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Liberty Quotes

Browse 6578 quotes about Liberty.

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Liberty Quotes

“The right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness means that each of us is free to go our own way, even if the ways some of us may choose to go seem sinful or shocking to our fellow citizens.”

IfsWayMayMeanSeemsLibertyCitizensFellowsPursuitShockingPursuit Of HappinessRight To LifeLife Liberty And The Pursuit Of Happiness
Book:Skipping Towards Gomorrah: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Pursuit of Happiness in America
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“The freedom of thought and action we Americans enjoy today seems as natural as the air we breathe. But there is a danger we may take this freedom for granted. We must never forget it was bought for us at a great price. The brave and resourceful Americans whose sacrifices gained our Independence and preserved it for more than 200 years against formidable foes have set an example of unflinching loyalty to the ideal of liberty and justice for all.”

YearsMaySeemsTodayActionEnjoyNaturalJusticeForgetLibertySacrificeAirDangerExampleIdealsIndependenceBraveBreatheLoyaltyGrantedNever ForgetFoeForget ItFreedom Of ThoughtFormidableResourcefulThoughts And ActionsLiberty And JusticeJustice For AllLiberty And Justice For AllEnjoy Today
Author:Ronald Reagan
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“One thing that does seem to me to be fairly consistent is that presidents who restrict civil liberties, even in wartime, are usually judged harshly for it. So most people agree that one of the worst stains on the reputation of FDR, who is widely considered a great president, is the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Likewise, Lincoln is judged harshly for the suspension of habeas corpus.”

PeopleWorldDoeWarSeemsPresidentLibertyOne ThingWorstAgreeReputationWar Of The WorldsConsistentJudgedWorld War IiWorld War IStainsCivil LibertiesSuspensionWartimeGreat PresidentsCorpusInternmentHabeas Corpus
Author:David Greenberg
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“In this way, we end up spending (as Thoreau put it) “the best part of one's life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it.” We'd love to drop all and explore the world outside, we tell ourselves, but the time never seems right. Thus, given an unlimited amount of choices, we make none. Settling into our lives, we get so obsessed with holding on to our domestic certainties that we forget why we desired them in the first place.”

WorldWayFirstsEndsSeemsOrderChoicesGivenEnjoyForgetLibertyOur LivesAmountValuableSpendingCertaintySettlingObsessedEarningUnlimitedHolding OnQuestionableEarning Money
Author:Rolf Potts
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“I am still puzzled why those in the United States who truly believe in liberty should not only have allowed the left to appropriate this almost indispensable term but should even have assisted by beginning to use it themselves as a term of opprobrium. This seems to be particularly regrettable because of the consequent tendency of many true liberals to describe themselves as conservatives.”

ShouldBelieveStillsStatesUseSeemsLeftTermUnitedLibertyUnited StatesEconomicsTendenciesAppropriateIndispensablePuzzled
Author:Friedrich August von Hayek
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“[If] the nature of ... government [were] a subordination of the civil to the ecclesiastical power, I [would] consider it as desperate for long years to come. Their steady habits [will] exclude the advances of information, and they [will] seem exactly where they [have always been]. And there [the] clergy will always keep them if they can. [They] will follow the bark of liberty only by the help of a tow-rope.”

IfsYearsLongHelpingSeemsGovernmentLibertyAtheismInformationHabitPositive AtheismDesperateSteadyRopeBarkClergySubordinationTow
Author:Thomas Jefferson
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“To me it seems that liberty and virtue were made for each other. If any man wish to enslave his country, nothing is a fitter preparative than vice; and nothing leads to vice so surely as irreligion.”

IfsMenMadeCountrySeemsWishLibertyVirtueVicesIrreligionMade For Each Other
Book:Works, Including His Letters to Thomas Prior, Dean Gervais, Mr. Pope, &c. to which is Prefixed an Account of His Life
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“There must be a law if there is to be liberty. Try to play a piano and you will run into laws as fixed as the decrees of the Medes and Persians. But through those statutes you reach the songs, drudgery leads to delight. The law of Christ brings the liberty of Christ. Keep His statutes, and they become songs. The other side of commandment is conquest. What seems restraint to the outsider means release to you.”

IfsTryingMeanPlaySeemsRunningLawSongSidesChristLibertyDelightReleasePianoFixedOutsidersCommandmentsRestraintConquestDecreeDrudgeryStatutes
Book:The Incredible Power of Kingdom Authority: Getting an Upper Hand on the Underworld
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“With a historical novel you know that liberties are being taken. Since Walter Scott, we know that poetic license, dramatic license, that events been conflated and that liberties have been taken, characters ditto, dates rearranged. But people don't seem to understand that movies are fictions, they are dramatizations, at least historical movies, and we should accord the moviemakers some of the same understanding and latitude. When you go to a movie you know it's a dramatization and not history.”

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Author:Nicholas Meyer
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“And it is in this darkness, when there is nothing left in us that can please or comfort our own minds, when we seem to be useless and worthy of all contempt, when we seem to have failed, when we seem to be destroyed and devoured, it is then that the deep and secret selfishness that is too close to us for us to identify is stripped away from our souls. It is in this darkness that we find liberty. It is in this abandonment that we are made strong. This is the night which empties us and makes us pure.”

MindMadeSoulSeemsNightLeftStrongSecretLibertyDarknessComfortPleasePureWorthyDestroyedSelfishnessUselessContemptAbandonment
Author:Thomas Merton
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“While the machinery of law enforcement and indeed the nature of crime itself have changed dramatically since the Fourth Amendment became part of the Nation's fundamental law in 1791, what the Framers understood then remains true today - that the task of combating crime and convicting the guilty will in every era seem of such critical and pressing concern that we may be lured by the temptations of expediency into forsaking our commitment to protecting individual liberty and privacy.”

MaySeemsTodayLawIndividualNationsLibertyCrimeChangedUnderstoodCommitmentConcernTasksFundamentalsRemainsCriticalTemptationGuiltyErasPrivacyAmendmentsFourthLaw EnforcementEnforcementMachineryIndividual LibertyExpediencyFramersFourth Amendment
Author:William J. Brennan
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“When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hold on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn. When you're down to nothing, God is up to something. The faithful see the invisible, believe the incredible and then receive the impossible. Where liberty dwells there is my country.”

GivingBelieveCountrySeemsTurnsLibertyImpossibleMinutesGiving UpIncrediblesInvisibleFaithfulTidesNever Giving UpPlace And Time
Author:Benjamin Franklin
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“People at civil-liberties organizations say it's a sea change, and that it's very clear judges have begun to question more critically assertions made by the executive. Even though it seems so obvious now, it is extraordinary in the context of the last decade, because courts had simply said they were not the best branch to adjudicate these claims - which is completely wrong, because they are the only nonpolitical branch. They are the branch that is specifically charged with deciding issues that cannot be impartially decided by politicians.”

PeopleMadeSaidSeemsLastsLibertyIssuesClearSeaJudgingPoliticianDecidedOrganizationClaimsCourtExtraordinaryObviousDecadesBranchesExecutivesAssertionCivil LibertiesSea ChangeSimply Said
Author:Edward Snowden
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