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Liberty Quotes

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Liberty Quotes

“The conflict between the principle of liberty and the fact of slavery is coming gradually to an issue. Slavery has now the power, and falls into convulsions at the approach of freedom. That the fall of slavery is predetermined in the counsels of Omnipotence I cannot doubt; it is a part of the great moral improvement in the condition of man, attested by all the records of history. But the conflict will be terrible, and the progress of improvement perhaps retrograde before its final progress to consummation.”

Source: Memoirs of John Quincy Adams: Comprising Portions of His Diary from 1795 to 1848

“It has been the fashion to speak of the conflict between human rights and property rights, and from this it has come to be widely believed that the use of private property is tainted with evil and should not be espoused by rational and civilized men... the only dependable foundation of personal liberty is the personal economic security of private property. The Good Society.”

“Men have always been obliged to fight to preserve liberty. Constitutions and laws do not safeguard liberty. It can be preserved only by a tolerant people, and this means eternal conflict.”

People Men Mean Law Fighting Liberty Conflict Eternal Constitution Preserves Obliged

Book:Crime: Its Cause and Treatment

Source: Crime: Its Cause and Treatment

“A rioter with a Molotov cocktail in his hands is not fighting for civil rights any more than a Klansman with a sheet on his back and mask on his face. They are both more or less what the law declares them: lawbreakers, destroyers of constitutional rights and liberties and ultimately destroyers of a free America.”

Source: Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1966

“When you're in this type of conflict, when you're at war, civil liberties are treated differently.”

War Liberty Type Conflict Treated Civil Liberties

Author:Trent Lott

“Complaints are everywhere heard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens, equally the friends of public and private faith, and of public and personal liberty, that our governments are too unstable, that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority.”

Source: The Federalist Papers: A Collection of Essays Written in Favour of the New Constitution