Quotessence
Home / Topics / Liberty Quotes

Liberty Quotes

Browse 6578 quotes about Liberty.

Related topics

MenGovernmentLibertarianPeopleFreedomLibertarianismIfsLawRightsStatesIndividualPoliticalWorldCountryHumansMayShouldThinkingAmericaPoliticsEconomicGivingNationsMeanConstitutionReligiousCivil LibertiesJusticeWarEconomicsBelieveWantHas BeensFreedom And LibertyCitizensDemocracyKnowsPropertyDoeSecurityWayLongPrinciplesFirstsTyrannyVirtueWellsMindPersonsForceIndividual LibertyMadeOrderReasonEndsNeedsIdeasMoralFreedom LibertyOpinionReligious LibertyHandsProtectSelfUnitedUseSlaveryFormHeartValuesOughtSocialRevolutionTwoConscienceSlaveCausesFactsSpiritAuthorityMatterTodayFightingStillsUnited StatesCommonInterestGivenWould BeChildrenDutyEarthEvilIndependenceResponsibilitySoulSpeechImportantInstitutionsLittlesmore

Liberty Quotes

“No man - prince, peasant, pope - has all the light, who says else is a mountebank. I claim no private lien on truth, only a liberty to seek it, prove it in debate, and to be wrong a thousand times to reach a single rightness. It is that liberty they fear. They want us to be driven to God like sheep, not running to him like lovers, shouting joy!”

MenWantLightRunningJoyLibertyLoversThousandProveClaimsDrivenDebateSheepPopeWant UPeasantsShoutingProve It
Author:Morris West
Create image

“Your pretended fear lest error should step in, is like the man that would keep all the wine out of the country lest men should be drunk. It will be found an unjust and unwise jealousy, to deny a man the liberty he hath by nature upon a supposition that he may abuse it.”

MenShouldMayCountryFoundLibertyStepsHe ManAbuseWineErrorsDenyDrunkUnjustUnwiseSupposition
Book:Memoirs of the Protector, Oliver Cromwell: And of His Sons, Richard and Henry
Create image

“There is no hate without fear. Hate is crystallized fear, fear's dividend, fear objectivized. We hate what we fear and so where hate is, fear is lurking. Thus we hate what threatens our person, our liberty, our privacy, our income, our popularity, our vanity and our dreams and plans for ourselves. If we can isolate this element in what we hate we may be able to cease from hating... Hate is the consequence of fear; we fear something before we hate; a child who fears noises becomes the man who hates them.”

IfsMenMayChildrenPersonsDreamHateLibertyPlansElementsConsequenceCeaseIncomeNoiseVanityPrivacyPopularityOur DreamsDividendsLurkingNo Hate
Author:Cyril Connolly
Create image

“At Genoa, the word Liberty may be read over the front of the prisons and on the chains of the galley-slaves. This application of the device is good and just. It is indeed only malefactors of all estates who prevent the citizen from being free. In the country in which all such men were in the galleys, the most perfect liberty would be enjoyed.”

MenMayCountryWould BePerfectLibertyFrontsCitizensPrisonSlaveChainsEnjoyedDevicesApplicationEstatesBeing Free
Book:On the Social Contract
Create image

“You are a free man, and let no organization come between you and your best interests. Do not let any man, or any body of men, tell you where you shall work, or where you shall not work, when you shall work, or when, you shall not work. If a man wants to belong to a labor organization, let him belong. If he does not want to belong to a labor organization, let him have perfect liberty to stay out. You own yourself. Let no man put a manacle on your hand, or foot, or head, or heart.”

IfsMenWantHeartDoeBodyHandsInterestPerfectLibertyFeetLaborOrganizationFree ManLabor Day
Book:The Battle for Bread: A Series of Sermons Relating to Labor and Capital
Create image

“Experience shows that the frequent use of severe punishment has never rendered a people better. The death of a criminal is a less effective means of restraining crimes than the permanent example of a man deprived of his liberty during the whole of his life to make amends for the injury he has done to the public.”

PeopleMenMeanDoneWholeUseShowsLibertyCrimeExampleCriminalsPunishmentPermanentInjurySevereDeprivedDeath PenaltyAmendsRestraining
Author:Catherine the Great
Create image

“For any man to match above his rank is but to sell his liberty.”

MenLibertySellsWedlock
Book:Introduction; Essay on the dramatick writings of Massinger, by John Ferriar; Commendatory verses on Massinger; A list of Massinger's plays; Glossarial index. The virgin-martyr. The unnatural combat. The Duke of Milan
Create image

“Christianity excludes malignity, subdues selfishness, regulates the passions, subordinates the appetites, quickens the intellect, exalts the affections. It promotes industry, honesty, truth, purity, kindness. It humbles the proud, exalts the lowly, upholds law, favors liberty, is essential to it, and would unite men in one great brotherhood. It is the breath of life to social and civil well-being here, and spreads the azure of that heaven into whose unfathomed depths the eye if faith loves to look.”

IfsMenWellsLooksEyeLawPassionHeavenSocialLibertyChristianityKindnessHonestyIndustryProudEssentialsBreathsDepthAffectionSpreadIntellectFavorsWell BeingSelfishnessPurityAppetiteBrotherhoodSubordinatesTruth HonestyAzureFaith In Love
Author:Mark Hopkins
Create image

“it is impossible for any mind of common honesty not to be revolted by the contradictions in their principles and practice. They inveigh against the governments of Europe, because, as they say, they favor the powerful and oppress the weak. ... [yet] you will see them with one hand hoisting the cap of liberty, and with the other flogging their slaves. You will see them one hour lecturing their mob on the indefeasible rights of man, and the next driving from their homes the children of the soil, whom they have bound themselves to protect by the most solemn treaties.”

MenMindChildrenHomeHandsGovernmentNextHoursPowerfulCommonLibertyPrinciplesPracticeRightsImpossibleHonestyProtectEuropeWeakSlaveBoundsFavorsDrivingSoilHypocrisyContradictionSolemnCapsTreatiesOne HourLecturingFlogging
Author:Frances Trollope
Create image

“The liberty of the press would be an empty sound, and no man would venture to write on any subject, however, pure his purpose, without an attorney at one elbow and a counsel at the other. From minds thus subdued by the fear of punishment, there could issue no works of genius to expand the empire of human reason.”

MenWritingMindHumansReasonWould BeLawPurposeSoundLibertyIssuesSubjectsMediaCrimeGeniusPureSpeechEmptyConstitutionPressesPunishmentEmpiresVenturePersecutionAttorneyElbowsHuman Reason
Author:Thomas Erskine, 1st Baron Erskine
Create image

“I never thought it was right to call up a man and try him because he erred in doctrine, it looks too much like methodism and not like Latter day Saintism. Methodists have creeds which a man must believe or be kicked out of their church. I want the liberty of believing as I please, it feels so good not to be tramelled.”

MenWantFeelsTryingBelieveLooksChurchLibertyToo MuchPleaseDoctrineLatterCreedsLatter DaysMethodistsLatter Day Saints
Author:Joseph Smith, Jr.
Create image

“The liberty I mean is social freedom. It is that state of things in which liberty is secured by the equality of restraint. A constitution of things in which the liberty of no one man, and no body of men, and no number of men, can find means to trespass on the liberty of any person, or any description of persons, in the society. This kind of liberty is, indeed, but another name for justice.”

MenKindMeanPersonsStatesPhilosophyBodyPoliticalNamesSocialJusticeNumbersLibertyConstitutionClassicDescriptionOne ManRestraintFind MePolitical PhilosophySecured
Book:The Portable Edmund Burke
Create image

“What was it that obliged Jerome to write his book, Concerning Illustrious Men? It was the common reproach of old cast upon Christians, 'That they were all poor, weak, unlearned men.' The sort of men sometime called 'Puritans' in the English nation have been reproached with the same character. . . But when truth shall have liberty to speak, it will be known that Christianity never was more expressed unto the life than in the lives of the persons that have been thus reproached.”

MenWritingPersonsHas BeensBookCharacterChristianSpeakNationsPoorCommonKnownLibertyChristianityWeakCastsObligedReproachPuritan
Author:Cotton Mather
Create image

“It is not the right of property which is protected, but the right to property. Property, per se, has no rights; but the individual - the man - has three great rights, equally sacred from arbitrary interference: the right to his life, the right to his liberty, the right to his property The three rights are so bound together as to be essentially one right. To give a man his life but to deny him his liberty, is to take from him all that makes his life worth living. To give him his liberty but take from him the property which is the fruit and badge of his liberty is to still leave him a slave.”

MenGivingStillsTogetherThreeIndividualLibertyRightsHe ManSacredPropertySlaveFruitBoundsDenyProtectedArbitraryWorth LivingInterferenceBadgesLife Worth Living
Author:George Sutherland
Create image

“The theory behind representative government is that superior men-or at least men not inferior to the average in ability and integrity-are chosen to manage the public business, and that they carry on this work with reasonable intelligence and honest. There is little support for that theory in known facts.”

MenLittlesFactsGovernmentAbilityBehindsKnownLibertySupportHonestTheoryIntegrityAverageChosenSuperiorsManageReasonableRepresentativesInferiorsSuperior ManRepresentative Government
Author:H. L. Mencken
Create image

“If the union of these States, and the liberties of this people, shall be lost, it is but little to any one man of fifty-two yearsof age, but a great deal to the thirty millions of people who inhabit these United States, and to their posterity in all coming time.”

PeopleIfsMenLittlesTwoStatesAgeLostUnitedDealsLibertyMillionsUnited StatesUnionsThirtyFiftyOne ManPosterity
Book:The collected works of Abraham Lincoln
Create image

“By academic freedom I understand the right to search for truth and to publish and teach what one holds to be true. This right implies also a duty: one must not conceal any part of what on has recognized to be true. It is evident that any restriction on academic freedom acts in such a way as to hamper the dissemination of knowledge among the people and thereby impedes national judgment and action.”

PeopleMenWayArtWisdomTruthAgeActionSchoolLyingJusticeFreedomEducationLibertyKnowledgeTeachTeachingHonestyDutyJudgmentBeing TrueAcademicEvidentPublishRestrictionSearch For TruthHamperDisseminationAcademic Freedom
Author:Albert Einstein
Create image

“I believe in human liberty as I believe in the wine of life. There is no salvation for men in the pitiful condescension of industrial masters. Guardians have no place in a land of freemen.”

MenBelieveHumansI BelieveLibertyLandMastersSalvationWineI Believe InGuardianPitifulFreemanCondescension
Book:Works: ¬The new freedom of call for the emancipation of the generous energies of a people
Create image

“... woman's narrow and purist attitude toward life makes her a greater danger to liberty wherever she has political power. Man haslong overcome the superstitions that still engulf women.”

MenStillsPoliticalPoliticsAttitudeLibertyGreaterDangerOvercomingSuperstitionsPolitical PowerSuffrageWoman SuffragePower Man
Book:Anarchy and the Sex Question: Essays on Women and Emancipation, 1896–1926
Create image

“It is not enough that France should be regarded as a country which enjoys the remains of a freedom acquired long ago. If she is still to count in the world--and if she does not intend to, she may as well perish--she must be seen by her own citizens and by all men as an ever-flowing source of liberty. There must not be a single genuine lover of freedom in the whole world who can have a valid reason for hating France.”

IfsMenWorldShouldWellsMayLongDoeStillsCountryReasonEnoughWholeHateEnjoyLibertySourceLoversCitizensRemainsGenuineWhole WorldFranceLong Ago
Book:Selected Essays, 1934-1943: Historical, Political, and Moral Writings
Create image

“A people may prefer a free government, but if by momentary discouragement or temporary panic, or a fit of enthusiasm for an individual, they can be induced to lay their liberties at the feet of even a great man, or trust him with powers to subvert their institutions, in all these cases they are unfit for liberty.”

PeopleIfsMenMayGovernmentIndividualLibertyCasesFeetFitInstitutionsLaysEnthusiasmGreat MenTemporaryPanicDiscouragementMomentaryFree Government
Book:On Liberty, Utilitarianism and Other Essays
Create image

“Every man who is not for us in this prolonged struggle for liberty is responsible for the present degradation of the mothers of the race. It is pitiful to see how few men ever have made our cause their own, but while leaving us to fight our battle alone, they have been unsparing in their criticism of every failure. Of all the battles for liberty in the long past, woman only has been left to fight her own, without help and with all the powers of earth and heaven, human and divine, arrayed against her.”

MenHumansLongHas BeensMadeHelpingEarthPastMotherFightingLeftHeavenCausesRaceLibertyStruggleDivineBattleCriticismResponsibleLeavingEvery ManDegradationPitifulMale Dominance
Book:History of Woman Suffrage ...: 1883-1900
Create image