Motivational Quotes

Liberty

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

- Fosdick, Harry Emerson

Best Quotes about Liberty

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

Farrar, Frederick

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

Phaedrus

Liberty consists in wholesome restraint.

Webster, Daniel

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

White, William Allen

Abuse is the very hallmark of liberty.

Hailsham, Lord Quintin Hogg

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

Thoreau, Henry David

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

Rogers, Will

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.

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.

11.

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

Kahn, Otto Herman

12.

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

13.

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

Freud, Sigmund

14.

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.

15.

If liberty has any meaning it means freedom to improve.

Wylie, Philip

16.

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

17.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

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.

A well governed appetite is the greater part of liberty.

Seneca

20.

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

Burke, Edmund

21.

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

Brandeis, Louis D.

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

Gompers, Samuel

25.

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

26.

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

27.

Political liberty is to be found only in moderate governments.

Montesquieu, Charles De

28.

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

29.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

30.

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

31.

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

Madison, James

32.

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

33.

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

Davis, Angela Y.

34.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

35.

Liberty has no crueler enemy than license.

Proverb, French

36.

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

37.

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

Breton, Andre

38.

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

Proverb, German

39.

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

Adams, John

40.

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

41.

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

Stedman, Captain J. G.

42.

Liberty must be limited in order to be possessed.

Burke, Edmund

43.

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.

44.

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

45.

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

Warren, Earl

46.

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

Wilde, Oscar

47.

There can be no liberty that isn't earned.

Young, Robert R.

48.

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

49.

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

Tillotson, John

50.

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