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Liberty Quotes

Browse 6578 quotes about Liberty.

Liberty Quotes

“Moral decay first hampers and then strangles honest government, regular commerce, and even the ability to take genuine pleasure in the goods of this world. Compulsion is applied from above as self-discipline relaxes below, and the last liberties expire under the weight of a unitary state.... Since religion has lost its empire over the souls of men, the most prominent boundary that divided good from evil is overthrown; kings and nations are guided by chance and none can say where are the natural limits of despotism and the bound of license.”

“In a state of tranquility, wealth, and luxury, our descendants would forget the arts of war and the noble activity and zeal which made their ancestors invincible. Every art of corruption would be employed to loosen the bond of union which renders our resistance formidable. When the spirit of liberty which now animates our hearts and gives success to our arms is extinct, our numbers will accelerate our ruin and render us easier victims to tyranny.”

“In order to become the master, the politician poses as the servant.”

Political Order Politics Freedom Liberty Masters Politician Greed Corruption Libertarian Servant Libertarianism Election Day Libertarian Party Political Will Political Corruption

Author:Charles de Gaulle

“Corruption, the most infallible symptom of constitutional liberty.”

Liberty Corruption Symptoms Infallible Infallibility

Author:Edward Gibbon

“The fact that the ministerial conspiracy against liberty had risen from corruption was of the utmost importance to the colonists.”

Facts Liberty Importance Corruption Conspiracy Risen Colonists

Book:The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution

Source: The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution

“Corruption, the most infallible symptom of constitutional liberty, was successfully practised; honours, gifts, and immunities were offered and accepted as the price of an episcopal vote; and the condemnation of the Alexandrian primate was artfully represented as the only measure which could restore the peace and union of the catholic church.”

Church Liberty History Vote Catholic Unions Corruption Accepted Honour Symptoms Catholic Church Condemnation Roman Empire Infallible Immunity Primates

Book:The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Source: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

“The sanctity of womanhood is incompatible with social liberty and social claims; and for a woman emancipation means corruption.”

Mean Social Women Liberty Claims Corruption Womanhood Emancipation Sanctity

Book:A Woman at Thirty

Source: A Woman at Thirty

“Trusting as we did to the virtue of the people, the real people, not the politicians and demagogues, we passed through the most responsible and trying scenes, sustained by the bone and sinew of the nation, the laborers of the land, where alone, in these days of Bank rule, and ragocrat corruption, real virtue and love of liberty is to be found.”

People Trying Real Found Nations Liberty Virtue Land Politician Scene And Love Responsible Workers Corruption Bones These Days Laborers

Author:Andrew Jackson

“Luxury, or a refinement on the pleasures and conveniences of life, had long been supposed the source of every corruption in government, and the immediate cause of faction, sedition, civil wars, and the total loss of liberty. It was, therefore, universally regarded as a vice, and was an object of declamation to all satyrists, and severe moralists.”

Source: An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals

“We should be unfaithful to ourselves if we should ever lose sight of the danger to our Liberties if anything partial or extraneous should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections. If an election is to be determined by a majority of a single vote, and that can be procured by a party through artifice or corruption, the Government may be the choice of a party for its own ends, not of the nation for the national good.”

Ifs Should May Ends Government Choices Nations Loses Party Liberty Danger Fairs Vote Sight Independent Election Majority Corruption Determined Purity Voting Virtuous Unfaithful Artifice

Author:John Adams

“Whensoever, therefore, the legislative shall transgress this fundamental rule of society, and either by ambition, fear, folly, or corruption, endeavour to grasp themselves, or put into the hands of any other, an absolute power over the lives, liberties, and estates of the people, by this breach of trust they forfeit the power the people had put into the hands... and it devolves to the people, who have a right to resume their original liberty, and... provide for their own safety and security.”

Source: Two Treatises of Government: With a Supplement, Patriarcha, by Robert Filmer

“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

“I can say across Europe that many principles that have been taken for granted here around free speech, and around civil liberties and an independent judiciary, and fighting corruption, those are principles that, you know, not perfectly but generally, we have tried to apply not just in our own country but also with respect to our foreign policy.”