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Liberty Quotes

Browse 6578 quotes about Liberty.

Liberty Quotes

“Rights are not the language of democracy. Compromise is what democracy is about. Rights are the language of freedom, and are absolute because their role is to protect our liberty. By using the absolute power of freedom to accomplish reforms of democracy, we have undermined democracy and diminished our freedom.”

Language Liberty Roles Democracy Rights Protect Absolutes Accomplish Compromise Reform Absolute Power

Book:The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America

Source: The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America

“When you begin to read a poem you are entering a foreign country whose laws and language and life are a kind of translation of your own; but to accept it because its stews taste exactly like your old mother's hash, or to reject it because the owl-headed goddess of wisdom in its temple is fatter than the Statue of Liberty, is an equal mark of that want of imagination, that inaccessibility to experience, of which each of us who dies a natural death will die.”

“What joins the Americans one to another is not a common ancestry, language or race, but a shared work of the imagination that looks forward to the making of a future, not backward to the insignia of the past. Their enterprise is underwritten by a Constitution that allows for the widest horizons of sight and the broadest range of expression, supports the liberties of the people as opposed to the ambitions of the state, and stands as premise for a narrative rather than plan for an invasion or a monument. The narrative was always plural; not one story, many stories.”

“It must be all the same to the citizens ("ressortissants", Fr.) of a country that their governing (those in power) speak such language or such other ("telle langue ou telle autre", Fr.); likewise that it must be all the same to them that these adhere to such or such religion, so long as a full (or complete) liberty is equally garantee for everyone.”

Long Country Speak Language Liberty Citizens Governing

Author:African Spir

“In South America euphemism appears to be the grisly preserve of violent power. 'Liberty' was the name of the biggest prison in Uruguay under the military dictatorship, while in Chile one of the concentration camps was called 'Dignity.' It was the self-styled 'Peace and Justice' paramilitary group in Chiapas [Mexico] that in 1997 shot 45 peasants in the back, nearly all of them women and children, as they prayed in a church. What have the souls of the south done over the past few decades to deserve quite so much liberty and dignity and peace and justice?”

“To those who think that liberty is a good thing, and that it may someday be possible for people to live in a society fit for free, fully human individuals, a thorough education in the nature of language, its uses and abuses, seems indispensable.”

People Thinking Humans May Use Seems Individual Language Liberty Fit Abuse Good Things Someday Indispensable Thorough Use And Abuse

Author:Aldous Huxley

“Denotation by means of sounds and markings is a remarkable abstraction. Three letters designate God for me; several lines a million things. How easy becomes the manipulation of the universe here, how evident the concentration of the intellectual world! Language is the dynamics of the spiritual realm. One word of command moves armies; the word liberty entire nations.”

“In my judgment the people of no nation can lose their liberty so long as a Bill of Rights like ours survives and its basic purposes are conscientiously interpreted, enforced and respected so as to afford continuous protection against old, as well as new, devices and practices which might thwart those purposes. I fear to see the consequences of the Court's practice of substituting its own concepts of decency and fundamental justice for the language of the Bill of Rights as its point of departure in interpreting and enforcing that Bill of Rights.”

“What finally emerges from the 'clear and present danger' cases is a working principle that the substantive evil must be extremely serious and the degree of imminence extremely high before utterances can be punished...It must be taken as a command of the broadest scope that explicit language, read in the context of a liberty-loving society, will allow.”

Evil Language Justice Liberty Principles Cases Taken Clear Danger Serious Degrees Constitution Command Scope Utterance Explicit

Author:Hugo Black

“But we have yet to make peace basic to our education. The most important subject in the world is hardly taught at all. In the spirit of this passage, the editor has taken the liberty of editing Mr. Cousins' language to make it more gender inclusive.”

World Important Spirit Language Peace Liberty Taken Subjects Taught Gender Editors Passages Editing Cousin Making Peace

Author:Norman Cousins

“Of all the superstitions that affect India, none is so great as that a knowledge of the English language is necessary for imbibing ideas of liberty and developing accuracy to thought.”

Ideas Language Liberty India Developing Superstitions English Language Englishmen Accuracy Imbibing

Book:India of My Dreams

Source: India of My Dreams

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

Different America Spirit Language Liberty Objects Youth Primaries American Revolution American Spirit

Book:Patrick Henry in his speeches and writings and in the words of his contemporaries

Source: Patrick Henry in his speeches and writings and in the words of his contemporaries

“English is the 'language of liberty' for nations emerging from years of cultural oppression.”

Years Language Nations Liberty Oppression Emerging

Author:Vaclav Havel