazyopolis?
But Al, the Statue of Liberty? Next time, hold that demonstration at a food stamp bureau or a crack house.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Disputed, Newsletters, Ron Paul Political Report

Hate, People, Food, Change

“I sincerely believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a money aristocracy that has set the government at defiance. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs.”

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

The earliest known appearance of this statement is from 1895 (Joshua Douglass, "Bimetallism and Currency", American Magazine of Civics, 7:256). It is apparently a combination of paraphrases or approximate quotations from three separate letters of Jefferson (longer excerpts in sourced section):
I sincerely believe, with you, that banking institutions are more dangerous than standing armies...
Letter to John Taylor (1816)
The bank mania...is raising up a moneyed aristocracy in our country which has already set the government at defiance...
Letter to Josephus B. Stuart (1817)
Bank paper must be suppressed, and the circulating medium must be restored to the nation to whom it belongs.
Letter to John W. Eppes (1813)
Misattributed

Money, People, Sincerity

“Whenever someone must buy a license or pay a fee to exercise a right, then it is something less than a right. It is in fact a mere privilege, subject to the whim of petty bureaucrats. Fundamental rights are not abstract tokens that are given or sold by other men. They are in fact primary liberties bestowed upon us by God, our maker. Rights are not substantially secured by asking, "Mother may I?" of any government agency. Rights are more properly demanded or boldly seized and then conspicuously exercised regularly. This secures the liberties that have legitimately belonged to us since birth. If need be, lost rights can and must be restored through proscriptive use. If you live in a land where your rights have been marginalized into privileges, then it is either time to change your government, or to change your address. Much like a muscle that atrophies with disuse, any right that goes unexercised for many years devolves into a privilege, and eventually can even be redefined as a crime.”

James Wesley Rawles (1960) Survivalist-fiction author and blogger

http://www.survivalblog.com/2012/11/notes-from-jwr-551.html
How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It, Plume, New York (2009)

Men, God, Exercises, Birth

“In preparing this record, penned by my own hand, of my life and my participation in our great struggles for national existence, human liberty and political equality, I make no pretence to literary merit. The motive that induces me is not authorship. The import of the subject matter of my narrative is my only claim to attention. The statements of facts are a matter of documentary evidence. The comments are my own and show how I saw the matters treated of, whether others saw them in the same light or not. Respectfully dedicating this work to the millions of armed men and devoted women who participated in the great wars of this country, I leave it as a heritage to my wife and son.”

Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964) U.S. Army general of the army, field marshal of the Army of the Philippines

Source: Reminiscences (1964), p. vi

Life, Women, Men, War

“I was not yet inclined to live the life of a celibate.... I have taken a young wife of honest but middle-class family although everyone tried to persuade me to make a court marriage. But I feared pride, that inherent vice of the nobility, particularly in that sex, and that is why I chose one who would not blush to see me take my brushes in hand. And to tell the truth it would have been hard for me to exchange the priceless treasure of liberty for the embraces of an old woman.”

Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) Flemish painter

In a letter to his friend Peiresc, c. 1635; as quoted in Rubens and the Roman Circle, Huemer, p. 44
his second wife was Helena Fourment, the daughter of a silk merchant, Daniel Fourment; when Rubens married her in 1630 she was just
1625 - 1640

Life, Marriage, Truth, Fear

“These Thoughts, my dear Friend, are many of them crude and hasty, and if I were merely ambitious of acquiring some Reputation in Philosophy, I ought to keep them by me, ’till corrected and improved by Time and farther Experience. But since even short Hints, and imperfect Experiments in any new Branch of Science, being communicated, have oftentimes a good Effect, in exciting the attention of the Ingenious to the Subject, and so becoming the Occasion of more exact disquisitions (as I before observed) and more compleat Discoveries, you are at Liberty to communicate this Paper to whom you please; it being of more Importance that Knowledge should increase, than that your Friend should be thought an accurate Philosopher.”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

Letter from Benjamin Franklin to Peter Collinson, September 1753.
1750s

Communication, Knowledge, Science, Time

“Most anarchists believe the coming change can only come through a revolution, because the possessing class will not allow a peaceful change to take place; still we are willing to work for peace at any price, except at the price of liberty.”

Lucy Parsons (1853–1942) American communist anarchist labor organizer

The Principles of Anarchism

Peace, Change

“I’m a lover of my own liberty, and so I would do nothing to restrict yours. I simply want to please my own conscience, which is God.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

Young India (21 January 1927)
1920s

God, Lovers

“When the people of the colonies were defending their liberties against the might of kings, they chose their banner from the design set in the firmament through all eternity. The flags of great empires of that day have gone, but the stars and stripes remain. It pictures a vision of a people whose eyes are turned to the rising dawn. It represents of the hope of a father for his posterity. It was never flaunted for the glory of royalty, but to be born under it is to be the child of a king, and to establish a home under it is to be the founder of a royal house. Alone of all flags, it expresses the sovereignty of the people which endures when all else passes away. Speaking with their voice, it has the sanctity of revelations. He who lives under it and disloyal to it is a traitor to the human race everywhere. What could be saved if the flag of the American nation were to perish?”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, America and the War (1920)

People, Hope, Home, Star

“Legislation is introduced by Parliament, but we should remember that all our advances, freedom and liberties are due to men and women who, when their conscience compelled them, have been prepared to defy the law. If legislation is introduced which erodes our basic freedom and democracy or threatens our right to combine, we should oppose it with the same vigour and determination of our forefathers. I believe it will be necessary to use all measures, including industrial action, to defy Tebbit's law and defend our movement.”

Arthur Scargill (1938) British trade unionist

Speech in Yorkshire (15 March 1982), quoted in Paul Routledge, "Scargill urges strike against Tebbit Bill", The Times (16 March 1982), p. 2

Women, Men, Law, Democracy

“It is futile to speak of liberty as long as economic slavery exists.
"Speak not of liberty — poverty is slavery!" is not a vain formula; it has penetrated into the ideas of the great working-class masses; it filters through all the present literature; it even carries those along who live on the poverty of others, and takes from them the arrogance with which they formerly asserted their rights to exploitation.”

Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, scientist, revolutionary, economist, activist, geogr…

Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Ideal (1896)

Literature, Idea

“Twenty-five years ago the Republican Party was married to liberty, and this is our silver wedding, fellow-citizens.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

1870s, An Appeal to Young Men (1879)

Wedding

“This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1850s, What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? (1852)

“Liberty is as much a matter of compulsion as duty, but where duty says to a person that he must or must not, liberty says to other persons that they must not interfere with that person, or that they even must help to prevent still other persons from interfering, if necessary.”

John R. Commons (1862–1945) United States institutional economist and labor historian

Source: Legal foundations of capitalism. 1924, p. 95

Help, Personality

“Your pretended fear lest error should step in, is like the man that would keep all the wine out of the country lest men should be drunk. It will be found an unjust and unwise jealousy, to deny a man the liberty he hath by nature upon a supposition that he may abuse it.”

Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658) English military and political leader

Letter to Walter Dundas (12 September 1650)

Men, Fear, Jealousy, Error

“Their coarseness is the sinew of some kind of brute confidence which is the reason England is home to every shade of political exile. They don't give asylum out of respect for asylum-seekers, but out of respect for themselves. They invented personal liberty, and they know it, and they did it without having any theories about it. They value liberty because it's liberty.”

Tom Stoppard (1937) British playwright

Herzen
The Coast of Utopia: Salvage (2002)

Home, Confidence, Personality

“The rights to life, liberty and property were not meant to be subject to the vagaries of majority rule.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

“Life, Liberty, and Property,” http://www.ilanamercer.com/phprunner/public_article_list_view.php?editid1=497 WorldNetDaily.com and Taki’s Magazine, May 15, 2009. 2000s, 2009

Life

“It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming to be in the balance. But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts — for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free. To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of those who know that the day has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has treasured. God helping her, she can do no other.”

Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American politician, 28th president of the United States (in office from 1913 to 1921)

1910s, Address to Congress on War (1917)

God, War, People, World

Quotes about liberty page 10

Quotes about liberty
page 10