Quotes on Liberty, Freedom, & America
"Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves."
~Abraham Lincoln
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"Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed."
~Martin Luther King, Jr.
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"You can protect your liberties in this world only by protecting the other man's freedom. You can be free only if I am free."
~Clarence S. Darrow
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"So far as a person thinks; they are free."
~Ralph Waldo Emerson
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"Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err. It passes my comprehension how human beings, be they ever so experienced and able, can delight in depriving other human beings of that precious right."
~Mahatma Gandhi
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"If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom: and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that, too."
~W. Somerset Maugham
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"No man is free who is not a master of himself."
~Epictetus
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"Liberty will not descend to a people; a people must raise themselves to liberty; it is a blessing that must be earned before it can be enjoyed."
~Charles Caleb Colton
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"There can be no real freedom without the freedom to fail."
~Eric Hoffer
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"A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him."
~Ezra Pound
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"In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility -- I welcome it."
~John F. Kennedy
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"Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it."
~George Bernard Shaw
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"The people never give up their liberties, but under some delusion."
~Edmund Burke
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"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it."
~Thomas Jefferson
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"Liberty can not be preserved without a general knowledge among the people."
~John Adams
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"It is not one man nor a million, but the spirit of liberty that must be preserved. The waves which dash upon the shore are, one by one, broken, but the ocean conquers nevertheless. It overwhelms the Armada, it wears out the rock. In like manner, whatever the struggle of individuals, the great cause will gather strength."
~Lord Byron
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"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
~Benjamin Franklin
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"What light is to the eyes -- what air is to the lungs -- what love is to the heart, liberty is to the soul of man."
~Robert Green Ingersoll
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"The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time."
~Thomas Jefferson
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"It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own."
~Thomas Jefferson
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"Over grown military establishments are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty."
~George Washington
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"The shallow consider liberty a release from all law, from every constraint. The wise man sees in it, on the contrary, the potent Law of Laws."
~Walt Whitman
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"Liberty has never come from government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it. The history of liberty is a history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of limitations of governmental power, not the increase of it."
~Woodrow T. Wilson
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"I would rather belong to a poor nation that was free than to a rich nation that had ceased to be in love with liberty."
~Woodrow T. Wilson
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"An educational method that shall have liberty as its basis must intervene to help the child to a conquest of liberty. That is to say, his training must be such as shall help him to diminish as much as possible the social bonds which limit his activity."
~Maria Montessori
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"He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself."
~Thomas Paine
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"Once we roared like lions for liberty; now we bleat like sheep for security! The solution for America's problem is not in terms of big government, but it is in big men over whom nobody stands in control but God."
~Norman Vincent Paele
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"A well governed appetite is the greater part of liberty."
~Seneca
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"The approach of liberty makes even an old man brave."
~Seneca
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"Of all the varieties of virtues, liberalism is the most beloved."
~Aristotle
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"We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But if that drop was not in the ocean, I think the ocean would be less because of that missing drop. I do not agree with the big way of doing things."
~Mother Teresa
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"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us finish the work ;we are in."
~Abraham Lincoln
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"Common sense is the knack of seeing things as they are, and doing things as they ought to be done."
~Josh Billings
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"All truth, in the long run, is only common sense clarified."
~Thomas Huxley
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"To see what is in front of one's nose requires a constant struggle."
~George Orwell
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"Life becomes real only when we begin to face and solve our own problems. Until then we only swim in circles in a large fantasy world which tends to make us very tired of living. Don't waste energy! Face life now!"
~Unknown
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"Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them."
~Ralph Waldo Emerson
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"Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees all others."
~Winston Churchill
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"The most glorious moments in your life are not the so-called days of success, but rather those days when out of dejection and despair you feel rise in you a challenge to life, and the promise of future accomplishments."
~Gustave Flaubert
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"If the human intellect is allowed to impose a preconceived pattern on
society, if our powers of reasoning are allowed to lay claim to a
monopoly of creative effort… then we must not be surprised if society,
as such, ceases to function as a creative force."
~Friedrich Hayek
