Motivational Quotes

Liberty

A free spirit takes liberties even with liberty itself.

- Picabia, Francis

Best Quotes about Liberty

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

Liberty consists in wholesome restraint.

Webster, Daniel

The approach of liberty makes even an old man brave.

Seneca

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

Adams, Henry Brooks

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

Breton, Andre

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.

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

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

Gompers, Samuel

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

10.

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

Madison, James

11.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

12.

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

13.

Political liberty is to be found only in moderate governments.

Montesquieu, Charles De

14.

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

15.

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

Davis, Angela Y.

16.

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

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.

Liberty must be limited in order to be possessed.

Burke, Edmund

19.

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

20.

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

Burke, Edmund

21.

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

Franklin, Benjamin

22.

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

23.

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

Stedman, Captain J. G.

24.

The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave.

Jefferson, Thomas

25.

There can be no liberty that isn't earned.

Young, Robert R.

26.

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

Brandeis, Louis D.

27.

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.

28.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

29.

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

Warren, Earl

30.

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

Fosdick, Harry Emerson

31.

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

Freud, Sigmund

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

35.

Liberty has no crueler enemy than license.

Proverb, French

36.

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.

37.

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

Wilde, Oscar

38.

A free spirit takes liberties even with liberty itself.

Picabia, Francis

39.

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

40.

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

Farrar, Frederick

41.

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

Rogers, Will

42.

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

Kahn, Otto Herman

43.

Liberty is the right to do what the law permits.

Montesquieu, Charles De

44.

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

45.

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

White, William Allen

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

49.

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

Adams, John

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