Motivational Quotes

Liberty

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

Best Quotes about Liberty

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

Kahn, Otto Herman

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

Jefferson, Thomas

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

Madison, James

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

Proverb, German

The approach of liberty makes even an old man brave.

Seneca

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

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

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

Freud, Sigmund

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

Warren, Earl

10.

There can be no liberty that isn't earned.

Young, Robert R.

11.

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

Farrar, Frederick

12.

If liberty has any meaning it means freedom to improve.

Wylie, Philip

13.

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.

14.

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

Stedman, Captain J. G.

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

Franklin, Benjamin

18.

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.

19.

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

Davis, Angela Y.

20.

Liberty is the right to do what the law permits.

Montesquieu, Charles De

21.

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

22.

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

Phaedrus

23.

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

24.

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

Wilde, Oscar

25.

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

26.

Liberty has no crueler enemy than license.

Proverb, French

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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.

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

Adams, Henry Brooks

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

36.

Liberty must be limited in order to be possessed.

Burke, Edmund

37.

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

38.

A well governed appetite is the greater part of liberty.

Seneca

39.

A free spirit takes liberties even with liberty itself.

Picabia, Francis

40.

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

Brandeis, Louis D.

41.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

42.

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

Gompers, Samuel

43.

Abuse is the very hallmark of liberty.

Hailsham, Lord Quintin Hogg

44.

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

Fosdick, Harry Emerson

45.

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

Breton, Andre

46.

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

Madison, James

47.

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

Tillotson, John

48.

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

49.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

50.

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