Motivational Quotes

Liberty

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

- Burke, Edmund

Best Quotes about Liberty

The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave.

Jefferson, Thomas

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

The approach of liberty makes even an old man brave.

Seneca

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

Tillotson, John

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

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

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

Proverb, German

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

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

10.

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

Warren, Earl

11.

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.

12.

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

Farrar, Frederick

13.

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

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.

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

Kahn, Otto Herman

16.

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

17.

Liberty has no crueler enemy than license.

Proverb, French

18.

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

Gompers, Samuel

19.

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

20.

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

Adams, Henry Brooks

21.

How false is the conception, how frantic the pursuit, of that treacherous phantom which men call Liberty: most treacherous, indeed, of all phantoms; for the feeblest ray of reason might surely show us, that not only its attainment, but its being, was impossible. There is no such thing in the universe. There can never be. The stars have it not; the earth has it not; the sea has it not; and we men have the mockery and semblance of it only for our heaviest punishment.

Ruskin, John

22.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

23.

Political liberty is to be found only in moderate governments.

Montesquieu, Charles De

24.

Liberty must be limited in order to be possessed.

Burke, Edmund

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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.

28.

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

Davis, Angela Y.

29.

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.

30.

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.

31.

If liberty has any meaning it means freedom to improve.

Wylie, Philip

32.

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

33.

Liberty is the right to do what the law permits.

Montesquieu, Charles De

34.

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

35.

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

Freud, Sigmund

36.

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

Wilde, Oscar

37.

Liberty consists in wholesome restraint.

Webster, Daniel

38.

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

Stedman, Captain J. G.

39.

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

40.

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

White, William Allen

41.

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

Breton, Andre

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

Adams, John

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

48.

A free spirit takes liberties even with liberty itself.

Picabia, Francis

49.

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

Madison, James

50.

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

Madison, James