Motivational Quotes

Liberty

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

Best Quotes about Liberty

A free spirit takes liberties even with liberty itself.

Picabia, Francis

The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal -- well-meaning but without understanding.

Brandeis, Louis D.

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

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.

Liberty consists in wholesome restraint.

Webster, Daniel

There can be no liberty that isn't earned.

Young, Robert R.

If liberty has any meaning it means freedom to improve.

Wylie, Philip

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

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.

10.

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

11.

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

Adams, John

12.

Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have.

Fosdick, Harry Emerson

13.

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

White, William Allen

14.

Liberty must be limited in order to be possessed.

Burke, Edmund

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

18.

Old England liberty -- to be robbed by the Ministry, and insulted by the populace without redress.

Stedman, Captain J. G.

19.

Political liberty is to be found only in moderate governments.

Montesquieu, Charles De

20.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

21.

It is not one man nor a million, but the spirit of liberty that must be preserved. The waves which dash upon the shore are, one by one, broken, but the ocean conquers nevertheless. It overwhelms the Armada, it wears out the rock. In like manner, whatever the struggle of individuals, the great cause will gather strength.

Byron, Lord

22.

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

Davis, Angela Y.

23.

Absolute liberty is absence of restraint; responsibility is restraint; therefore, the ideally free individual is responsible to himself.

Adams, Henry Brooks

24.

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

25.

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

Wilde, Oscar

26.

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

Warren, Earl

27.

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

Farrar, Frederick

28.

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

29.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

30.

The slaves of power mind the cause they have to serve, because their own interest is concerned; but the friends of liberty always sacrifice their cause, which is only the cause of humanity, to their own spleen, vanity, and self-opinion.

Hazlitt, William

31.

Liberty is God's gift, liberties the devil s.

Proverb, German

32.

Liberty has never come from government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it. The history of liberty is a history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of limitations of governmental power, not the increase of it.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

33.

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

34.

The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime, and the punishment of his guilt.

Curran, John Philpot

35.

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.

36.

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

Kahn, Otto Herman

37.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

38.

I like to walk about among the beautiful things that adorn the world; but private wealth I should decline, or any sort of personal possessions, because they would take away my liberty.

Santayana, George

39.

The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave.

Jefferson, Thomas

40.

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

41.

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

Franklin, Benjamin

42.

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

Freud, Sigmund

43.

Liberty is the right to do what the law permits.

Montesquieu, Charles De

44.

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

Phaedrus

45.

Liberty may be endangered by the abuse of liberty, but also by the abuse of power.

Madison, James

46.

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

47.

Abuse is the very hallmark of liberty.

Hailsham, Lord Quintin Hogg

48.

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

49.

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

Gompers, Samuel

50.

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