Quotes about liberty
page 8

“I am convinced that there are more threats to American liberty within the 10 mile radius of my office on Capitol Hill than there are on the rest of the globe.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Texas Straight Talk: On Reinstating the Draft http://antiwar.com/paul/?articleid=14259 (16 February 2009) 2000s, 2006-2009

“It is said we go about the world waging war to promote peace, and yet the price paid is rarely weighed against the failed efforts to make the world a better place. Justifying conscription to promote the cause of liberty is one of the most bizarre notions ever conceived by man! Forced servitude, with the risk of death and serious injury as a price to live free, makes no sense. What right does anyone have to sacrifice the lives of others for some cause of questionable value? Even if well motivated it can’t justify using force on uninterested persons. It’s said that the 18 year old owes it to his country. Hogwash! It just as easily could be argued that a 50 year-old chickenhawk, who promotes war and places the danger on innocent young people, owes a heck of a lot more to the country than the 18 year-old being denied his liberty for a cause that has no justification.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Source: Conscription - The Terrible Price of War, November 21, 2003 http://www.house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec2003/cr112103.htm

Death, War, People, World

“Scarce a month had elapsed since the law was to have gone into effect before it was clear to the discerning that, for all their professions, most of the "better sort" were not genuine Sons of Liberty at all, but timid sycophants, pliant instruments of despotism, far more intent upon the ruin of Mr. Adams and of America in general than any minister could be shown to be.”

Carl L. Becker (1873–1945) American historian

The Eve of the Revolution (1918)

Law

“Look for me in the whirlwind or the storm, look for me all around you, for, with God's grace, I shall come and bring with me countless millions of black slaves who have died in America and the West Indies and the millions in Africa to aid you in the fight for Liberty, Freedom and Life.”

Marcus Garvey (1887–1940) Jamaica-born British political activist, Pan-Africanist, orator, and entrepreneur

First Message to the Negroes of the World from Atlanta Prison" http://www.unia-acl.org/archive/whrlwind.htm (10 February 1925).

Life, God, Freedom, Fight

“Australia has, in its short history, paid a heavy price in human life in the cause of liberty and national survival. No one can foretell what the price will be in South-east Asia.”

Harold Holt (1908–1967) Australian politician, 17th Prime Minister of Australia

statement on the death of Private Errol Noack, first Australian conscript killed in Vietnam, 25 May 1966
As prime minister
Source: The Life and Death of Harold Holt, p. 180.

Life, History

“A man watches a bird flying, and wishes to fly himself, but he cannot, because he has no wings. Even so the will is present with a man to be pure, and blameless, and without spot, and to have no wickedness in him, but to be always with God; but he has not the power. To fly into the air of God and the liberty of the Holy Ghost may be his wish, but unless wings are given him, he cannot. Let us then beseech God to bestow upon us the wings of a dove, even of the Holy Ghost, that we may fly to Him and be at rest, and that He would separate and make to cease from our souls and bodies, that evil wind, which is the sin that dwelleth in the members of our souls and bodies. None but He can do it.”

Macarius of Egypt (300–391) Egyptian Christian monk and hermit

Homily 2. Fifty Spiritual Homilies of Saint Macarius the Egyptian, trans. Arthur J. Mason.
Disputed

God, Soul, Bird, Evil

“Whereas the Americans thought that they were fighting for such high-minded slogans as "liberty" and "justice," they were actually fighting to stuff the money bags of the big bankers. These "free citizens" are, in fact, mere marionettes; their freedom is imaginary, and a brief glance at American work-methods and leisure-time entertainments is enough to prove conclusively that l’homme machine is not merely imminent: it is already the American reality.”

Ludwig Klages (1872–1956) German psychologist and philosopher

Sämtliche Werke, vol. 4, p. 409, as translated by Joseph Pryce

Money, Justice, Reality, Freedom

“Do you wish to be free? Then above all things, love God, love your neighbor, love one another, love the common weal; then you will have true liberty.”

Girolamo Savonarola (1452–1498) Italian Dominican friar and preacher

Reported in Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895) edited by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 378

Love, God

“To make our story shorter than the miniature groom's, he learnt that his own property in himself was in danger; and that, if the patriot’s definition of liberty be true —"it is like the air we breathe, without it we die"—his life was near its termination. A writ was issued against him; and, thanks to a douceur to his valet, two professional gentlemen, as he left his toilet, would deprive his friends at the Clarendon of his company.”

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

Heath's book of Beauty, 1833 (1832)

Life

“A general Dissolution of Principles & Manners will more surely overthrow the Liberties of America than the whole Force of the Common Enemy. While the People are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their Virtue they will be ready to surrender their Liberties to the first external or internal Invader. How necessary then is it for those who are determin'd to transmit the Blessings of Liberty as a fair Inheritance to Posterity, to associate on publick Principles in Support of publick Virtue.”

Samuel Adams (1722–1803) American statesman, Massachusetts governor, and political philosopher

Letter to James Warren (12 February 1779) http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/2094

People, Support

“…the finances of the country is intimately associated with the liberties of the country. It is a powerful leverage by which English liberty has been gradually acquired. Running back into the depths of antiquities for many centuries, it lies at the root of English liberty, and if the House of Commons can by any possibility lose the power of the control of the grants of public money, depend upon it your very liberty will be worth very little in comparison.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Hastings (17 March 1891), quoted in A. W. Hutton and H. J. Cohen (eds.), The Speeches of The Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone on Home Rule, Criminal Law, Welsh and Irish Nationality, National Debt and the Queen's Reign. 1888–1891 (London: Methuen, 1902), p. 343.
1890s

Money, Housing, Dependency, Country

“It is quite useless to declare that all men are born free if you deny that they are born good. Guarantee a man's goodness and his liberty will take care of itself. To guarantee his freedom on condition that you approve of his moral character is formally to abolish all freedom whatsoever, as every man's liberty is at the mercy of a moral indictment which any fool can trump up against everyone who violates custom, whether as a prophet or as a rascal.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Preface
1900s, Major Barbara (1905)

Men, Fools, Freedom

“The laws of certain states …give an ownership in the service of negroes as personal property…. But being men, by the laws of God and nature, they were capable of acquiring liberty—and when the captor in war …thought fit to give them liberty, the gift was not only valid, but irrevocable.”

Alexander Hamilton (1757–1804) Founding Father of the United States

As quoted in Papers of Alexander Hamilton http://www.vindicatingthefounders.com/library/five-founders-on-slavery.html, ed. Harold C. Syrett (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961-), 19:101-2 Philo Camillus no. 2 (1795)

Men, God, War, Law

“A man cannot live intensely except at the cost of the self. Now the bourgeois treasures nothing more highly than the self (rudimentary as his may be). And so at the cost of intensity he achieves his own preservation and security. His harvest is a quiet mind which he prefers to being possessed by God, as he does comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty, and a pleasant temperature to that deathly inner consuming fire. The bourgeois is consequently by nature a creature of weak impulses, anxious, fearful of giving himself away and easy to rule.”

Hermann Hesse book Steppenwolf

Source: Steppenwolf (1927), pp. 51-52

God, Pleasure, Fear, Nature

“Rights give rise to legal claims. Ultimately, the more rights animals are granted, the greater the legal lien exercised on their behalf against the liberty and property of people.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"In Defense of Vick, Man is the Only Top Dog," http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/rights-animals-peta-1836739-human-moral Orange County Register, September 2, 2007. 2000s, 2007

People, Exercises, Animals

“There is a certain enthusiasm in liberty, that makes human nature rise above itself in acts of bravery and heroism.”

Alexander Hamilton book The Farmer Refuted

The Farmer Refuted (1775)

Nature

“This is not only his birthday, but the anniversary of the farewell reception extended to him at the White House by President Adams during his last visit to our country. This day not only recalls his youth and his dashing figure in our Revolution, but it reminds us of the venerable man, half a century later, held in love and admiration by two countries for the sacrifices he had made in the service of liberty.”

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)

Love, Youth, Birthday, Housing

“I also have a message for all Americans: The capture of Saddam Hussein does not mean the end of violence in Iraq. We still face terrorists who would rather go on killing the innocent than accept the rise of liberty in the heart of the Middle East. Such men are a direct threat to the American people, and they will be defeated.”

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

2000s, 2003, Remarks on the Capture of Saddam Hussein (December 2003)

Men, People, Heart

“Lead your child by the hand to the great scenes of nature; teach him on the mountain and in the valley. There he will listen better to your teaching; the liberty will give him greater force to surmount difficulties. But in these hours of liberty it should be nature that teaches rather than you. Do not allow yourself to prevail for the pleasure of success in your teaching; or to desire in the least to proceed when nature diverts him; do not take away in the least the pleasure which she offers him. Let him completely realize that it is nature that teaches, and that you, with your art, do nothing more than walk quietly at her side. When he hears a bird warble or an insect hum on a leaf, then cease your talk; the bird and the insect are teaching; your business is then to be silent.”

Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746–1827) Swiss pedagogue and educational reformer

Diary entry (1774-02-15)

Pleasure, Art, Mountain, Business

“A reduction in the liberty of the least well off cannot be justified even if it is to their economic advantage.”

Nicholas Barr (1943) British economist

Source: Economics Of The Welfare State (Fourth Edition), Chapter 3, Political Theory: Social Justice And The State, p. 49

“At 8 o’clock, the [body] of the hall was nearly filled with an intelligent and respectable looking audience – The exercises commenced with a patriotic song by the Hutchinsons, which was received with great applause. The Rev. H. H. Garnett opened the meeting stating that the black man, a fugitive from Virginia, who was announced to speak would not appear, as a communication had been received yesterday from the South intimating that, for prudential reasons, it would not be proper for that person to appear, as his presence might affect the interests and safety of others in the South, both white persons and colored. He also stated that another fugitive slave, who was at the battle of Bull Run, proposed when the meeting was announced to be present, but for a similar reason he was absent; he had unwillingly fought on the side of Rebellion, but now he was, fortunately where he could raise his voice on the side of Union and universal liberty. The question which now seemed to be prominent in the nation was simply whether the services of black men shall be received in this war, and a speedy victory be accomplished. If the day should ever come when the flag of our country shall be the symbol of universal liberty, the black man should be able to look up to that glorious flag, and say that it was his flag, and his country’s flag; and if the services of the black men were wanted it would be found that they would rush into the ranks, and in a very short time sweep all the rebel party from the face of the country”

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

Douglass Monthly https://web.archive.org/web/20160309192511/http://deadconfederates.com/tag/black-confederates/#_edn2 (March 1862), p. 623 1860s

Men, War, Color, Exercises

“There is an idea, which is not without its advocates, that a vigorous Executive is inconsistent with the genius of republican government. The enlightened well-wishers to this species of government must at least hope that the supposition is destitute of foundation; since they can never admit its truth, without at the same time admitting the condemnation of their own principles. Energy in the Executive is a leading character in the definition of good government. It is essential to the protection of the community against foreign attacks; it is not less essential to the steady administration of the laws; to the protection of property against those irregular and high-handed combinations which sometimes interrupt the ordinary course of justice; to the security of liberty against the enterprises and assaults of ambition, of faction, and of anarchy.”

Alexander Hamilton Federalist Papers

Federalist No. 70 (18 March 1788) http://thomas.loc.gov/home/histdox/fed_70-2.html The Federalist Papers (1787–1788)

Truth, Justice, Law, Hope

“I would not look with favor upon a President working to subvert the first amendment's guarantees of religious liberty. Nor would our system of checks and balances permit him to do so — and neither do I look with favor upon those who would work to subvert Article VI of the Constitution by requiring a religious test — even by indirection — for it. If they disagree with that safeguard they should be out openly working to repeal it.”

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

1960, Speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association

“Why, if (as Boaz maintains) the liberty of a human being to own another should be trumped by equal human rights, the liberty to own large amounts of property should not also be trumped by equal human rights?”

Jeffrey Friedman (political scientist) (1959) American political scientist

Source: “What’s wrong with Libertarianism”, p. 427

“Civil rights, as we may remember, are reducible to three primary heads; the right of personal security; the right of personal liberty; and the right of private property. In a state of slavery, the two last are wholly abolished, the person of the slave being at the absolute disposal of his master; and property, what he is incapable, in that state, either of acquiring, or holding, in his own use. Hence, it will appear how perfectly irreconcilable a state of slavery is to the principles of a democracy, which form the basis and foundation of our government.”

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)

Democracy, Appearance, Personality

“While reasonable men will ungrudgingly submit to such curtailment of their liberties as will promote at least the greater liberty of all, to the exact degree to which such curtailment may become unreasonable will the enforcement of it have to rest on force. Force against reason: reason, because it has the power of enlisting force to fight for it, will win. From the recognition of that truth has come democracy.”

Rockwell Kent (1882–1971) American artist

This Is My Own, p. 130 (1940)

Men, Truth, Democracy, Fight

“Liberty, too, must be limited in order to be possessed.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol (1777)

“There is a battle shaping up in the world – a battle between the forces of archy – of statism, of political rule and authority – and its only alternative – anarchy, the absence of political rule. This battle is the necessary and logical consequence of the battle between individualism and collectivism, between liberty and the state, between freedom and slavery.”

Roy A. Childs, Jr. (1949–1992) American libertarian essayist and critic

“Objectivism and the State: An Open Letter to Ayn Rand,” 1969

World, Freedom

“In the affluent world we have had capitalism in one form or another for a couple of centuries. That is how countries of the West became "the affluent world." Capitalism has given people both the liberty and the incentive to create, produce, and trade, thereby generating preosperity.”

Johan Norberg book In Defense of Global Capitalism

In Defense of Global Capitalism

People, World, Country

“No doubt there is much immature talking and hasty writing and will always be where liberty of speech and press prevails. The political, religious, and social views of any age and even of the most radical members of society, were born, long before their time. Those who invented the alphabet and the printing press are indirectly responsible for much of the violence of a changing social state; but in the same way, they are responsible for the progress of the world, for the enlightenment, for the civilization, and for all that makes the present better than the past.”

Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union

Voltaire (1916)

Age, World, Way, Change

“Grey was the very type of the old whig nobleman, punctiliously honourable and high-minded, and devoted to the constitution and to popular liberty as he understood them. At the same time his views were narrow, he was personally diffident and timorous in reform, and even less democratic than many of his opponents. (For his general opinions and comments on passing events see LE STRANGE'S Correspondence of Princess Lieven and Earl Grey, 1824–34, London, 1890, a collection of his letters to the wife of the Russian ambassador, with whom he maintained a most intimate friendship.) At the time when, after his long exclusion from office, he became prime minister, he had outlived the power of feeling or inspiring enthusiasm; but it was perhaps fortunate that at a moment of so much popular excitement the ministry was led by so cold a man. He was a great orator and a great debater, and, like all great orators, was very nervous just before rising to deliver his greatest speeches. He was exceedingly ready in apprehending complicated statements of fact, and in bringing them home to his hearers.”

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

J. A. Hamilton, 'Grey, Charles, second Earl Grey, Viscount Howick, and Baron Grey (1764–1845)', Dictionary of National Biography (1890).
About

Friendship, Feeling, Home, Time

“That spirit I have faith will prevail. America is not going to abandon its principles or desert its ideals. The foundation on which they are built will remain firm. I believe that the principle which your organization represents is their main support. It seems to me perfectly plain that the authority of law, the right to equality, liberty and property, under American institutions, have for their foundation reverence for God. If we could imagine that to be swept away, these institutions of our American government could not long survive. But that reverence will not fail. It will abide. Unnumbered organizations of which your own is one exist for its promotion. In the inevitable longing of the human soul to do right is the secure guarantee of our American institutions. By maintaining a society to promote reverence for the Holy Name you are performing both a pious and a patriotic service.”

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

1920s, Authority and Religious Liberty (1924)

God, Faith, Law, Soul

“Liberty is the power that we have over ourselves.”

Hugo Grotius (1583–1645) philosopher

As quoted in The Word Book Complete Word Power Library, Volume 1 (1981), p. 324

“Liberty once again must become more important to us than the desire for security and material comfort. Personal safety and economic prosperity can only come as the consequence of liberty. They cannot be provided by an authoritarian government… The foundation for a police state has been put in place, and it's urgent we mobilize resistance before it's too late… Central planning is intellectually bankrupt – and it has bankrupted our country and undermined our moral principles. Respect for individual liberty and dignity is the only answer to government force, force that serves the politically and economically powerful. Our planners and rulers are not geniuses, but rather demagogues and would-be dictators -- always performing their tasks with a cover of humanitarian rhetoric… The collapse of the Soviet system came swiftly and dramatically, without a bloody conflict… It came as no surprise, however, to the devotees of freedom who have understood for decades that socialism was doomed to fail… And so too will the welfare/warfare state fail… A free society is based on the key principle that the government, the president, the Congress, the courts, and the bureaucrats are incapable of knowing what is best for each and every one of us… A government as a referee is proper, but a government that uses arbitrary force to direct every aspect of society threatens freedom… The time has come for a modern approach to achieving those values that all civilized societies seek. Only in a free society do individuals have the best chance to seek virtue, strive for excellence, improve their economic well-being, and achieve personal happiness… The worthy goals of civilization can only be achieved by freedom loving individuals. When government uses force, liberty is sacrificed and the goals are lost. It is freedom that is the source of all creative energy. If I am to be your president, these are the goals I would seek. I reject the notion that we need a president to run our lives, plan the economy, or police the world… It is much more important to protect individual liberty and privacy than to make government even more secretive and powerful.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Video Address Announcing 2008 Presidential Exploratory Committee, February 19, 2007 http://blog.4president.org/2008/2007/02/ron_paul_video_.html http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPlPT4bncq8 2000s, 2006-2009

Love, Secret, World, Freedom

“The running up of this queer flag caused much fear to the families of the Californians established in the neighborhood of Sonoma, Petaluma, and San Rafael, for they realized that the instigators of the uprising that had disturbed the tranquility of the frontier had made up their minds to rule, come what might, and, as the rumor had been spread far and wide that Ide and his associates had raised the bear flag in order to enjoy complete liberty and not be obliged to any civilized governments, the ranchers, who would have remained unperturbed should the American flag have been run up in Sonoma and who would have considered it as the harbinger of a period of progress and enlightenment, seized their machetes and guns and fled to the woods, determined to await a propitious moment for getting rid of the disturbers of the peace. Strange to relate, the first victim that the ranchers sacrificed was the painter of the "Bear Flag," young Thomas Cowie…”

Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo (1807–1890) Californian military commander, politician, and rancher

As quoted in The Literature of California: Native American beginnings to 1945 (2000) ed., Jack Hicks
Historical and Personal Memoirs Relating to Alta California (1875)

Fear, Family, Peace

“I think that the principle of the Conservative Party is jealousy of liberty and of the people, only qualified by fear; but I think the principle of the Liberal Party is trust in the people, only qualified by prudence.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Speech at the opening of the Palmerston Club, Oxford (December 1878) as quoted in "Gladstone's Conundrums; The Statesman Answers Sundry Interesting Questions" in The New York Times (9 February 1879) http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9C03E4DB123EE73BBC4153DFB4668382669FDE 1870s

People, Fear, Jealousy, Thinking

“No right was deemed by the fathers of the Government more sacred than the right of speech. It was in their eyes, as in the eyes of all thoughtful men, the great moral renovator of society and government. Daniel Webster called it a homebred right, a fireside privilege. Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one's thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down. They know its power. Thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers, founded in injustice and wrong, are sure to tremble, if men are allowed to reason of righteousness, temperance, and of a judgment to come in their presence. Slavery cannot tolerate free speech. Five years of its exercise would banish the auction block and break every chain in the South. They will have none of it there, for they have the power. But shall it be so here?”

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

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

Men, Exercises

“At the foundation of our civil liberty lies the principle which denies to government officials an exceptional position before the law and which subjects them to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen.”

Louis Brandeis (1856–1941) American Supreme Court Justice

Dissent, Burdeau v. McDowell, 256 U.S. 465, 477 (1921).
Judicial opinions

Law

“Let them revere nothing but religion, morality and liberty.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

Letter to Abigail Adams (15 April 1776) http://www.masshist.org/digitaladams/aea/cfm/doc.cfm?id=L17760415ja 1770s

Religion

“Individual liberty is individual power, and as the power of a community is a mass compounded of individual powers, the nation which enjoys the most freedom must necessarily be in proportion to its numbers the most powerful nation.”

John Quincy Adams (1767–1848) American politician, 6th president of the United States (in office from 1825 to 1829)

Letter to James Lloyd (1 October 1822)

Communication, Freedom

“In every age its [liberty's] progress has been beset by its natural enemies, by ignorance and superstition, by lust of conquest and by love of ease, by the strong man's craving for power, and the poor man's craving for food.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) British politician and historian

p, 125
The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877)

Love, Age, Food, Nature

“The Judge is intrusted with the liberties of the people, and his saying is the Law.”

Sir Thomas Twisden, 1st Baronet (1602–1683) English politician

King v. Wagstaffe (1665), Sir Thomas Ray. Rep. 138.

People, Law

“You are a guardian and protector of liberty. You may be the only thing that stands between freedom and slavery. And if you can, join those who are willing to take a stand in Washington, DC on 9-12. If not, stand together somewhere in your community on 9-12. Get involved. They're very well organized in their communities, and I didn't realize how many socialist communities there were.”

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

The Glenn Beck Program
Premiere Radio Networks
2009-09-01
Beck implores listeners to attend 9/12 rally because they "may be the only thing that stands between freedom and slavery"
Media Matters for America
2009-09-01
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/200909010011
2000s, 2009

Communication, Freedom

“There is no "slippery slope" toward loss of liberty, only a long staircase where each step down must first be tolerated by the American people and their leaders.”

Alan Simpson (1931) American politician

As quoted in The New York Times (26 September 1982).

People, Loss

“Pyrrhus: No law demands mercy to prisoners
Agamemnon: Though the law forbids it not, yet decency forbids it.
Pyr: The victor is at liberty to do whatever he likes.
Agam.: To whom much is allowed, it is least suitable to act wantonly.”
Pyrrhus: Lex nulla capto parcit aut poenam impedit. Agamemnon: Quod non vetat lex, hoc vetat fieri pudor. Pyr: Quodcumque libuit facere victori licet. Agam.: Minimum decet libere cui multum licet.

Seneca the Younger Agamemnon

Troades (The Trojan Women), lines 333-336
Tragedies

Law

“There are, very crudely, two factions in the Cortes. One side are the traditionalists. They're comprised of the monarchists, the pious, and the old-fashioned. They're called the serviles. It's an insulting nickname, like calling a man a Tory. Serviles means the slaves, and they wish to see the king restored and the church triumphant. They are the faction of landlords, privilege, and aristocracy. The serviles are opposed by the liberalles, who are so called because they are forever talking about liberty. The liberalles want to see a Spain in which the people's wishes are more influential than the decrees of a tyrannical church or the whim of a despotic king. His Brittanic Majesty's government has no official view in these discussions. We merely wish to see a Spanish government willing to pursue the war against Napoleon.”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Lord William Pumphrey, p. 162
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Fury (2006)

War, People, Fashion

“BECAUSE no People can be truly happy, though under the greatest Enjoyment of Civil Liberties, if abridged of the Freedom of their Consciences, as to their Religious Profession and Worship: And Almighty God being the only Lord of Conscience, Father of Lights and Spirits; and the Author as well as Object of all divine Knowledge, Faith and Worship, who only doth enlighten the Minds, and persuade and convince the Understandings of People, I do hereby grant and declare, That no Person or Persons, inhabiting in this Province or Territories, who shall confess and acknowledge One almighty God, the Creator, Upholder and Ruler of the World; and profess him or themselves obliged to live quietly under the Civil Government, shall be in any Case molested or prejudiced, in his or their Person or Estate, because of his or their conscientious Persuasion or Practice, nor be compelled to frequent or maintain any religious Worship, Place or Ministry, contrary to his or their Mind, or to do or suffer any other Act or Thing, contrary to their religious Persuasion.”

William Penn (1644–1718) English real estate entrepreneur, philosopher, early Quaker and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania Charter of Privileges (28 October 1701)

God, People, World, Faith

“If the defenders of privilege desire to exclude from this country the opponents of privilege, they should see to it that Congress omits the taking of the eleventh census. For the eleventh census, if taken, will undoubtedly emphasize these two lessons of the tenth: first, that foreign immigration does not increase dishonesty and violence among us, but does increase the love of liberty; second, that the population of the world is gradually dividing into two classes, Anarchists and criminals.”

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

Individual Liberty (1926), Anarchism and Crime

Love, World, Country

“The military forces of a free country may be considered under three general descriptions — 1. The militia. 2. the navy — and 3. the regular troops — and the whole ought ever to be, and understood to be, in strict subordination to the civil authority; and that regular troops, and select corps, ought not to be kept up without evident necessity. Stipulations in the constitution to this effect, are perhaps, too general to be of much service, except merely to impress on the minds of the people and soldiery, that the military ought ever to be subject to the civil authority, &c. But particular attention, and many more definite stipulations, are highly necessary to render the military safe, and yet useful in a free government; and in a federal republic, where the people meet in distinct assemblies, many stipulations are necessary to keep a part from transgressing, which would be unnecessary checks against the whole met in one legislature, in one entire government. — A militia, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves, and render regular troops in a great measure unnecessary. The powers to form and arm the militia, to appoint their officers, and to command their services, are very important; nor ought they in a confederated republic to be lodged, solely, in any one member of the government. First, the constitution ought to secure a genuine and guard against a select militia, by providing that the militia shall always be kept well organized, armed, and disciplined, and include, according to the past and general usuage of the states, all men capable of bearing arms; and that all regulations tending to render this general militia useless and defenceless, by establishing select corps of militia, or distinct bodies of military men, not having permanent interests and attachments in the community to be avoided. I am persuaded, I need not multiply words to convince you of the value and solidity of this principle, as it respects general liberty, and the duration of a free and mild government: having this principle well fixed by the constitution, then the federal head may prescribe a general uniform plan, on which the respective states shall form and train the militia, appoint their officers and solely manage them, except when called into the service of the union, and when called into that service, they may be commanded and governed by the union. This arrangement combines energy and safety in it; it places the sword in the hands of the solid interest of the community, and not in the hands of men destitute of property, of principle, or of attachment to the society and government, who often form the select corps of peace or ordinary establishments: by it, the militia are the people, immediately under the management of the state governments, but on a uniform federal plan, and called into the service, command, and government of the union, when necessary for the common defence and general tranquility. But, say gentlemen, the general militia are for the most part employed at home in their private concerns, cannot well be called out, or be depended upon; that we must have a select militia; that is, as I understand it, particular corps or bodies of young men, and of men who have but little to do at home, particularly armed and disciplined in some measure, at the public expence, and always ready to take the field. These corps, not much unlike regular troops, will ever produce an inattention to the general militia; and the consequence has ever been, and always must be, that the substantial men, having families and property, will generally be without arms, without knowing the use of them, and defenceless; whereas, to preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them; nor does it follow from this, that all promiscuously must go into actual service on every occasion. The mind that aims at a select militia, must be influenced by a truly anti-republican principle; and when we see many men disposed to practice upon it, whenever they can prevail, no wonder true republicans are for carefully guarding against it. As a farther check, it may be proper to add, that the militia of any state shall not remain in the service of the union, beyond a given period, without the express consent of the state legislature.”

Richard Henry Lee (1732–1794) American statesman

Additional Letters From The Federal Farmer, 169 (1788)

Men, People, Family, Peace

“The militia is the natural defence of a free country against sudden foreign invasions, domestic insurrections, and domestic usurpations of power by rulers. It is against sound policy for a free people to keep up large military establishments and standing armies in time of peace, both from the enormous expenses, with which they are attended, and the facile means, which they afford to ambitious and unprincipled rulers, to subvert the government, or trample upon the rights of the people. The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them. And yet, though this truth would seem so clear, and the importance of a well regulated militia would seem so undeniable, it cannot be disguised, that among the American people there is a growing indifference to any system of militia discipline, and a strong disposition, from a sense of its burthens, to be rid of all regulations. How it is practicable to keep the people duly armed without some organization, it is difficult to see. There is certainly no small danger, that indifference may lead to disgust, and disgust to contempt; and thus gradually undermine all the protection intended by this clause of our national bill of rights.”

Joseph Story book Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States

Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1833), p. 708 http://books.google.com/books?id=Ennw5lvHmcoC&pg=PA708&dq=%22The+right+of+the+citizens+to+keep%22.

People, Truth, Peace, Nature

“Pursuit of happiness, unalienable pursuit… right to life liberty and… A black moonless night; Jimmy Herf is walking alone up South Street. Behind the wharfhouses ships raise shadowy skeletons against the night. "By Jesus I admit I'm stumped," he says aloud. All these April nights combing the streets alone a skyscraper has obsessed him, a grooved building jutting up with uncountable bright windows falling onto him out of a scudding sky. Typewriters rain continual nickelplated confetti in his ears.”

John Dos Passos book Manhattan Transfer

Source: Manhattan Transfer (1925), p. 365

Life, Night, Happiness

“The freedom secured by the Constitution consists, in one of its essential dimensions, of the right of the individual not to be injured by the unlawful exercise of governmental power. The mandate for segregated schools, Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U. S. 483 (1954); a wrongful invasion of the home, Silverman v. United States, 365 U. S. 505 (1961); or punishing a protester whose views offend others, Texas v. Johnson, 491 U. S. 397 (1989); and scores of other examples teach that individual liberty has constitutional protection, and that liberty’s full extent and meaning may remain yet to be discovered and affirmed. Yet freedom does not stop with individual rights. Our constitutional system embraces, too, the right of citizens to debate so they can learn and decide and then, through the political process, act in concert to try to shape the course of their own times and the course of a nation that must strive always to make freedom ever greater and more secure. Here Michigan voters acted in concert and statewide to seek consensus and adopt a policy on a difficult subject against a historical background of race in America that has been a source of tragedy and persisting injustice. That history demands that we continue to learn, to listen, and to remain open to new approaches if we are to aspire always to a constitutional order in which all persons are treated with fairness and equal dignity. Were the Court to rule that the question addressed by Michigan voters is too sensitive or complex to be within the grasp of the electorate; or that the policies at issue remain too delicate to be resolved save by university officials or faculties, acting at some remove from immediate public scru-tiny and control; or that these matters are so arcane that the electorate’s power must be limited because the people cannot prudently exercise that power even after a full debate, that holding would be an unprecedented restriction on the exercise of a fundamental right held not just by one person but by all in common. It is the right to speak and debate and learn and then, as a matter of political will, to act through a lawful electoral process.”

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

Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, 572 U. S. ____, (2016), plurality opinion.

People, Education, School, Law

“The RIGHT OF NATURE, which Writers commonly call Jus Naturale, is the Liberty each man hath, to use his own power, as he will himself, for the preservation of his own Nature; that is to say, of his own Life; and consequently, of doing any thing, which in his own Judgement, and Reason, he shall conceive to be the aptest means thereunto.”

Thomas Hobbes book Leviathan

The First Part, Chapter 14, p. 64
Leviathan (1651)

Life, Nature

“What exactly did these words, of both the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address, mean? They meant that there was no difference, between one human being, and another human being, that made one the master and the other the servant. As Jefferson once put it, some men are not born with saddles on their backs, nor are others born booted and spurred to ride them. That a man or woman rides a horse corresponds with the difference in their natures. No injustice is done to the horse! That an ox should pull a plow, while a man walks behind, is according to nature. In these cases, servitude follows from the laws of nature. But these same laws of nature tell us that when a human being is subjected to other human beings as if he were a horse or an ox, the laws of nature are violated. All human beings are accordingly equal in their right not to be enslaved, and in their right to be in secure possession of their lives, liberties, and property. To this end they have a right to be governed only by laws to which they have consented.”

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

2000s, God Bless America (2008), The American Proposition

Men, Law, Nature, Horse

“n a word, this new office of Imperator was nothing else than the primitive regal office re-established; for it was those very restrictions--as respected the temporal and local limitation of power, the collegiate arrangement, and the cooperation of the senate or the community that was necessary for certain cases-- which distinguished the consul from the king.(17) There is hardly a trait of the new monarchy which was not found in the old: the union of the supreme military, judicial, and administrative authority in the hands of the prince; a religious presidency over the commonwealth; the right of issuing ordinances with binding power; the reduction of the senate to a council of state; the revival of the patriciate and of the praefecture of the city. But still more striking than these analogies is the internal similarity of the monarchy of Servius Tullius and the monarchy of Caesar; if those old kings of Rome with all their plenitude of power had yet been rulers of a free community and themselves the protectors of the commons against the nobility, Caesar too had not come to destroy liberty but to fulfil it, and primarily to break the intolerable yoke of the aristocracy. Nor need it surprise us that Caesar, anything but a political antiquary, went back five hundred years to find the model for his new state; for, seeing that the highest office of the Roman commonwealth had remained at all times a kingship restricted by a number of special laws, the idea of the regal office itself had by no means become obsolete. At very various periods and from very different sides-- in the decemviral power, in the Sullan regency, and in Caesar's own dictatorship--there had been during the republic a practical recurrence to it; indeed by a certain logical necessity, whenever an exceptional power seemed requisite there emerged, in contradistinction to the usual limited -imperium-, the unlimited -imperium- which was simply nothing else than the regal power.”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

On the Re-Establishment of the Monarchy
Vol. 4. pt. 2, Translated by W. P. Dickson
The History of Rome - Volume 4: Part 2

Law, Communication, Idea, Time

“I accept that in a free society you have to justify reductions in people's liberties. I accept that, bearing in mind my starting point is that the most important human right is the right to life…”

John Howard (1939) 25th Prime Minister of Australia

Terrorism Summit (Friday, 5 August 2005)

Life, People

“An individual who finds that he enjoys seeing others in positions of lesser liberty understands that he has no claim whatever to this enjoyment.”

John Rawls book A Theory of Justice

Source: A Theory of Justice (1971; 1975; 1999), Chapter I, Section 6, pg. 31

Understanding

“South Africa’s Constitution is descriptive, not prescriptive—full of pitch-perfect verbal obesities that provide little by way of recourse for those whose natural, individual rights are violated. As a protector of individual rights to life, liberty and property, it’s worse than useless—a wordy and worthless document.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

“ South Africa Land Theft: Constitution All But Allows It, https://townhall.com/columnists/ilanamercer/2018/03/11/south-africa-land-theft-constitution-all-but-allows-it-n2459680” Townhall.com, March 11, 2018. 2010s, 2018

Life, Way, Nature, Perfection

“Secondly, what does justice require? In the end, it requires liberty.”

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

1963, Address at the Free University of Berlin

Justice

“Our call to people of goodwill and justice, and especially to all gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender people, and those who support and love us —our allies in the fight for liberty and justice for all— is to take action.”

Jeffrey Montgomery (1953–2016) American LGBT rights activist and public relations executive

America...You Kill Me

Love, People, Justice, Support

“I am afraid that if you look intently at what is moving towards Great Britain, you will see that the only choice open is the old grim choice our forbears had to face, namely, whether we shall submit or whether we shall prepare. Whether we shall submit to the will of a stronger nation or whether we shall prepare to defend our rights, our liberties and indeed our lives.”

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

BBC broadcast (16 November 1934) on German rearmament, quoted in Martin Gilbert, Prophet of Truth: Winston S. Churchill, 1922–1939 (London: Minerva, 1990), p. 566
The 1930s

“For I can assure you that in any war, even if it does not become a world war, I do not think there will be a victor who can do much. There may be one less badly off than the other. One side or the other may have sued first for peace. The destruction will be so great, the moral erosion of the experience will be so great, that it is idle to think you’ll find liberty, walking serenely among the corpses of the dead and the agonies of the dying. There are other things to do than that if we want democracy and freedom to live; there have to be other things to do than that.”

Norman Thomas (1884–1968) American Presbyterian minister and socialist

Debate with Barry Goldwater, University of Arizona campus, Tucson, Arizona, November 1961

War, World, Peace, Democracy

“A man shows a narrowness of mind and becomes unworthy of his humanity by refusing any privilege to his fellow man because he is colored. Every prejudice entertained, every breach of justice and charity against a fellow-citizen because of color is a stain flung upon the banner of our liberty that floats over us.”

John Ireland (bishop) (1838–1918) Catholic bishop

Sermon at St. Augustine Catholic Church (1890)

Justice, Color

“The magnitude of the service which you rendered to your country and to humanity is beyond estimation. Sharp outlines here and there we know, but the whole account of the World War would be on a scale so stupendous that it could never be recorded. In the victory which was finally gained by you and your foreign comrades, you represented on the battle field the united efforts of our whole people. You were there as the result of a great resurgence of the old American spirit, which manifested itself in a thousand ways, by the pouring out of vast sums of money in credits and charities, by the organization and quickening of every hand in our extended industries, by the expansion of agriculture until it met the demands of famishing continents, by the manufacture of an unending stream of munitions and supplies, by the creation of vast fleets of war and transport ships, and, finally, when the tide of battle was turning against our associates, by bringing into action a great armed force on sea and land of a character that the world had never seen before, which, when it finally took its place in the line, never ceased to advance, carrying the cause of liberty to a triumphant conclusion. You reaffirmed the position of this Nation in the estimation of mankind. You saved civilization from a gigantic reverse. Nobody says now that Americans can not fight.”

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

1920s, Toleration and Liberalism (1925)

Money, War, People, World

“Cognitive liberty begins at home, behind your eyes and between your ears. The first act of liberation is to step forward, and be counted as one of us.”

Mark Pesce (1962) American writer

Tales of Un-DARE-ing Do http://hyperreal.org/~mpesce/undaringdo.html

Home

“We tax our ingenuity to draw nice distinctions. We are told of political liberty — of religious liberty — of moral liberty. Yet, after all, is there more than one liberty; and these divisions, are they not the more and the less of the same thing? The provision we have referred to in our political institutions, as framed in accordance with the principle inherent in ourselves, insures to us all of free action that statues can insure.”

Frances Wright (1795–1852) American activist

Independence Day speech (1828)

Drawing

“Puritanism, believing itself quick with the seed of religious liberty, laid, without knowing it, the egg of democracy.”

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat

Literary Essays, vol. II (1870–1890), New England Two Centuries Ago

Democracy

“The shrine is vowed to freedom, but, my friend,
Freedom is but a means to gain an end.
Freedom should build the temple, but the shrine
Be consecrate to thought still more divine.
The human bliss which angel hopes foresaw
Is liberty to comprehend the law.
Give, then, thy book a larger scope and frame,
Comprising means and end in Truth's great name.”

Margaret Fuller (1810–1850) American feminist, poet, author, and activist

Life Without and Life Within (1859), Freedom and Truth

Truth, Books, Law, Hope

“The unhappy legacies of authoritarianism can be removed only if the concept of absolute power as the basis of government is replaced by the concept of confidence as the mainspring of political authority: the confidence of the people in their right and ability to decide the destiny of their nation, mutual confidence between the people and their leaders and, most important of all, confidence in the principles of justice, liberty and human rights.”

Aung San Suu Kyi (1945) State Counsellor of Myanmar and Leader of the National League for Democracy

In Quest of Democracy (1991)

People, Justice, Confidence

“However it may have happened, it is an excellent thing, and I do not like it the worse for its being so very triumphant a peace for France…The sense of humiliation in the Government here will be certainly lost in the extreme popularity of the measure…this rascally people are quite overjoyed at receiving from Ministers what, if they had dared to ask it, could not have been refused them at almost any period of the war. Will the Ministers have the impudence to say that there was any time (much less that when Bonaparte's offer was refused) when we might not have had terms as good? Bonaparte's triumph is now complete indeed, and, since there is to be no political liberty in the world, I really believe he is the fittest person to be the master.”

Charles James Fox (1749–1806) British Whig statesman

Letter to T. Maitland (1801), quoted in L. G. Mitchell, Charles James Fox (London: Penguin, 1997), pp. 169-170.
1800s

War, People, World, Peace

“God grant, that not only the Love of Liberty, but a thorough Knowledge of the Rights of Man, may pervade all the Nations of the Earth, so that a Philosopher may set his Foot anywhere on its Surface, and say, 'This is my Country.”

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

Letter to David Hartley (December 4, 1789); reported in Albert H. Smyth, ed., The Writings of Benjamin Franklin (1907), Volume 10, p. 72; often quoted as, "Where liberty dwells, there is my country".
Decade unclear

Love, God, Knowledge, Country

“With equal pleasure I have as often taken notice, that Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country, to one united people; a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs, and who, by their joint counsels, arms and efforts, fighting side by side throughout a long and bloody war, have nobly established their general Liberty and Independence.”

John Jay Federalist Papers

1780s, The Federalist Papers, Federalist No. 2 (1787)

War, People, Pleasure, Religion

“The American political system is a remarkable example of the coexistence — sometimes harmonious, more often uncomfortable — of all three dispositions. Americans, we might say, are anarchists in their values (privacy, liberty, individualism, property, and rights); realists in their means (power, law, coercive mediation, and sovereign adjudication); and minimalists in their political temper (tolerance wariness of government, pluralism, and such institutionalizations of caution as the separation of powers and judicial review.”

Benjamin R. Barber (1939–2017) US political scientist

Source: Strong democracy: Participatory politics for a new age (2003), p. 5

Law

“Philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe explained that “no one is as hopelessly enslaved as the person who thinks he’s free.” That’s becoming an apt description for Americans who are oblivious to—or ignorant of—the liberties we’ve lost.”

Walter E. Williams (1936) American economist, commentator, and academic

2010s, American Contempt for Liberty (2015)

Thinking, Personality

“Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been, and ever will be, pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit.”

Alexis De Tocqueville book Democracy in America

Source: Democracy in America, Volume I (1835), Chapter XV-IXX, Chapter XV.

Justice

“From the fact that most Americans want others to fund or subsidize their healthcare, it does not follow that they have such a right. A need is not a right. A man's life, liberty and the products of his labor were not intended to be up for grabs by grubby, greedy majorities.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

“The Defunct Foundations of the Republic,” http://www.ilanamercer.com/phprunner/public_article_list_view.php?editid1=528 WorldNetDaily.com, January 1, 2010. 2010s, 2010

Life

“The militarization of our law enforcement is due to an unprecedented expansion of government power in this realm. … Americans must never sacrifice their liberty for an illusive and dangerous, or false, security.”

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

2014-08-14
Rand Paul: We Must Demilitarize the Police
Rand
Paul
Time
http://time.com/3111474/rand-paul-ferguson-police/
2015-04-09
2010s

Law, Falseness

“The claim "I deserve my income," as applied to an individual's pretax income in free market economies, has considerable intuitive force. If true, it suggests a powerful moral claim against taxation for redistributive purposes, on the intuitively plausible supposition that a just economic order ought to ensure that people get what they morally deserve.
But, however intuitive these claims may be, they are unjustified. In two of his important works of political economy, The Constitution of Liberty (see esp. ch. 6), and Law, Legislation, and Liberty (vol. 2), Hayek explained why free market prices cannot, and should not, track claims of individual moral desert.”

Elizabeth S. Anderson (1959) professor of philosophy and womens' studies

How Not to Complain About Taxes (III): "I deserve my pretax income" http://left2right.typepad.com/main/2005/01/how_not_to_comp_1.html (January 26, 2005)

People, Law

“In his 1975 book, The Limits of Liberty, Buchanan returned to the study of constitutions, but now approached them with a somewhat more cynical (realistic?) Hobbesian perspective. His later books with Geoffrey Brennan (1980,1985) also emphasized the importance of constitutional rules as constraints on the selfish pursuits of individual actors, and as means for controlling that public sector beast—Leviathan. This concern with constitutional decision making and constitutional rules can be regarded as one of the salient characteristics of James Buchanan’s research throughout his career.”

Dennis Mueller (1940) American economist

James Buchanan, Gordon Tullock, and The Calculus (2012)

Books, Decision, Study, Selfishness

“Those who suffer from the abuse of drugs have themselves to blame for it. This does not mean that society is absolved from active concern for their plight. It does mean that their plight is subordinate to the plight of those citizens who do not experiment with drugs but whose life, liberty, and property are substantially affected by the illegalization of the drugs sought after by the minority.”

William F. Buckley Jr. (1925–2008) American conservative author and commentator

The War On Drugs Is Lost (1995)

Life, Suffering

“Religious groups should exert themselves in behalf of the unemployed and should be zealous in defense of civil liberties, but they merely weaken their efforts when they enter into combinations with communists.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

Property (1935)

Effort

“How could liberty ever have established itself amongst us? Apart from several tragic scenes, the revolution has been nothing but a web of farcical scenes… But it is in the nation’s senate that the most grotesque parades have taken place.”

Jean-Paul Marat (1743–1793) politician and journalist during the French Revolution

L'Ami du peuple, no.672 (1792-07-14)

“Now, what is the policy? It is, so far as we know, to interfere with the established fiscal policy of this country in order to promote the union of the Empire—that is to say, it is to affect gravely, if not to sap, the foundations of the edifice in order to promote the stability of the structure. (Laughter and cheers)…Had free trade failed us in the 57 years of experience we have had of it, had we found ourselves with a shrinking trade, a diminished revenue, a population on the verge of poverty, we should long ago have reviewed the whole system of free trade and reconsidered it. But we find ourselves, so far as all statistics can give us a clue, at a pinnacle of wealth such as no nation of the size has ever reached in the history of the world…The Empire is built up on free trade…your Empire is founded on the condition, and it could not have existed until now except on that condition, that every self-governing part of it shall have the right to work out its own prosperity by its own methods. I do not know why it should enter the heads of any statesman to deny that liberty to the United Kingdom.”

Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery (1847–1929) British politician

Speech to the Liberal League on 12 June 1903, repudiating Chamberlain's proposals, reported in The Times (13 June 1903), p. 8.

World, History, Laughter, Parting

“I believe that the love of freedom and the hatred of oppression under-girds and vitalizes the whole republican movement. The principles of our fathers in regard to human liberty and equality still live in the hearts of their descendants, and will find appropriate expression and suitable exponents.”

Owen Lovejoy (1811–1864) American politician

As quoted in His Brother's Blood: Speeches and Writings, 1838&ndash;64 https://books.google.com/books?id=qMEv8DNXVbIC&pg=PA158 (2004), edited by William Frederick Moore and Jane Ann Moore, p. 158 1850s, Speech at the Joliet Convention in Illinois (June 1858)

Love, Freedom, Heart

“The Welsh made a very good and a very hard fight against the English in self-defence, and what was the consequence? That the English were obliged to surround your territory with great castles; and the effect of this has been that, as far as I can reckon, more by far than one-half of the great remains of the castles in the whole island south of the Tweed are castles that surround Wales. That shows that Wales was inhabited by men, and by men who valued and were disposed to struggle for their liberties.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the Eisteddfod in Wrexham (8 September 1888), quoted in A. W. Hutton and H. J. Cohen (eds.), The Speeches of The Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone on Home Rule, Criminal Law, Welsh and Irish Nationality, National Debt and the Queen's Reign. 1888–1891 (London: Methuen, 1902), p. 61.
1880s

Men, Fight

“Limiting the liberty of each by the like liberty of all, excludes a wide range of improper actions, but does not exclude certain other improper ones.”

Herbert Spencer book Social Statics

Pt. II, Ch. 4 : Derivation of a First Principle, § 4
Social Statics (1851)

“In a single instant, we realized that this will be a decisive decade in the history of liberty, that we've been called to a unique role in human events. Rarely has the world faced a choice more clear or consequential.”

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

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

World, History, Decision

“Where the people fear the government you have tyranny. Where the government fears the people you have liberty.”

John Basil Barnhill

Indictment of Socialism (#3) http://debs.indstate.edu/b262b3_1914.pdf, transcript of Barnhill-Tichenor Debate on Socialism (1914) This quote is often erroneously attributed to Thomas Jefferson

People, Fear

“Where the forms of civil, religious and political liberty still exist, they must be strengthened and given new power over the hearts as well as over the minds of men. Faith must not be lost, and courage must not be lacking. The call is for every civilized human being who believes in justice, in liberty and in public morals. The bell is ringing!”

Nicholas Murray Butler (1862–1947) American philosopher, diplomat, and educator

Address The bell is ringing
Liberty-Equality-Fraternity (1942)

Men, Faith, Justice, Courage

“Mr. Vice President, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Ambassador Goldberg, distinguished Members of the leadership of the Congress, distinguished Governors and mayors, my fellow countrymen. We have called the Congress here this afternoon not only to mark a very historic occasion, but to settle a very old issue that is in dispute. That issue is, to what congressional district does Liberty Island really belong; Congressman Farbstein or Congressman Gallagher? It will be settled by whoever of the two can walk first to the top of the Statue of Liberty. This bill that we will sign today is not a revolutionary bill. It does not affect the lives of millions. It will not reshape the structure of our daily lives, or really add importantly to either our wealth or our power. Yet it is still one of the most important acts of this Congress and of this administration. For it does repair a very deep and painful flaw in the fabric of American justice. It corrects a cruel and enduring wrong in the conduct of the American nation. Speaker McCormack and Congressman Celler almost 40 years ago first pointed that out in their maiden speeches in the Congress. And this measure that we will sign today will really make us truer to ourselves both as a country and as a people. It will strengthen us in a hundred unseen ways.”

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

1960s, Remarks at the signing of the Immigration Bill (1965)

Pain, People, Justice, Way

“I am not going to talk about patriotism, duty, liberty, and the defense of freedom — because that's all dung to a soldier.”

David Gemmell book Legend

Source: Drenai series, Legend, Pt 1: Against the Horde, Ch. 12

Freedom

“No doubt, I am proud of the people. I am from the people and I am the son of the people. I will work for the sake of the people. I will sacrifice my life for the liberty of this people and safeguarding, protecting and preserving it from all evils.”

Abd al-Karim Qasim (1914–1963) Prime Minister of Iraq

Speech delivered at the second congress of the peace partisans (April 14, 1959).
Principles of the 14th July Revolution (1959)

Life, People, Evil

“Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have.”

Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878–1969) American pastor

As quoted in The Home Book of Quotations, Classical and Modern (1937) edited by Burton Egbert Stevenson

“Question: As a doctor, is it meaningful to you when somebody say that healthcare is a right, or that people have a right to good medical care?
Ron Paul: That's incorrect, because you don't have a right to the fruits of somebody else's labor. You don't have a right to a house, you don't have a right to a job, you don't have a right to medical care. You have a right to your life, you have your right to your liberty, you have a right to keep what your earn. And that's what produces prosperity. So you want equal justice. And this is not hard for me to argue, because if you really are compassionate and you care about people, the freer the society the more prosperous it is, and more likely that you are going to have medical care… When you turn it over to central economic planning, they're bound to make mistake. The bureaucrats and the special interests and the Halliburtons are gonna make the money. Whether it's war, or Katrina, these noncompetitive contracts, the bureaucrats make a lot of money and you end up with inefficiency.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

All Things Considered, NPR, July 25, 2007 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12224561 2000s, 2006-2009

Life, Money, War, People

“We cannot suppose that our opposition has made a corrupt and dissipated nation more friendly to America, or created in them a greater respect for the rights of mankind. We can therefore expect a restoration and establishment of our privileges, and a compensation for the injuries we have received, from their want of power, from their fears, and not from their virtues. The unanimity and valor, which will effect an honorable peace, can render a future contest for our liberties unnecessary. He who has strength to chain down the wolf is a madman if he let him loose without drawing his teeth and paring his nails.”

Samuel Adams (1722–1803) American statesman, Massachusetts governor, and political philosopher

Speech about Declaration of Independence (1776)

Fear, Peace, Wolf, Future

“Had the Pilgrim Fathers been met on Plymouth Rock by immigration officials; had their children been placed immediately in good free schools, and given the care of doctors, dentists, and nurses; had they found themselves in infinitely better circumstances than they had ever enjoyed in England, indulging in undreamed-of luxuries, and taught by kind-hearted philanthropists,—what pioneer virtues would they have developed, what sons would they have bred, what honours would history have accorded them? If our early settlers were masterful, they earned the right to mastery, and the price they paid for it was endurance. To the sacrifices which they made, to their high courage and heroic labours, we owe law, liberty, and well-being.”

Agnes Repplier (1855–1950) American essayist

in "The Modest Immigrant" (1916)

Children, School, Law, History

“It [America] was founded and I hope that it resurges the notion of liberty, the notion of freedom, the notion of a system that treats everyone equally. I think we move further and further away from that not closer and closer and that if we could all focus on that that would be the focus and we could actually accomplish that. And that’s what I talk about all the time. As governor of New Mexico I like to think that on a daily basis it was about a system that was gonna treat everybody equally as opposed to politics which you know is hit and miss and it’s politics it’s who you know as opposed to a system that provides that equality.”

Gary Johnson (1953) American politician, businessman, and 29th Governor of New Mexico

Statement made to representatives of the Pagan Newswire Collective (PNC)
2011-10-16
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/paganswithdisabilities/2011/10/full-transcript-of-qa-with-presidential-candidate-gary-johnson/
2012-02-24
2011

Hope, Thinking, Freedom, Time