Home / Topics / Liberty Quotes

Liberty Quotes

Browse 6578 quotes about Liberty.

Liberty Quotes

“May it not be asked of every intelligent friend to the liberties of his country, whether the power exercised in such an act as this ought not to produce great and universal alarm? Whether a rigid execution of such an act, in time past, would not have repressed that information and communication among the people which is indispensable to the just exercise of their electoral rights? And whether such an act, if made perpetual, and enforced with rigor, would not, in time to come, either destroy our free system of government, or prepare a convulsion that might prove equally fatal to it?”

Source: The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution: As Recommended by the General Convention at Philadelphia in 1787. Together with the Journal of the Federal Convention, Luther Martin's Letter, Yates's Minutes, Congressional Opinions, Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of '98-'99, and Other Illustrations of the Constitution

“What produces the general good is always terrible or seems bizarre when begun too soon. The Revolution must stop when it has perfected public happiness and liberty through the laws.”

Seems Law Liberty Produce Revolution Terrible Bizarre

Author:Louis Antoine de Saint-Just

“Capitalism has given people both the liberty and the incentive to create, produce, and trade, thereby generating prosperity.”

People Given Liberty Produce Capitalism Trade Prosperity Incentives

Book:In Defence of Global Capitalism

Source: In Defence of Global Capitalism

“Englishmen Francis Galton to describe the "science" of bettering human stock and the elimination of unwanted characteristics... and individuals. Galton proposed societal intervention for the furtherance of "racial quality," maintaining that "Jews are specialized for a parasitical existence upon other nations" and that "except by sterilization I cannot yet see any way of checking the produce of the unfit who are allowed their liberty and are below the reach of moral control.”

Way Humans Individual Nations Existence Quality Liberty Moral Produce Jew Characteristics Maintaining Intervention Englishmen Elimination Unwanted Sterilization

Author:Francis Galton

“Freedom of speech is the great bulwark of liberty; they prosper and die together: And it is the terror of traitors and oppressors, and a barrier against them. It produces excellent writers, and encourages men of fine genius.”

Men Together Dies Liberty Produce Fine Genius Speech Terror Excellent Barriers Freedom Of Speech Traitor Oppressors

Author:Benjamin Franklin

“Excessive liberty and excessive servitude are equally dangerous, and produce nearly the same effect.”

Liberty Effects Dangerous Produce Excess Servitude

Author:Zoroaster

“Democracy is liberty - a liberty which does not infringe on the liberty nor encroach on the rights of others; a liberty which maintains strict discipline, and makes law its guarantee and the basis of its exercise. This alone is true liberty; this alone can produce true democracy.”

Doe Law Liberty Democracy Rights Produce Discipline Exercise Bases Guarantees Strict True Democracy

Author:Chiang Kai-shek

“Political liberty is only good insofar as it produces private liberty.”

Government Political Liberty Produce

Author:Samuel Johnson

“An invaluable little book.... What Makes a Terrorist uses standard tools of economics and statistical analysis to get at the truth about terrorism.... Krueger finds one familiar fact in all his numbers. Countries with fewer civil liberties tend to produce more terrorists.”

Littles Book Country Facts Use Numbers Liberty Produce Standards Economics Tools Terrorism Terrorist Familiar Analysis Fewer Civil Liberties Invaluable

Author:Daniel Finkelstein

“Nothing is so contagious as example; never was there any considerable good or ill done that does not produce its like. We imitate good actions through emulation, and had ones through a malignity in our nature, which shame conceals, and example sets at liberty.”

Doe Done Action Liberty Example Produce Shame Ill Contagious Good Actions Emulation

Author:Francois de La Rochefoucauld

“We wish that this column, rising towards heaven among the pointed spires of so many temples dedicated to God, may contribute also to produce in all minds a pious feeling of dependence and gratitude. We wish, finally, that the last object to the sight of him who leaves his native shore, and the first to gladden his who revisits it, may be something which shall remind him of the liberty and the glory of his country. Let it rise! let it rise, till it meet the sun in his coming; let the earliest light of the morning gild it, and the parting day linger and play on its summit!”

Source: An Address Delivered at the Completion of the Bunker Hill Monument, June 17, 1843

“Democracy turns upon and devours itself. Universal suffrage, in theory the palladium of our liberties, becomes the assurance of our slavery. And that slavery will grow more and more abject and ignoble as the differential birth rate, the deliberate encouragement of mendicancy and the failure of popular education produce a larger and larger mass of prehensile half-wits, and so make the demagogues more and more secure.”

“Government planning not only fails; it tends to produce outcomes that are the opposite of what its proponents say that they favor. The only stable and productive social system is one that embraces human liberty in its totality, and defends the market economy, private property, sound money, and peaceful international relations, while opposing government intervention as economically and socially destructive.”

“The foundations of liberty are private property and the rule of law; this system guarantees the fewest possible forms of injustice, produces the greatest material and cultural progress, most effectively stems violence and provides the greatest respect for human rights. According to this concept of liberalism, freedom is a single, unified concept. Political and economic liberties are as inseparable as the two sides of a medal.”