Liberty Quotations | Page 2

NAFTA and GATT have about as much to do with free trade as the Patriot Act has to do with liberty.

If we can return to a government that the Founders, in their wisdom, envisioned for us, we can return to a government that will allow our economy to thrive again, and our people to live in liberty.

If liberty has any meaning it means freedom to improve.

The Union next to our liberties the most dear. May we all remember that it can only be preserved by respecting the rights of the States, and distributing equally the benefits and burdens of the Union.

Religion flourishes in greater purity, without than with the aid of Government.

I keep telling myself to calm down, to take less of an interest in things and not to get so excited, but I still care a lot about liberty, freedom of speech and expression, and fairness in journalism.

If we don't fight hard enough for the things we stand for, at some point we have to recognize that we don't really stand for them.

The proverb warns that 'You should not bite the hand that feeds you.' But maybe you should, if it prevents you from feeding yourself.

The candle of liberty has always been kept lit by a vigilant few.

My position does not give me the liberty to exclude anything, but my mood tells me there will not be violence.

If government were a product, selling it would be illegal.

Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.

But let her remember, that it is in Britain alone, that laws are equally favourable to liberty and humanity; that it is in Britain the sacred rights of nature have received their most awful ratification.

If someone who is poor says, 'I may not have much money, but for me, what's really important is to have a good television so my family can enjoy and watch,' we should be a little careful and recognize that just like we all have individual liberty to make the choices we want, that we not judge too much on that.

Bureaucracy, the rule of no one, has become the modern form of despotism.

What spectacle can be more edifying or more seasonable, than that of Liberty and Learning, each leaning on the other for their mutual and surest support?

The difference between Liberty and liberties is as great as God and gods.

True liberty consists only in the power of doing what we ought to will, and in not being constrained to do what we ought not to will

Let me be clear: There is no stronger advocate for civil liberties in the Senate than myself.

Our constitutional liberties shall not be sacrificed in our search for greater security, for that is what our enemies and all enemies of freedom and democracy hope to achieve.

The key to the survival of liberty in the modern world is the embrace of multiple identities.

It is the Constitution of the United States that has been undermined, undercut, and is under attack. It is the American people's liberties that is in jeopardy. That is why I wrote 'Losing America.'

Every one of our greatest national treasures, our liberty, enterprise, vitality, wealth, military power, global authority, flow from a surprising source: our ability to give thanks.

To help the poor to a capacity for action and liberty is something essential for one's own health as well as theirs: there is a needful gift they have to offer which cannot be offered so long as they are confined by poverty.

The law, which restrains a man from doing mischief to his fellow citizens, though it diminishes the natural, increases the civil liberty of mankind.

Inequality is as dear to the American heart as liberty itself.

The planter, the farmer, the mechanic, and the laborer... form the great body of the people of the United States, they are the bone and sinew of the country men who love liberty and desire nothing but equal rights and equal laws.

Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it.

Men of New England, I hold you to the doctrines of liberty which ye inherit from your Puritan forefathers.

Is not liberty the destruction of all despotism - including, of course, legal despotism?

As an actor, I think it's always important to separate yourself from your characters because, when you include yourself in a character, you're taking a liberty that you don't really have unless you're life is that incredibly close to the character.

The Italian Revolution was fought first of all to obtain the liberty and unity of the nation, and then, with that achieved, to join the freest and most advanced nations in inaugurating a new era of peace, justice, and joint cooperation in the work of civilization.

Talk is cheap - except when Congress does it.

When they kept you out it was because you were black; when they let you in, it is because you are black. That's progress?

I am often reminded that the wellspring of Vermont liberty flows from Main Street, not State Street.

If we wish to preserve a free society, it is essential that we recognize that the desirability of a particular object is not sufficient justification for the use of coercion.

Our country may be likened to a new house. We lack many things, but we possess the most precious of all - liberty!

To open his lips is crime in a plain citizen.

We cannot make events. Our business is wisely to improve them.

It appears first, that liberty is a natural, and government an adventitious right, because all men were originally free.

Make men wise, and by that very operation you make them free. Civil liberty follows as a consequence of this; no usurped power can stand against the artillery of opinion.

The history of liberty is a history of resistance.

Only by acknowledging the success and sacrifice made by those who came before us can we fully understand what we must do to ensure the liberty of those who will succeed us.

The liberties of none are safe unless the liberties of all are protected.

Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.

Everyone wants to live at the expense of the state. They forget that the state wants to live at the expense of everyone.

The Founders who crafted our Constitution and Bill of Rights were careful to draft a Constitution of limited powers - one that would protect Americans' liberty at all times - both in war, and in peace.

The little platoon of the black community is the church. Our Christian faith is based on individual freedom from sin and the personal decision to find spiritual liberty that leads to a better life here on Earth and for eternity. On Sundays in America, the most conservative people can be found in black churches.

I have always compared our traditions of liberty, like those of Abraham Lincoln and Ho Chi Minh.

Well, take the evolution of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. It began as hackers' rights. Then it became general civil liberties of everybody - government stay away.

Defending birthright citizenship is about being on the right side of liberty. The 14th Amendment is a great legacy of the Republican Party.

I believe that successfully addressing our national security needs while protecting our basic freedoms and civil liberties requires continual Congressional oversight, and I will continue to work to assert the role of this body in carrying out this grave responsibility.

Has there ever been a society which has died of dissent? Several have died of conformity in our lifetime.

One of the things that bothers me most is the growing belief in the country that security is more important than freedom. It ain't.

Life without Liberty is far worse than death.

Unity in things Necessary, Liberty in things Unnecessary, and Charity in all.

Well, we can't afford blindness anymore. There are tens of thousands of thugs who loathe liberty and love death, and want to annihilate Western civilization.

For more than two centuries, the defenders of liberty have put their lives on the line, because they have known that we cannot take our freedoms for granted.

The right to do something does not mean that doing it is right.

But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.

America stands for individual liberty, but that means an ordered liberty.

There are hard choices to be made in balancing the country's security and an individual's liberties. But it is a choice that has to be faced.

Throughout the day no time for memorandums now. Go ahead! Liberty and independence forever.

Citizen participation is a device whereby public officials induce nonpublic individuals to act in a way the officials desire.

As long as I am an American citizen, and as long as American blood runs in these veins, I shall hold myself at liberty to speak, to write, and to publish whatever I please on any subject, being amenable to the laws of my country for the same.

Others indeed may talk, and write, and fight about liberty, and make an outward pretence to it but the free-thinker alone is truly free.

With the blessings of liberty, we have responsibilities to defend it

They who are in the highest places, and have the most power, have the least liberty, because they are the most observed.

A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers.

It's time to take Economics 101 to Washington. We believe in liberty, we believe in limited government, we believe in free enterprise, we believe in family values and the sanctity of human life, and we all believe Washington needs a good dose of Economics 101.

Nothing is more precious than independence and liberty.

The people are the only legitimate fountain of power, and it is from them that the constitutional charter, under which the several branches of government hold their power, is derived.

The power to arrest - to deprive a citizen of liberty - must be used fairly, responsibly, and without bias.

What fools are we, to be besotted with the love of our own trouble, and to hate our liberty and rest!

I feel constricted if I become too much aware of the act of making. Liberty is lost and instead of an instinctual lyrical expression the whole thing becomes arid.

How can you be conservative and justify wiretapping people without a warrant? We're supposed to be the party of personal freedom and civil liberties.

The public good is in nothing more essentially interested, than in the protection of every individual's private rights.

Show me the country that has no strikes and I'll show you the country in which there is no liberty.

The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else.

Liberty is the only thing you can't have unless you give it to others.

There is nothing with which it is so dangerous to take liberties as liberty itself.

Liberty is not merely a privilege to be conferred; it is a habit to be acquired.

Affirmative action based on quotas is wrong - wrong because it is antithetical to the genius of the American idea: individual liberty.

Divine love does not weigh down, nor carry his servant captive and enslaved to the lowest depths, but raises him, supports him and magnifies him above all liberty whatsoever.

In our pledge every day, we pledge one Nation under God with liberty and justice for all.

When the American spirit was in its youth, the language of America was different: Liberty, sir, was the primary object.

A superfluity of wealth, and a train of domestic slaves, naturally banish a sense of general liberty, and nourish the seeds of that kind of independence that usually terminates in aristocracy.

Nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people.

I have very real concerns about the civil liberties implications of ultimately requiring every resident to submit themselves for compulsory fingerprinting or some other biometric test.

An unexamined faith is not worth having, for fundamentalism and uncritical certitude entail the rejection of one of the great human gifts: that of free will, of the liberty to make up our own minds based on evidence and tradition and reason.

Liberty, freedom and democracy are very fuzzy words, but human rights is very specific.

Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: First a right to life, secondly to liberty, and thirdly to property; together with the right to defend them in the best manner they can.

That a man be willing, when others are so too, as far forth as for peace and defense of himself he shall think it necessary, to lay down this right to all things; and be contented with so much liberty against other men, as he would allow other men against himself.

It was the separation of powers upon which the framers placed their hopes for the preservation of the people's liberties. Despite this heritage, the congress has been in too many cases more than willing to walk away from its constitutional powers.

We have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes nonwork.

When goods do not cross borders, soldiers will.

The same liberty that protects me also protects members of the Mafia.

Say what you like about my bloody murderous government,' I says, 'but don't insult me poor bleedin' country.

The desire for liberty has also made itself felt as struggle against domestic tyranny or arbitrary rule.

It is not in the nature of politics that the best men should be elected. The best men do not want to govern their fellowmen.