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Liberty Quotes

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Liberty Quotes

“Republicanism is not the phantom of a deluded imagination. On the contrary, laws, under no form of government, are better supported, liberty and property better secured, or happiness more effectually dispensed to mankind.”

Government Happiness Form Law Imagination Liberty Mankind Security Property Contrary Republic Forms Of Government Phantoms Secured Deluded Republicanism

Book:Maxims of Washington: Political, Social, Moral, and Religious

Source: Maxims of Washington: Political, Social, Moral, and Religious

“Their poverty secured their freedom, since our desires and our possessions are the strongest fetters of despotism.”

Desire Freedom Liberty Poverty Possession Strongest Despotism Secured Fetters

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 commotions that have taken place in America, as far as they are yet known to me, offer nothing threatening. They are a proof that the people have liberty enough, and I could not wish them less than they have. If the happiness of the mass of the people can be secured at the expense of a little tempest now and then, or even of a little blood, it will be a precious purchase. 'Malo libertatem periculosam quam quietem servitutem.' Let common sense and common honesty have fair play, and they will soon set things to rights.”

Source: Correspondence

“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.”

Source: The Portable Edmund Burke

“The right of ordinary citizens to possess weapons is the most extraordinary, most controversial, and least understood of those liberties secured by Englishmen and bequeathed to their American colonists. It lies at the very heart of the relationship between the individual and his fellows, and between the individual and his government.”

Heart Government Lying Individual Liberty Citizens Weapons Ordinary Understood Fellows Extraordinary Englishmen Controversial Second Amendment Secured Ordinary Citizens Colonists

Book:To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origins of an Anglo-American Right

Source: To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origins of an Anglo-American Right

“[A] republic . . . [is] a government, in which the property of the public, or people, and of every one of them was secure and protected by law . . . implies liberty; because property cannot be secured unless the man be at liberty to acquire, use or part with it, at his discretion, and unless he have his personal liberty of life and limb, motion and rest, for that purpose.”

People Men Use Government Law Purpose Freedom Liberty He Man Property Secure Acquire Republic Protected Limbs Discretion Secured Personal Liberty

Book:The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations

Source: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations

“Property must be secured, or liberty cannot exist.”

Liberty Property Patriot Private Property Property Rights Secured

Book:The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations

Source: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations

“The rights of Englishmen are derived from God, not from king or Parliament, and would be secured by the study of history, law, and tradition.”

Would Be Law Liberty Study Rights Kings Tradition Parliament Englishmen Secured

Author:John Adams

“We are bound to maintain public liberty, and, by the example of our own systems, to convince the world that order and law, religion and morality, the rights of conscience, the rights of persons, and the rights of property, may all be preserved and secured, in the most perfect manner, by a government entirely and purely elective. If we fail in this, our disaster will be significant, and will furnish an argument, stronger than has yet been found, in support of those opinions which maintain that government can rest safely on nothing but power and coercion.”

Source: A Discourse, Delivered at Plymouth, December 22, 1820: In Commemoration of the First Settlement of New-England

“Property must be secured or liberty cannot exist. But if unlimited or unbalanced power of disposing property, be put into the hands of those who have no property, France will find, as we have found, the lamb committed to the custody of the world. In such a case, all the pathetic exhortations and addresses of the national assembly to the people, to respect property, will be regarded no more than the warbles of the songsters of the forest.”

People Ifs World Hands Found Politics Liberty Cases Economy Property Committed Forests France Liberalism Addresses Unlimited Pathetic Assembly Lambs Secured Custody Unbalanced

Author:John Adams

“Civil liberty is only natural liberty, modified and secured by the sanctions of civil society. It is not a thing, in its own nature, precarious and dependent on human will and caprice; but it is conformable to the constitution of man, as well as necessary to the well-being of society.”

Men Humans Wells Natural Liberty Constitution Well Being Dependent Sanctions Civil Liberties Civil Society Secured Precarious Caprice Human Will

Book:The Works of Alexander Hamilton: Miscellanies, 1774-1789: A full vindication; The farmer refuted; Quebec bill; Resolutions in Congress; Letters from Phocion; New-York Legislature, etc

Source: The Works of Alexander Hamilton: Miscellanies, 1774-1789: A full vindication; The farmer refuted; Quebec bill; Resolutions in Congress; Letters from Phocion; New-York Legislature, etc