Motivational Quotes

Liberty

If liberty has any meaning it means freedom to improve.

- Wylie, Philip

Best Quotes about Liberty

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

Franklin, Benjamin

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

Madison, James

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.

The people never give up their liberties, but under some delusion.

Burke, Edmund

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

A well governed appetite is the greater part of liberty.

Seneca

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

Liberty consists in wholesome restraint.

Webster, Daniel

It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.

Jefferson, Thomas

10.

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

11.

A free spirit takes liberties even with liberty itself.

Picabia, Francis

12.

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

Phaedrus

13.

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

White, William Allen

14.

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

15.

Political liberty is to be found only in moderate governments.

Montesquieu, Charles De

16.

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

Warren, Earl

17.

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

18.

Liberty must be limited in order to be possessed.

Burke, Edmund

19.

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

Fosdick, Harry Emerson

20.

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.

21.

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

Adams, Henry Brooks

22.

The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave.

Jefferson, Thomas

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

26.

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

27.

Liberty has no crueler enemy than license.

Proverb, French

28.

Liberty is the right to do what the law permits.

Montesquieu, Charles De

29.

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

Kahn, Otto Herman

30.

Abuse is the very hallmark of liberty.

Hailsham, Lord Quintin Hogg

31.

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

Wilde, Oscar

32.

There can be no liberty that isn't earned.

Young, Robert R.

33.

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

Stedman, Captain J. G.

34.

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

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

Jefferson, Thomas

37.

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

Madison, James

38.

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

Breton, Andre

39.

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

40.

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.

41.

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

Proverb, German

42.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

43.

What light is to the eyes -- what air is to the lungs -- what love is to the heart, liberty is to the soul of man.

Ingersoll, Robert Green

44.

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

45.

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

46.

They who are in the highest places, and have the most power, have the least liberty, because they are the most observed.

Tillotson, John

47.

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

48.

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

Gompers, Samuel

49.

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

50.

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

Rogers, Will