Motivational Quotes

Liberty

We have to talk about liberating minds as well as liberating society.

- Davis, Angela Y.

Best Quotes about Liberty

I am truly free only when all human beings, men and women, are equally free. The freedom of other men, far from negating or limiting my freedom, is, on the contrary, its necessary premise and confirmation.

Bakunin, Mikhail

Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.

Jefferson, Thomas

Liberty must be limited in order to be possessed.

Burke, Edmund

Liberty can not be preserved without a general knowledge among the people.

Adams, John

Then we are assured by Sartre that owing to the final disappearance of God our liberty is absolute! At this the entire audience waves its hat or claps its hands. But this natural enthusiasm is turned abruptly into something much less buoyant when it is learnt that this liberty weighs us down immediately with tremendous responsibilities. We now have to take all God's worries on our shoulders --now that we are become men like gods. It is at this point that the Anxiety and Despondency begin, ending in utter despair.

Lewis, Wyndham

Over grown military establishments are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty.

Washington, George

An educational method that shall have liberty as its basis must intervene to help the child to a conquest of liberty. That is to say, his training must be such as shall help him to diminish as much as possible the social bonds which limit his activity.

Montessori, Maria

It is not true that democracy will always safeguard freedom of conscience better than autocracy. Witness the most famous of all trials. Pilate was, from the standpoint of the Jews, certainly the representative of autocracy. Yet he tried to protect freedom. And he yielded to a democracy.

Schumpeter, Joseph A.

Abuse is the very hallmark of liberty.

Hailsham, Lord Quintin Hogg

10.

The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave.

Jefferson, Thomas

11.

We are as great as our belief in human liberty -- no greater. And our belief in human liberty is only ours when it is larger than ourselves.

Macleish, Archibald

12.

The shallow consider liberty a release from all law, from every constraint. The wise man sees in it, on the contrary, the potent Law of Laws.

Whitman, Walt

13.

You cannot have Liberty in this world without what you call Moral Virtue, and you cannot have Moral Virtue without the slavery of that half of the human race who hate what you call Moral Virtue.

Blake, William

14.

The history of liberty is the history of the limitations of governmental power, not the increase of it. When we resist the concentration of power we are resisting the powers of death. Concentration of power precedes the destruction of human liberties.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

15.

Liberty doesn't work as well in practice as it does in speeches.

Rogers, Will

16.

Liberty is the right to do what the law permits.

Montesquieu, Charles De

17.

The deadliest foe of democracy is not autocracy but liberty frenzied.

Kahn, Otto Herman

18.

It would seem that man was born a slave, and that slavery is his natural condition. At the same time nothing on earth can stop man from feeling himself born for liberty. Never, whatever may happen, can he accept servitude; for he is a thinking creature.

Weil, Simone

19.

I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.

Mencken, H. L.

20.

What do we mean by setting a man free? You cannot free a man who dwells in a desert and is an unfeeling brute. There is no liberty except the liberty of some one making his way towards something. Such a man can be set free if you will teach him the meaning of thirst, and how to trace a path to a well. Only then will he embark upon a course of action that will not be without significance. You could not liberate a stone if there were no law of gravity -- for where will the stone go, once it is quarried?

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De

21.

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.

Jefferson, Thomas

22.

Liberty consists in wholesome restraint.

Webster, Daniel

23.

One's liberty should end when it becomes the curse of his neighbor.

Farrar, Frederick

24.

Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.

Thoreau, Henry David

25.

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.

Jefferson, Thomas

26.

A free spirit takes liberties even with liberty itself.

Picabia, Francis

27.

Political liberty is to be found only in moderate governments.

Montesquieu, Charles De

28.

Liberty is the only thing you cannot have unless you are willing to give it to others.

White, William Allen

29.

I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue.

Goldwater, Barry

30.

Once we roared like lions for liberty; now we bleat like sheep for security! The solution for America's problem is not in terms of big government, but it is in big men over whom nobody stands in control but God.

Peale, Norman Vincent

31.

We are right to take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties.

Madison, James

32.

When liberty is mentioned, we must always be careful to observe whether it is not really the assertion of private interests which is thereby designated.

Hegel, Georg

33.

What a pity we don't pursue the salvation of humans with the same verve we pursue the salvation of animals

34.

They who give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Franklin, Benjamin

35.

There is nothing with which it is so dangerous to take liberties as liberty itself.

Breton, Andre

36.

If liberty has any meaning it means freedom to improve.

Wylie, Philip

37.

We have to talk about liberating minds as well as liberating society.

Davis, Angela Y.

38.

Liberty has no crueler enemy than license.

Proverb, French

39.

A well governed appetite is the greater part of liberty.

Seneca

40.

The ingrained idea that, because there is no king and they despise titles, the Americans are a free people is pathetically untrue. There is a perpetual interference with personal liberty over there that would not be tolerated in England for a week.

Asquith, Margot

41.

When liberty comes with hands dabbled in blood it is hard to shake hands with her.

Wilde, Oscar

42.

Show me the country that has no strikes and I'll show you the country in which there is no liberty.

Gompers, Samuel

43.

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. We here highly resolve that the dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Lincoln, Abraham

44.

Liberty, as it is conceived by current opinion, has nothing inherent about it; it is a sort of gift or trust bestowed on the individual by the state pending good behavior.

Mccarthy, Mary

45.

Liberty, not communism, is the most contagious force in the world.

Warren, Earl

46.

I would rather not be a king than to forfeit my liberty.

Phaedrus

47.

The approach of liberty makes even an old man brave.

Seneca

48.

The liberty of the individual is no gift of civilization. It was greatest before there was any civilization.