Quotes about liberty
page 5

“With hearts fortified with these animating reflections, we most solemnly, before God and the world, declare that, exerting the utmost energy of those powers, which our beneficent Creator hath graciously bestowed upon us, the arms we have been compelled by our enemies to assume, we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating firmness and perseverance employ for the preservation of our liberties; being with one mind resolved to die freemen rather than to live as slaves.”

John Dickinson (1732–1808) American politician

From The Declaration upon taking up Arms, before Congress, July 6th, 1775: as cited in A Conspectus of American Biography, Volume 1, ed. George Derby, J. T. White (1906), p. 239

God, World, Heart, Animals

“In most of the old colonial world, the struggle for independence is coming to an end. Even in areas behind the Curtain, that which Jefferson called "the disease of liberty" still appears to be infectious. With the passing of ancient empires, today less than 2 percent of the world's population lives in territories officially termed "dependent." As this effort for independence, inspired by the American Declaration of Independence, now approaches a successful close, a great new effort — for interdependence — is transforming the world about us. And the spirit of that new effort is the same spirit which gave birth to the American Constitution. That spirit is today most clearly seen across the Atlantic Ocean. The nations of Western Europe, long divided by feuds far more bitter than any which existed among the 13 colonies, are today joining together, seeking, as our forefathers sought, to find freedom in diversity and in unity, strength.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1962, Address at Independence Hall

World, Disease, Birth, Effort

“What then is Liberty? Liberty, I would answer, so far as it is possible for it to exist in a Society of Beings whose interests are almost perpetually opposed to each other, consists in this, that, every Man, while he respects the persons of others, and allows them quietly to enjoy the produce of their industry, be certain himself likewise to enjoy the produce of his own industry, and that his person be also secure. But to contribute by one’s suffrage to procure these advantages to the Community,—to have a share in establishing that order, that general arrangement of things, by means of which an individual, lost as it were in the croud, is effectually protected,—to lay down the rules to be observed by those who, being invested with a considerable power, are charged with the defence of individuals, and provide that they should never transgress them,—these are functions, are acts of Government, but not constituent parts of Liberty.”

Jean-Louis de Lolme (1740–1806) Genevan and English political theorist and writer on constitutional matters

The Constitution of England (1784), Ch. 5 : In which an Inquiry is made, whether it would be an Advantage to public Liberty, that the Laws should be enacted by the Votes of the People at large.

Communication, Parting, Personality

“Life is the apprenticeship to progressive renunciation, to the steady diminution of our claims, of our hopes, of our powers, of our liberty.”

Henri-Frédéric Amiel (1821–1881) Swiss philosopher and poet

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Journal

Life, Hope

“Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous, and they are tied to their country and wedded to its liberty and interests by the most lasting bands. As long therefore as they can find employment in this line, I would not convert them into mariners, artisans, or any thing else. But our citizens will find employment in this line till their numbers, and of course their productions, become too great for the demand both internal and foreign.”

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

Letter to John Jay (23 August 1785); published in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson (1953), edited by Julian P. Boyd, vol. 8, p. 426
1780s

Wedding, Country

“Liberty is more precious than money or office; and we should be vigilant lest we purchase wealth or place at the price of inner freedom.”

John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) Catholic bishop

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 77

Money, Freedom, Wealth

“We go forward with complete confidence in the eventual triumph of freedom. Not because history runs on the wheels of inevitability; it is human choices that move events. Not because we consider ourselves a chosen nation; God moves and chooses as he wills. We have confidence because freedom is the permanent hope of mankind, the hunger in dark places, the longing of the soul. When our Founders declared a new order of the ages, when soldiers died in wave upon wave for a union based on liberty, when citizens marched in peaceful outrage under the banner "Freedom Now"”

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

they were acting on an ancient hope that is meant to be fulfilled.
2000s, 2005, Second Inaugural Address (January 2005)

Hunger, God, Age, Peace

“[T]his Fifth Edition is required to meet the demand of a somewhat wider class of students than those for whom the Lectures were originally intended. …Mr. Stirling has been at liberty to prepare the modifications and additions …”

George Biddell Airy (1801–1892) English mathematician and astronomer

Preface to the fifth edition.
Popular Astronomy: A Series of Lectures Delivered at Ipswich (1868)

“[Conservatism:] Our revolutionary message … is that a self-disciplined people can create a political community in which an ordered liberty will promote both economic prosperity and political participation.”

Irving Kristol (1920–2009) American columnist, journalist, and writer

Source: Essay in American Spectator Magazine (1977).

People, Communication

“We want to stop all immigration from Islamic countries. We want to stimulate voluntary re-emigration to Islamic countries. We want to expel all criminals with dual citizenship and deprive them of their Dutch nationality. We want to de-islamize our nation. Dear Friends, there is a lot of work to do. We, the defenders of freedom and security, have an historic duty. Our generation has been entrusted with a huge task: To oppose Islam and keep the flame of liberty burning. I say it without exaggeration: the future of human civilization depends on us. Now is a time when everyone in the West must do his duty. We are writing history here. So, let us do our duty. Let us stand with a happy heart and a strong spirit. Let us go forth with courage and save freedom!”

Geert Wilders (1963) Dutch politician

Speech http://www.pvv.nl/index.php/36-fj-related/geert-wilders/7981-geert-wilders-speech-danish-free-press-society-copenhagen-2-11-2014.html at the 10 years memorial conference for Theo Van Gogh arranged by the Danish Free Press Society (Copenhagen, 2 November 2014); Video: Geert Wilders speaks in the Danish Parliament Building https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKgpzi0PW0w 2010s

History, Courage, Freedom, Strong

“This is our turn at the wheel, and history will judge us based on how we handle it. Decline is a choice, but so is liberty.”

Dinesh D'Souza (1961) Indian-American political commentator, filmmaker, author

Source: Books, America: Imagine a World without Her (2014), Ch. 16

History

“The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them.”

Patrick Henry (1736–1799) attorney, planter, politician and Founding Father of the United States

Speech on the Federal Constitution, Virginia Ratifying Convention (Monday, 9 June 1788), as contained in The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution: Volume 3, ed. Jonathan Elliot, published by the editor (1836), p. 170
1780s

People

“Liberty, n. The distinction between freedom and liberty is not accurately known; naturalists have never been able to find a living specimen of either.”

Ambrose Bierce book The Devil's Dictionary

The Devil's Dictionary (1911)

Freedom

“If I forget, then it might as well never have happened. Memory is liberty.”

Charles Stross book Glasshouse

Source: Glasshouse (2006), Chapter 13, “Climb” (p. 224)

Memory, Forgetting

“To-morrow the rediscovery of romantic love,
The photographing of ravens; all the fun under
Liberty's masterful shadow;
To-morrow the hour of the pageant-master and the musician, The beautiful roar of the chorus under the dome;
To-morrow the exchanging of tips on the breeding of terriers,
The eager election of chairmen
By the sudden forest of hands. But to-day the struggle.To-morrow for the young the poets exploding like bombs,
The walks by the lake, the weeks of perfect communion;
To-morrow the bicycle races
Through the suburbs on summer evenings. But to-day the struggle.”

W. H. Auden book Spain

Source: Spain (1937), Lines 81–92

Love, Beauty, Summer, Perfection

“What is the true End of Monarchy? Not to deprive People of their natural Liberty; but to correct their Actions, in order to attain the supreme Good.
The Form of Government, therefore, which best attains this End, and at the same Time sets less Bounds than others to natural Liberty, is that which coincides with the Views and Purposes of rational Creatures, and answers the End, upon which we ought to fix a steadfast Eye in the Regulations of civil Polity.”

Catherine the Great (1729–1796) Empress of Russia

Proposals for a New Law Code (1768)

People, Nature, Time

“Our policy is not built on envy or hatred, but on liberty for the individual man or woman.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

The Path To Power (1995)

Envy

“If conservatives really believed in individual liberty, as they endlessly claim — and if they used both halves of their brains — then they'd be libertarians. Instead, they sabotage themselves, and their cause, by constantly generating one spurious reason after another to deprive other people of their freedom.”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

"Revenge of the Cookie Monster".

People, Freedom

“What were these rights and liberties for which Confederates contended? The right to own slaves; the liberty to take this property into the territories.”

James M. McPherson (1936) American historian

James M. McPherson. Battle Cry of Freedom http://historynewsnetwork.org/blog/153655 (1988) p. 241 1980s

“Vyshinsky: Were you badly treated?
Muralov: I was deprived of my liberty.
Vyshinsky: But perhaps rough methods were used against you?
Muralov: No. No such rough methods were used. I must say that in Novosibirsk and here I was treated politely and no cause for resentment was given. I was treated very decently and politely.”

Nikolay Muralov (1877–1937) Soviet revolutionary

Dialogue with state prosecutor Andrey Vyshinsky during his trial. Quote from Harpal Brar's Trotskyism or Leninism?, p. 300-1.

“Taxation and representation are inseparable… whatever is a man's own, is absolutely his own; no man has a right to take it from him without his consent, either expressed by himself or representative; whoever attempts to do it, attempts an injury; whoever does it, commits a robbery; he throws down and destroys the distinction between liberty and slavery.”

Charles Pratt, 1st Earl Camden (1714–1794) English lawyer, judge and Whig politician

Speech in the House of Lords, on the taxation of Americans by the British parliament, 7 March 1766; as reported in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (1990), 2nd edn., p. 60.

“The embarrassing truth — the brontosaurus in the broom closet that nobody wants to talk about — is that the Republican Party was never the party of freedom. That Goldwater business in the 1960s was a fluke, immediately snuffed out by "older, wiser heads" in the GOP like those of Nelson Rockefeller, Weeping Willy Scranton, Henry Cabot Lodge, and George Romney. The Republican Party was created in the 1850s by northeastern mercantilists just like them, to crush the hopes of poor southerners for individual liberty and independence, and keep them bound in serfdom, paying 80 percent of all taxes collected in America.”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

"The Brontosaurus in the Broom Closet" http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2009/tle541-20091018-05.html 18 October 2009.

Truth, Hope, Business, Freedom

“Let us learn wisdom from this illustrious example. We have passed the Red Sea of slaughter; our garments are yet wet with its crimson spray. We have crossed the fearful wilderness of war, and have led our four hundred thousand heroes to sleep beside the dead enemies of the Republic. We have heard the voice of God amid the thunders of battle commanding us to wash our hands of iniquity, to 'proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.' When we spurned his counsels we were defeated, and the gulfs of ruin yawned before us. When we obeyed his voice, he gave us victory. And now at last we have reached the confines of the wilderness. Before us is the land of promise, the land of hope, the land of peace, filled with possibilities of greatness and glory too vast for the grasp of the imagination. Are we worthy to enter it? On what condition may it be ours to enjoy and transmit to our children's children? Let us pause and make deliberate and solemn preparation. Let us, as representatives of the people, whose servants we are, bear in advance the sacred ark of republican liberty, with its tables of the law inscribed with the 'irreversible guaranties' of liberty. Let us here build a monument on which shall be written not only the curses of the law against treason, disloyalty, and oppression, but also an everlasting covenant of peace and blessing with loyalty, liberty, and obedience; and all the people will say, Amen.”

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

1860s, Speech in the House of Representatives (1866)

Wisdom, God, War, Children

“The object and practice of liberty lies in the limitation of governmental power. Through the ages the constantly expanding grasp of government has been liberty's greatest threat.”

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

Source: Reminiscences (1964), p. 417

Age

“No man's life, liberty or property are safe while the legislature is in session.”

Gideon Tucker

Final accounting in the Estate of A.B. (1866) http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/no_mans_life_liberty_or_property_are_safe_while_the_legislature_is_in_sessi/

Life

“Why, what is the matter with us? Are we going to palliate and excuse a palpable and flagrant outrage on the right of speech, by implying that only a particular description of persons should exercise that right? Are we, at such a time, when a great principle has been struck down, to quench the moral indignation which the deed excites, by casting reflections upon those on whose persons the outrage has been committed? After all the arguments for liberty to which Boston has listened for more than a quarter of a century, has she yet to learn that the time to assert a right is the time when the right itself is called in question, and that the men of all others to assert it are the men to whom the right has been denied?”

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

1880s, Plea for Free Speech in Boston (1880)

Men, Exercises, Question, Learning

“The Intention and the End of Monarchy, is the Glory of the Citizens, of the State, and of the Sovereign.
But, from this Glory, a Sense of Liberty arises in a People governed by a Monarch; which may produce in these States as much Energy in transacting the most important Affairs, and may contribute as much to the Happiness of the Subjects, as even Liberty itself….”

Catherine the Great (1729–1796) Empress of Russia

Proposals for a New Law Code (1768)

People, Sense, Happiness

“Horace Mann said that one former was worth a thousand reformers. And if you are going to keep justice and liberty alive, you lawyers, we teachers will try to become what we were meant to be, the formers of the character of our citizens.”

Aurelia Henry Reinhardt (1877–1948) American educator and social activist

Speech delivered in 1917 to the California Bar Association, in [California, State Bar of, Proceedings ... Annual Convention, California Bar Association, https://books.google.com/books?id=-GsdAQAAMAAJ, 1917, 170-172]

Justice, Teachers

“For there have been some people, otherwise good and holy, who saw that intemperance and luxury time and again drive man to throw off all restraints unless he is curbed by the utmost severity. And in their desire to correct such a pernicious evil they have adopted the only method which they saw fit, namely to permit earthly blessings only insofar as they were an absolute necessity. This advice showed the best of intentions but was far too rigid. For they committed the very dangerous error of imposing on the consequence of others stricter rules than those laid down in the Word of the Lord. By restricting people within the demands of necessity, they meant abstinence from everything possible. On the other hand, there are many nowadays who seek a pretext to excuse intemperance in the use of the external things, and who desire to indulge the lusts of the flesh. Such people take for granted that liberty should not be restricted by any limitations at all; but to this we can never agree. We must grant, indeed, that it is not right or possible to bind the consciences of others with hard and fast rules.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Page 85.
Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life (1551)

People, Error, Evil, Time

“If "safeguards of individual liberty" do not have "any intrinsic worth", then neither does individual liberty. And if individual liberty has no intrinsic worth, neither does individual life. It is impossible to imagine a more complete denial of President Bush's proclamation of the sanctity of human life, or of his assertion of an "essential human dignity attached to all persons by virtue of their very existence." This is not only legal positivism, it is nihilism. It is not only a denial of any moral foundation of constitutionalism, it is a denial of any moral foundation of political community.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, Bush's Lincolnian Challenge (2002)

Life, Imagination, Communication, Personality

“When service is performed, the individual performing it is entitled to the compensation for it. His creation becomes a part of himself. It is his property. To attempt to deal with persons or with property in a communistic or socialistic way is to deny what seems to me to be this plain fact. Liberty and equality require that equal compensation shall be paid for equal service to the individual who performs it. Socialism and communism cannot be reconciled with the principles which our institutions represent. They are entirely foreign, entirely un-American. We stand wholly committed to the policy that what the individual produces belongs entirely to him to be used by him for the benefit of himself, to provide for his own family and to enable him to serve his fellow men.”

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

1920s, Authority and Religious Liberty (1924)

Men, Family, Way, Communication

“"In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," instead of "life, liberty and property." With that vagueness, Jefferson undermined the foundation of civilization: private property right."”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

2010s, 2016

Life, Happiness

“If you defend a behavior by arguing that people are programmed directly for it, then how do you continue to defend it if your speculation is wrong, for the behavior then becomes unnatural and worthy of condemnation. Better to stick resolutely to a philosophical position on human liberty: what free adults do with each other in their own private lives is their business alone. It need not be vindicated — and must not be condemned—by genetic speculation.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Ever Since Darwin

"So Cleverly Kind an Animal", p. 267
Ever Since Darwin (1977)

People, Behavior, Business

“The war we fight today is more than a military conflict; it is the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century. On one side are those who believe in the values of freedom and moderation; the right of all people to speak, and worship, and live in liberty. And on the other side are those driven by the values of tyranny and extremism; the right of a self-appointed few to impose their fanatical views on all the rest. As veterans, you have seen this kind of enemy before. They're successors to Fascists, to Nazis, to Communists, and other totalitarians of the 20th century. And history shows what the outcome will be. This war will be difficult; this war will be long; and this war will end in the defeat of the terrorists and totalitarians, and a victory for the cause of freedom and liberty.”

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

2000s, 2006, Speech at the American Legion National Convention (August 2006)

War, People, History, Decision

“But you say, “by obedience to another he loses his liberty.” How then is it that children suffer the orders of their father and mother, and pupils the injunctions of their instructors?”

Philo (-15–45 BC) Roman philosopher

36.
Every Good Man is Free

Children, Suffering

“Special interests and the demented philosophy of conquest have driven most wars throughout history. Rarely has the cause of liberty, as it was in our own revolution, been the driving force. In recent decades our policies have been driven by neo-conservative empire radicalism, profiteering in the military industrial complex, misplaced do-good internationalism, mercantilistic notions regarding the need to control natural resources, and blind loyalty to various governments in the Middle East.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Statement on the Iraq War Resolution http://www.house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec2007/cr021407.htm (February 14, 2007). 2000s, 2006-2009

War, History, Nature, Loyalty

“According to the way it is generally used today, the term 'ethics' relates above all to the domain of human rights, 'the rights of man'- or, by derivation, the rights of living beings. We are supposed to assume the existence of a universally recognizable human subject possessing 'rights' that are in some sense natural: the right to live, to avoid abusive, to enjoy 'fundamental' liberties (of opinion, of expression, of democratic choice in the election of governments, etc.) These rights are help to be self-evident, and the result of a wide consensus. 'Ethics' is a matter of busying ourselves with these rights, of making sure that they are respected.”

Alain Badiou (1937) French writer and philosopher

Source: Ethics, Chapter One, "Does Man Exist?"

Way, Business, Nature, Sense

“Whilst America hath been the land of promise to Europeans, and their descendants, it hath been the vale of death to millions of the wretched sons of Africa… Whilst we were offering up vows at the shrine of Liberty… whilst we swore irreconcilable hostility to her enemies… whilst we adjured the God of Hosts to witness our resolution to live free or die… we were imposing on our fellow men, who differ in complexion from us, a slavery, ten thousand times more cruel than the utmost extremity of those grievances and oppressions, of which we complained.”

St. George Tucker (1752–1827) Bermudan lawyer and judge

A Dissertation on Slavery: With a Proposal for the Gradual Abolition of it, in the State of Virginia (1796)

Death, Men, God, Hostility

“This- this- is liberty! genuine British liberty!- This instant about two thousand liberty boys are swearing and swaggering by with large sticks”

Ignatius Sancho (1729–1780) British composer, writer and grocer

(from vol 2, letter 67: 6 Jun 1780, to J___ S___ esq).

Boy

“Hail the mild morning, where the dawn began,
The full fruition of the hopes of man.
Where sage Experience seals the sacred cause,
And that rare union, Liberty and Laws,
Speaks to the reas'ning race “to freedom rise,
Like them be equal, and like them be wise."”

Joel Barlow (1754–1812) American diplomat

The Conspiracy of Kings (1792)

Law, Hope, Freedom

“The noble lord who moved the address had, in the course of his speech, warned the House not to let an anxiety for liberty lead to a compromise of the safety of the state. He, for his part, could not separate those things. The safety of the state could only be found in the protection of the liberties of the people. Whatever was destructive of the latter also destroyed the former…The discontent existing in the country had been insisted on as a ground for the adoption of some measures…But there was another axiom no less true—that there never was an extensive discontent without great misgovernment…When no attention was paid to the calls of the people for relief, when their petitions were rejected and their sufferings aggravated, was it wonderful that at last public discontents should assume a formidable aspect?”

Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey (1764–1845) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

Speech in the House of Lords (23 November 1819). The Speech from the Throne at the opening of the session of 1819-20 called for strong measures against the seditious spirit shown in the manufacturing districts. Grey moved an amendment in the Lords, calling for an enquiry into the Peterloo Massacre of 16 August, in order to maintain ‘that confidence in the public institutions of the country, which constitutes the best safeguard of all law and government.’ His amendment was defeated by 159 votes to 34. Parliamentary Debates, vol. xli, pp. 7-19, quoted in Alan Bullock and Maurice Shock (ed.), The Liberal Tradition from Fox to Keynes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), pp. 5-6.
1810s

People, Suffering, Parting, Housing

“No progress, either moral or material, can be made in a world which is frozen, like ours, into a rigid mold of suppression of liberties.”

Damon Knight book A for Anything

Source: A for Anything (1959), Chapter 10 (p. 120)

World

“I sought not in her visage, for the tinge of the morning, and the lustre of heaven. These had vanished with life; but I hoped for liberty to print a last kiss upon her lips. This was denied me; for such had been the merciless blow that destroyed her, that not a lineament remained!”

Charles Brockden Brown (1771–1810) American novelist, historian and editor

Wieland; or, the Transformation (1798)

Life, Hope, Kiss

“It is quite evident that the Soviet system today represents the exact opposite of almost everything that the left in the West is striving for - obsessive state secrecy rather than freedom of information, centralised bureaucratic control instead of devolved decision making and public accountability, total state power over the individual as opposed to inalienable civil liberties, authoritarian economic management rather than trade union freedom and industrial democracy, and a government-manipulated media instead of greater diversity and choice in news and information sources.”

Peter Tatchell (1952) British gay rights activist

Democratic Defence. London: GMP Publishers. p. 36. ISBN 0-946097-16-X.

Democracy, Decision, Freedom

“Had President Kennedy not pledged the nation to bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, and oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty?”

William Westmoreland book A Soldier Reports

Source: A Soldier Reports (1976), p. 409.

Support, Success

“The historian, essentially, wants more documents than he can really use; the dramatist only wants more liberties than he can really take.”

Henry James book The Aspern Papers

The Aspern Papers; The Turn of the Screw; The Liar; The Two Faces.
Prefaces (1907-1909)

“At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life…. people have organized intimate relationships and made choices that define their views of themselves and their places in society, in reliance on the availability of abortion in the event that contraception should fail…. We conclude the line should be drawn at viability, so that, before that time, the woman has a right to choose to terminate her pregnancy…. there is no line other than viability which is more workable. To be sure, as we have said, there may be some medical developments that affect the precise point of viability, but this is an imprecision within tolerable limits…. A husband has no enforceable right to require a wife to advise him before she exercises her personal choices.”

Anthony Kennedy (1936) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=505&invol=833 (29 June 1992) (joint opinion coauthored with Justices Souter and O’Connor).

Life, People, Exercises, Universe

“The people resemble a wild beast, which, naturally fierce and accustomed to live in the woods, has been brought up, as it were, in a prison and in servitude, and having by accident got its liberty, not being accustomed to search for its food, and not knowing where to conceal itself, easily becomes the prey of the first who seeks to incarcerate it again.”

Niccolo Machiavelli book Discourses on Livy

Book 1, Ch. 16
Discourses on Livy (1517)

People, Food, Search, Nature

“Why has it [the Church] never done what it was sent to do? Others …will say it has done so. Has it not lifted woman to equality and companionship with man, secured the sanctity and stability of marriage, changed parental despotism to parental service, and eliminated unnatural vice, the abandonment of children, blood revenge, and the robbery of the shipwrecked from the customs of Christian nations? Has it not abolished slavery, mitigated war, covered all lands with a network of charities to uplift the poor and the fallen, fostered the institutions of education, aided the progress of civil liberty and social justice, and diffused a softening tenderness throughout human life? It has done all that, and vastly more.”

Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) United States Baptist theologian

Source: Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), Ch.4 Why Has Christianity Never Undertaken the Work of Social Reconstruction?, p. 147

Life, Marriage, War, Children

“Liberty lends us her wings and Hope guides us by her star.”

Charlotte Brontë book Villette

Source: Villette (1853), Ch. VI: London

Hope, Star

“I never thought I would see the day when America (which is based on the idea of liberty, from which the world Liberal comes) would become so self-centered and hypocritical. I mean if democracy considers liberal to be a term of abuse, then we should be terrified. A liberal is someone who belives in liberty. And if it is wrong to be liberal, then the other side has to be facist.”

Derek Walcott (1930–2017) Saint Lucian–Trinidadian poet and playwright

Conversations with Derek Walcott (University Press Mississippi, 1996, page.165)

World, Democracy, Idea

“Thomas [...] could offer no proof of it, but he could assume as probable a plan of good which became the more perfect for the very reason that it allowed great liberty in detail.

One hardly feels Saint Thomas here in all his force. He offers suggestion rather than proof;— apology, the weaker because of obvious effort to apologise, rather than defence, for infinite Goodness, Justice and Power; [...] but at all events society has never done better by way of proving its right to enforce morals, or unity of opinion. Unless it asserts law, it can only assert force.”

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

Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)

Justice, Law, Way, Feeling

“Francis Fukuyama seized on the ignominious collapse of the Soviet system as proof that “the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution” was “the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government” and Marxism’s “death as a living ideology of world historical significance.” That conclusion was, to say the least, premature, not only because it reckoned without the rise of an Islamist theocracy or the fallout from the 2008 worldwide recession, which provoked a renascence of Marxist advocacy in the writings of Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt, Alain Badiou, the Occupy Movement, and Thomas Picketty. This pattern is, again, an echo of what happened in Reconstruction, and it warns those who yet believe that liberal democracy is the most desirable political future to be wary of Whiggish assumptions about democracy’s inevitability. Human society has oscillated between desires for stability, security, and reciprocity—which is what feudalism, Marxism, and theocracy promise—and desires for mobility, liberty, and profit—which is what the Enlightenment offered on a world-historical scale. There is nothing that can be declared permanent in a bourgeois revolution, and our own Reconstruction, not to mention a good deal of recent history, is the unhappy proof.”

Allen C. Guelzo (1953) American historian

2010s, Defending Reconstruction (2017)

Death, World, Democracy, History

“When man was first in the jungle, he took care of himself. When he entered a societal group, controls were necessarily imposed. But our society -- unlike most in the world -- presupposes that freedom and liberty are in a frame of reference that makes the individual, not government, the keeper of his tastes, beliefs, and ideas. That is the philosophy of the First Amendment; and it is the article of faith that sets us apart from most nations in the world.”

William O. Douglas (1898–1980) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Dissenting, Paris Adult Theatre I v. Slaton, 413 U.S. 49 (1972)
Judicial opinions

World, Faith, Idea, Freedom

“Utopia is a framework for utopias, a place where people are at liberty to join together voluntarily to pursue and attempt to realize their own vision of the good life in the ideal community but where no one can impose his own utopian vision upon others.”

Robert Nozick book Anarchy, State, and Utopia

Source: Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), Ch. 10 : A Framework for Utopia; The Framework, p. 311
Context: There will not be one kind of community existing and one kind of life led in utopia. Utopia will consist of utopias, of many different and divergent communities in which people lead different kinds of lives under different institutions. Some kinds of communities will be more attractive to most than others; communities will wax and wane. People will leave some for others or spend their whole lives in one. Utopia is a framework for utopias, a place where people are at liberty to join together voluntarily to pursue and attempt to realize their own vision of the good life in the ideal community but where no one can impose his own utopian vision upon others.

Life, People, Communication

“The greater the share the people have in government, the less liberty, civil or religious, does a nation enjoy.”

John Wesley (1703–1791) Christian theologian

As quoted in England in the Eighteenth Century (1714 - 1815) (1964) by J. H. Plumb, p. 94
General sources

People

“Indian religion has always felt that since the minds, the temperaments and the intellectual affinities of men are unlimited in their variety, a perfect liberty of thought and of worship must be allowed to the individual in his approach to the Infinite.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

The Foundations of Indian Culture (1953), p. 147

Men, Religion, Perfection

“The repression of liberty that took place in the countries in which Communist regimes were established cannot be adequately explained as a product of backwardness, or of errors in the application of Marxian theory. It was the result of a resolute attempt to realize an Enlightenment utopia - a condition of society in which no serious form of conflict any longer exists.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

'Isaiah Berlin: The Value of Decency' (p.99)
Gray's Anatomy: Selected Writings (2009)

Error, Country

“They are arrayed against every principle for which we stand. So when the Soviet leaders jail a writer, or a priest, or a doctor or a worker, for the crime of speaking freely, it is not only for humanitarian reasons that we should be concerned. For these acts reveal a regime that is afraid of truth and liberty; it dare not allow its people to enjoy the freedoms we take for granted, and a nation that denies those freedoms to its own people will have few scruples in denying them to others. If detente is to progress then it ought to mean that the Soviet authorities relax their ruthless opposition to all forms and expressions of dissent.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech to Chelsea Conservative Association (26 July 1975) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/102750 Leader of the Opposition

People, Truth, Freedom

“The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is inefficiency. An efficient bureaucracy is the greatest threat to liberty.”

Eugene McCarthy (1916–2005) American politician

Time magazine (12 February 1979)

“"The Polarity Principle:" The more government, the more violence. By ‘more government’ is meant more centralization of government power, more intervention in personal, social, and economic affairs and activities, more limits on political criticism and competition, and more narrowing of electoral choices. In other words, by ‘more government’ is meant less freedom, less civil liberties, political rights, and economic freedom.”

Rudolph Rummel (1932–2014) American academic

“Libertarianism, Violence within States, and the Polarity Principle,” Comparative Politics, Vol. 16, No. 4 (Jul., 1984), pp. 443-462. Published by Comparative Politics, Ph.D. Programs in Political Science, City University of New York.

Freedom, Personality

“It is not of special importance to me what the law says about marriage. It is of overwhelming importance, however, who it is that rules me. Today's decree says that my Ruler, and the Ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast, is a majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court. The opinion in these cases is the furthest extension in fact—and the furthest extension one can even imagine—of the Court's claimed power to create “liberties” that the Constitution and its Amendments neglect to mention. This practice of constitutional revision by an unelected committee of nine, always accompanied (as it is today) by extravagant praise of liberty, robs the People of the most important liberty they asserted in the Declaration of Independence and won in the Revolution of 1776: the freedom to govern themselves.”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Dissenting, Obergefell v. Hodges, 135 S. Ct. 2584, 192 L. Ed. 2d 609 (2015) ; decided June 26, 2015.
2010s

Marriage, People, Law, Imagination

“The freedom of the press is one of the great bulwarks of liberty, and can never be restrained but by despotic governments.”

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

Article 12
Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776)

Freedom

“I must beg leave to recommend to your Excellency's consideration the appointing an officer to write and sign the necessary passes. The person I should wish to be appointed is Lieutenant Bio d get. If it was put in general orders, that passes signed by him should be deemed authentic, as if signed by me, it would leave me at liberty to pursue the more important employments of my station.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (July 1776)

Personality

“Liberty of the people is not my liberty!”

Max Stirner book The Ego and Its Own

Cambridge 1995, p. 190
The Ego and Its Own (1845)

People

“[T]hree of [Newt Gingrich's] "Five Principles of American Civilization" deal with business, technology, and organization — all characteristics of work. There is no mention of liberty or equality or, for that matter, of democracy.”

John Ralston Saul book The Unconscious Civilization

The Unconscious Civilization (1995)

Democracy, Business

“Of liberty I would say that, in the whole plenitude of its extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will. But rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add "within the limits of the law" because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.”

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

Letter to Isaac H. Tiffany (4 April 1819)
1810s

Law

“The old laws of England — they
Whose reverend heads with age are gray,
Children of a wiser day;
And whose solemn voice must be
Thine own echo — Liberty!”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

St. 82
(1819)

Children, Age, Law

“I work in waves because I'm impatient. It has to be done. I take liberties.”

Cy Twombly (1928–2011) American painter

Quote, as cited by Serota N. in the interview 'Cy Twombly: History behind the Thought' , Exhitbition catalogue: Cycles & Seasons, Tate Modern, London 2008
2000 - 2011

“It was ready-made for them to call an emergency and pretend it was war-time, you know, the war on terrorism is a metaphor, and terrorism is an abstract noun. It's like a "war on dandruff." There's no such thing, you know. It isn't war, it's just a slogan. But using the slogan they got through the U. S. A. Patriot Act, which removes many of our liberties. Nobody made a sound when we lost Habeas Corpus—due process of law—and suddenly Bush managed to get rid of it. Where was a voice on television, aside from mine, that spoke out against this? Where were all those noble jurists, those great lawyers, those lovers of liberty, where the hell were they? They were nowhere!”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

2010s, "Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia" (2013)

War, Law, Lovers, Hell

“They came here—the exile and the stranger, brave but frightened—to find a place where a man could be his own man. They made a covenant with this land. Conceived in justice, written in liberty, bound in union, it was meant one day to inspire the hopes of all mankind; and it binds us still. If we keep its terms, we shall flourish.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, Inaugural address (1965)

Justice, Hope

“I have started work on a modern subject, a scene on the barricades… I may not have fought for my country but at least I shall have painted for her.. [quote is referring to his famous painting 'Liberty Leading the People', 1830]”

Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) French painter

Quote in an unpublished letter to Delacroix' brother, 18 October 1830, but mentioned by M. Sérullaz; as quoted in Eugene Delacroix – selected letters 1813 – 1863, ed. and translation Jean Stewart, art Works MFA publications, Museum of Fine Art Boston, 2001, p. 13
1815 - 1830

People, Quotes, Painting, Country

“Against all these assertions Grotius published to the world a demonstration that no such rights could exist. His whole argument was mainly a development of two postulates. The first of these was that the right of nations to communicate with one another had been universally recognized; that it was based on a fundamental law of humanity; that the liberty of the sea being necessary to enable nations to communicate with one another, it could not be taken away by any power whatever. The second was that every attempt to make an ocean highway a monopoly of any single nation is forbidden by the immensity of the sea, its lack of stability, its want of fixed limits. This argument in places seemed thin. The book [Mare Liberum], after the custom of the time, was filled with an array—far more than sufficient—of learned citations; but its most significant feature—that which went to make it the herald of a new epoch—was that it took its stand upon the inalienable rights of mankind,—that it mainly deduced these rights neither from revelation nor from national enactments, but from natural law as ascertained by human reason.”

Andrew Dickson White (1832–1918) American politician

Source: Seven Great Statesmen in the Warfare of Humanity with Unreason (1915), p. 61

Books, World, Law, Communication

“Free speech is the bedrock of liberty and a free society. And yes, it includes the right to blaspheme and offend.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali (1969) Dutch feminist, author

Nomad: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations (2010)

“Yes, certainly, we jeopardize the liberty to profiteer at the expense of the community, and, if necessary, we even abolish it.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

Speech to the Workers of Berlin (10 December 1940)
1940s

Communication

“You say you are fighting for liberty. Yes you are fighting for liberty: liberty to keep four millions of your fellow-beings in ignorance and degradation;– liberty to separate parents and children, husband and wife, brother and sister;– liberty to steal the products of their labor, exacted with many a cruel lash and bitter tear;– liberty to seduce their wives and daughters, and to sell your own children into bondage;– liberty to kill these children with impunity, when the murder cannot be proven by one of pure white blood. This is the kind of liberty– the liberty to do wrong– which Satan, Chief of the fallen Angels, was contending for when he was cast into Hell.”

Jefferson Davis (1808–1889) President of the Confederate States of America

David Hunter, letter to Jefferson Davis https://books.google.com/books?id=Jc8VCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA59 (1863)

Children, Angels, Hell, Parent

“Human rights did not begin with the French Revolution… [they] really stem from a mixture of Judaism and Christianity… [we English] had 1688, our quiet revolution, where Parliament exerted its will over the King… it was not the sort of Revolution that France's was…'Liberty, equality, fraternity' – they forgot obligations and duties I think. And then of course the fraternity went missing for a long time.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

On the French Revolution; quoted in '"Les droits de l'homme n'ont pas commencé en France," nous déclare Mme Thatcher', Le Monde (13 July 1989)
Third term as Prime Minister

Thinking, Time

“This is a moment, quite honestly, that I think we reclaim the civil rights movement. It has been so distorted and so turned upside down because we must repair honor and integrity first, I tell you right now. We are on the right side of history. We are on the side of individual freedoms and liberties, and damn it, we will reclaim the civil rights moment. We will take that movement, because we were the people that did it in the first place.”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

The Glenn Beck Program
Premiere Radio Networks
2010-05-26
Beck says his 8-28 rally will "reclaim the civil rights movement. … We were the people that did it in the first place"
2010-05-26
Media Matters for America
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201005260024
Walsh
Joan
Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin's unholy alliance
2010-08-28
Salon
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/joan_walsh/politics/2010/08/28/beck_and_palin_religious_heroes/index.html
reacting to Bertha Lewis of ACORN singing "We Shall Overcome" at an anti Arizona SB 1070 rally
2010s, 2010

People, History, Thinking, Freedom

“Responsible parenthood involves decades devoted to the child’s proper nurture. To sentence a woman to bear a child against her will is an unspeakable violation of her rights: her right to liberty (to the functions of her body), her right to the pursuit of happiness, and, sometimes, her right to life itself, even as a serf. Such a sentence represents the sacrifice of the actual to the potential, of a real human being to a piece of protoplasm, which has no life in the human sense of the term. It is sheer perversion of language for people who demand this sacrifice to call themselves ‘right-to-lifers.’”

Leonard Peikoff (1933) Canadian-American philosopher

Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (1993), Chapter 10: Government
1990s

Life, People, Sense, Happiness

“The Protestants say that it is the duty of every person to read, to understand, and to believe this revelation—that a man should use his reason; but if he honestly concludes that the Bible is not a revelation from God, and dies with that conclusion in his mind, he will be tormented forever. They say:—“Read,” and then add: “Believe, or be damned.” “No matter how unreasonable the Bible may appear to you, you must believe. No matter how impossible the miracles may seem, you must believe. No matter how cruel the laws, your heart must approve them all!” This is what the church calls the liberty of thought. We read the Bible under the scowl and threat of God. We read by the glare of hell.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

The Truth (1896)

God, Law, Hell, Understanding

“Pop, pop, pop! Bom, bom, bom! throughout the day. No time for memorandums now. Go ahead! Liberty and Independence forever.”

Davy Crockett (1786–1836) American politician

Last entry in his diary, (5 March 1836)

Time

“The wielders of power did not speak for it, nor did they naturally serve it. Their interest was to use and develop power, no less natural and necessary than liberty but more dangerous.”

Bernard Bailyn book The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution

Source: The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (1967), Chapter III, POWER AND LIBERTY A THEORY OF POLITICS, p. 59.

Nature

“When we remain silent and fail to act, when we know that silence and inaction is the wrong thing to do because of political considerations, because we might make enemies, because we might alienate the base, because we might provoke a primary challenge, because ad infinitum, ad nauseam, when we succumb to those considerations in spite of what should be greater considerations and imperatives in defense of our institutions and our liberty, we dishonor our principles and forsake our obligations. Those things are far more important than politics.”

Jeff Flake (1962) American politician

Speech in the U.S. Senate (2017)

Silence

“Liberty trains for liberty. Responsibility is the first step in responsibility.”

W.E.B. Du Bois book John Brown

John Brown: A Biography (1909): "The Legacy of John Brown"

Training

“What has become of the descendants of the irresponsible adventurers, the scapegrace sons, the bond servants, the redemptionists and the indentured maidens, the undesirables, and even the criminals, which made up-not all, of course, but nevertheless a considerable part of-the earliest emigrants to these virgin countries?
They have become the leaders of the thought of the world, the vanguard in the march of progress, the inspirers of liberty, the creators of national prosperity, the sponsors of universal education and enlightenment.”

William Randolph Hearst (1863–1951) American newspaper publisher

Communication to the American Crime Study Commission (May 19, 1929)

World, Education, Universe, Parting

“The awful events of September 11, 2001 declared a war we were vaguely aware of, but hadn't really comprehended how near the threat was, and how terrible were the plans of our enemies.
It's a big thing, this war.
It's a fight between a just regard for human dignity and a malevolent force that defiles an honorable religion by disputing God's love for every soul on earth. It's a fight between right and wrong, good and evil.
And should our enemies acquire for their arsenal the chemical, biological and nuclear weapons they seek, this war will become a much bigger thing.
So it is, whether we wished it or not, that we have come to the test of our generation, to our rendezvous with destiny.
And much is expected of us.
We are engaged in a hard struggle against a cruel and determined adversary.
Our enemies have made clear the danger they pose to our security and to the very essence of our culture …liberty.
Only the most deluded of us could doubt the necessity of this war.
Like all wars, this one will have its ups and downs.
But we must fight. We must.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

2000s, 2004, Speech at the Republican National Convention (2004)

Love, God, War, Religion

“It is not on the ruin of liberty that we may (in the future… - "pourra", Fr.) build justice.”

African Spir (1837–1890) Russian philosopher

Source: Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937), p. 46.

Justice, Future

“Tax revenues are up 59 percent since 1980. Because of our economic growth? No. During Carter's four years, we had growth of 37.2 percent; Reagan's five years have given us 30.7 percent. The new revenues are due to four giant Republican tax increases since 1981. All republicans rightly chastised Carter for his $38 billion deficit. But they ignore or even defend deficits of $220 billion, as government spending has grown 10.4 percent per year since Reagan took office, while the federal payroll has zoomed by a quarter of a million bureaucrats… big government has been legitimized in a way the Democrats never could have accomplished. It was tragic to listen to Ronald Reagan on the 1986 campaign trail bragging about his high spending on farm subsidies, welfare, warfare, etc… the IRS has grown bigger, richer, more powerful, and more arrogant. In the words of the founders of our country, our government has "sent hither swarms" of tax gatherers "to harass our people and eat out their substance." His officers jailed the innocent George Hansen, with the President refusing to pardon a great American whose only crime was to defend the Constitution. Reagan's new tax "reform" gives even more power to the IRS. Far from making taxes fairer or simpler, it deceitfully raises more revenue for the government to waste… I want to totally disassociate myself from the policies that have given us unprecedented deficits, massive monetary inflation, indiscriminate military spending, an irrational and unconstitutional foreign policy, zooming foreign aid, the exaltation of international banking, and the attack on our personal liberties and privacy.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Letter to chairman of the RNC http://www.textfiles.com/politics/ron_paul.txt Frank Fahrenkopf (March 1987). 1980s

People, Way, Personality, Country

“Our tasks are definite. The first to see that no man, woman, or child shall go hungry or unsheltered through the approaching winter.
The second is to see that our great benevolent agencies for character building, for hospitalization, for care of children and all their vast number of agencies of voluntary solicitude for the less fortunate are maintained in full strength.
The third is to maintain the bedrock principle of our liberties by the full mobilization of individual and local resources and responsibilities.
The fourth is that we may maintain the spiritual impulses in our people for generous giving and generous service—in the spirit that each is his brother’s keeper.”

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

The Hoover Policies (1937)

Children, People, Winter

“The notion that the Constitution of the United States, designed, among other things, 'to establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility,... and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,' prohibits the States from simply banning this visibly brutal means of eliminating our half-born posterity is quite simply absurd.”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Stenberg v. Carhart (2000) (dissenting).
2000s

Justice

“To this day my seat on a saddle or on the back of a horse is as secure and tireless as in a rocking chair, and far more pleasurable. Sometimes, in later years, when I found myself suddenly on a strange horse in a trooper's saddle, flying for life or liberty in front of pursuit, I blessed the baby lessons of the wild gallops among the beautiful colts.”

Clara Barton (1821–1912) American Civil War nurse

Barton, Clara H. The Story of My Childhood. New York: Baker & Taylor Company, 1907. Reprinted by Arno Press in 1980.

Life, Pleasure, Beauty, Horse

“The dearest ambition of a slave is not liberty but to have a slave of his own.”

Richard Francis Burton (1821–1890) British explorer, geographer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, cartographer, ethnologist, spy, lin…

The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night (1885) When it was the Three Hundred and Sixtieth Night, footnote

“In a free nation, it matters not whether individuals reason well or ill; it is sufficient that they do reason. Truth arises from the collision and from hence springs liberty, which is a security from the effects of reasoning.”

Montesquieu (1689–1755) French social commentator and political thinker

Quoted by Thomas Erskine in the trial of Thomas Paine, 1792

Truth, Spring

“What a curious phenomenon it is, that you can get men to die for the liberty of the world, who will not make the little sacrifice that is needed to free themselves from their own individual bondage.”

Bruce Fairchild Barton (1886–1967) American author, politician and advertising executive

"The Fine, Rare Habit of Learning to Do Without", Every Week magazine, as quoted in http://adventistdigitallibrary.org/islandora/object/adl:352018/datastream/PDF/view The Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol 95, No 31, 1 August 1918, pp. 18-19

Men, World

“My aversion to them…springs from the perniciousness of that sect to society—I hate Papists, as a man, not as a Protestant. If Papists were only enemies to the religion of other men, I should overlook their errors. As they are foes to liberty, I cannot forgive them.”

Horace Walpole (1717–1797) English art historian, man of letters, antiquarian and Whig politician

Memoirs from the Declaration of the War with Spain (1746)

Men, Hate, Religion, Error

“My pro-life position is I believe there's life. It's not necessarily based in religion. I think there's a life there, therefore the notion of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.”

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

Quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle (January 23, 2001)
2000s, 2001

Life, Religion, Thinking, Happiness

“Within the Veil was he born, said I; and there within shall he live, — a Negro and a Negro's son. Holding in that little head — ah, bitterly! — the unbowed pride of a hunted race, clinging with that tiny dimpled hand — ah, wearily! — to a hope not hopeless but unhopeful, and seeing with those bright wondering eyes that peer into my soul a land whose freedom is to us a mockery and whose liberty is a lie.”

W.E.B. Du Bois book The Souls of Black Folk

Source: The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Ch. XI: Of the Passing of the First-Born

Lie, Hope, Soul, Freedom

“Ours is not only a fortunate people, but a very commonsensical people, with vision high, but their feet on the earth, with belief in themselves and faith in God. Whether enemies threaten from without or menaces arise from within, there is some indefinable voice saying, '. Here is the sample of liberty no storms may shake. Here are the altars of freedom no factions shall destroy. It was American in conception, American in its building. It shall be American in the fulfillment. Factional once, we are all American now. And we mean to be all Americans to all the world.”

Warren G. Harding (1865–1923) American politician, 29th president of the United States (in office from 1921 to 1923)

1920s, The American Soldier (1920)

God, People, World, Faith

“Our cause is just. Our union is perfect. Our internal resources are great, and, if necessary, foreign assistance is undoubtedly attainable. — We gratefully acknowledge, as signal instances of the Divine favour towards us, that his Providence would not permit us to be called into this severe controversy, until we were grown up to our present strength, had been previously exercised in warlike operation, and possessed of the means of defending ourselves. With hearts fortified with these animating reflections, we most solemnly, before God and the world, declare that, exerting the utmost energy of those powers, which our beneficent Creator hath graciously bestowed upon us, the arms we have been compelled by our enemies to assume, we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating firmness and perseverence, employ for the preservation of our liberties; being with one mind resolved to die freemen rather than to live slaves.”

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

Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms (1775); Jefferson composed the first draft of this document, but the final work was done by John Dickinson, working with his original draft. Full text online http://www.nationalcenter.org/1775DeclarationofArms.html 1770s

God, World, Exercises, Heart

“Might and spirit will win and incalculable political and social consequences will follow upon victory. Victory must therefore be ours. England is not played out. Her mission is not accomplished. She can, if she would, take the place of esteemed honour among the democracies of the world, and if peace is to come with healing on her wings the democracies of Europe must be her guardians…History, will, in due time, apportion the praise and the blame, but the young men of the country must, for the moment, settle the immediate issue of victory. Let them do it in the spirit of the brave men who have crowned our country with honour in times that have gone. Whoever may be in the wrong, men so inspired will be in the right. The quarrel was not of the people, but the end of it will be the lives and liberties of the people. Should an opportunity arise to enable me to appeal to the pure love of country - which I know is a precious sentiment in all our hearts, keeping it clear of thought which I believe to be alien to real patriotism - I shall gladly take that opportunity. If need be I shall make it for myself. I wish the serious men of the Trade Union, the Brotherhood and similar movements to face their duty. To such it is enough to say 'England has need of you'; to say it in the right way. They will gather to her aid. They will protect her when the war is over, they will see to it that the policies and conditions that make it will go like the mists of a plague and shadows of a pestilence.”

Ramsay MacDonald (1866–1937) British statesman; prime minister of the United Kingdom

Letter to the Mayor of Leicester, declining to speak at a recruitment meeting (September 1914), quoted in David Marquand, Ramsay MacDonald (Metro, 1997), p. 175
1910s

Love, Men, War, People

Quotes about liberty page 5

Quotes about liberty
page 5