Motivational Quotes

Liberty

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

Best Quotes about Liberty

A well governed appetite is the greater part of liberty.

Seneca

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

Madison, James

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

The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave.

Jefferson, Thomas

If liberty has any meaning it means freedom to improve.

Wylie, Philip

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

Thoreau, Henry David

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

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

Freud, Sigmund

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

Brandeis, Louis D.

10.

Liberty must be limited in order to be possessed.

Burke, Edmund

11.

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

Warren, Earl

12.

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

White, William Allen

13.

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

Stedman, Captain J. G.

14.

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

Rogers, Will

15.

The approach of liberty makes even an old man brave.

Seneca

16.

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

Davis, Angela Y.

17.

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

18.

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

19.

Liberty is the right to do what the law permits.

Montesquieu, Charles De

20.

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

21.

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

Madison, James

22.

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.

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

Wilde, Oscar

28.

Political liberty is to be found only in moderate governments.

Montesquieu, Charles De

29.

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

30.

Liberty consists in wholesome restraint.

Webster, Daniel

31.

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

Gompers, Samuel

32.

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

Farrar, Frederick

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

37.

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.

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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.

41.

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.

42.

There can be no liberty that isn't earned.

Young, Robert R.

43.

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

Burke, Edmund

44.

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

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.

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

Adams, Henry Brooks

47.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

48.

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

Breton, Andre

49.

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

Phaedrus

50.

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