Motivational Quotes

Liberty

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

- Rogers, Will

Best Quotes about Liberty

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

Freud, Sigmund

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

Madison, James

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

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

Farrar, Frederick

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

Burke, Edmund

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

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

Brandeis, Louis D.

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

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

10.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

11.

Liberty must be limited in order to be possessed.

Burke, Edmund

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

Phaedrus

16.

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

17.

If liberty has any meaning it means freedom to improve.

Wylie, Philip

18.

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

Proverb, German

19.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

20.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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.

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

White, William Allen

28.

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

29.

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

30.

Liberty has no crueler enemy than license.

Proverb, French

31.

There can be no liberty that isn't earned.

Young, Robert R.

32.

Liberty is the right to do what the law permits.

Montesquieu, Charles De

33.

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

Warren, Earl

34.

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

35.

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

Wilde, Oscar

36.

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

Adams, John

37.

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

Kahn, Otto Herman

38.

A free spirit takes liberties even with liberty itself.

Picabia, Francis

39.

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

40.

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

Gompers, Samuel

41.

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

Fosdick, Harry Emerson

42.

Abuse is the very hallmark of liberty.

Hailsham, Lord Quintin Hogg

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.

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.

45.

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

Stedman, Captain J. G.

46.

The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave.

Jefferson, Thomas

47.

A well governed appetite is the greater part of liberty.