Liberty Quotes
Best selected liberty quotes
by some famous people of their times. These quotes
about liberty will motivate and inspire you and will make you much wiser about
the subject.
The liberty of the individual is no gift of civilization. It was greatest before there was any civilization. Sigmund Freud
I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone. H. L. Mencken
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. Joseph A. Schumpeter
Old England liberty -- to be robbed by the Ministry, and insulted by the populace without redress. Captain J. G. Stedman
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. Woodrow T. Wilson
Over grown military establishments are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty. George Washington
Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves. Henry David Thoreau
Liberty is the right to do what the law permits. Charles De Montesquieu
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? Antoine De Saint-Exupery
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. Maria Montessori
A well governed appetite is the greater part of liberty. Seneca
Liberty, not communism, is the most contagious force in the world. Earl Warren
The approach of liberty makes even an old man brave. Seneca
I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it. Thomas Jefferson
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. William Hazlitt
Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it. George Bernard Shaw
One's liberty should end when it becomes the curse of his neighbor. Frederick Farrar
Peace is liberty in tranquillity. Marcus T. Cicero
Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have. Harry Emerson Fosdick
The effect of liberty to individuals is that they may do what they please: we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations. Edmund Burke
Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. Benjamin Franklin
License they mean when they cry liberty. John Milton
The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal -- well-meaning but without understanding. Louis D. Brandeis
It is easy to take liberty for granted when you have never had it taken from you. M. Grundler
Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty. John F. Kennedy
The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground. Thomas Jefferson
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. Mikhail Bakunin
Liberty is the only thing you cannot have unless you are willing to give it to others. William Allen White
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. Margot Asquith
Where liberty is, there is my country. Benjamin Franklin
Liberty exists in proportion to wholesome restraint. Daniel Webster
Liberty consists in wholesome restraint. Daniel Webster
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? Robert Green Ingersoll
We have to talk about liberating minds as well as liberating society. Angela Y. Davis
No nation ancient or modern ever lost the liberty of freely speaking, writing, or publishing their sentiments, but forthwith lost their liberty in general and became slaves. John P. Zenger
The people never give up their liberties, but under some delusion. Edmund Burke
Liberty can not be preserved without a general knowledge among the people. John Adams
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. Georg Hegel
We are right to take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties. James Madison
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. Mary Mccarthy
I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death. Patrick Henry
Liberty is God's gift, liberties the devils. German Proverb
I would rather not be a king than to forfeit my liberty. Phaedrus
It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once. David Hume
The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts. Edmund Burke
The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time. Thomas Jefferson
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. John Ruskin
Liberty may be endangered by the abuse of liberty, but also by the abuse of power. James Madison
Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty. Thomas Jefferson
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. Abraham Lincoln
Liberty must be limited in order to be possessed. Edmund Burke
Liberty has no crueler enemy than license. French Proverb
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. Walt Whitman
Absolute liberty is absence of restraint; responsibility is restraint; therefore, the ideally free individual is responsible to himself. Henry Brooks Adams
The more liberty you give away the more you will have. Robert Green Ingersoll
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. William Blake
Show me the country that has no strikes and I'll show you the country in which there is no liberty. Samuel Gompers
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. Woodrow T. Wilson
The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave. Thomas Jefferson
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. Thomas Jefferson
They who are in the highest places, and have the most power, have the least liberty, because they are the most observed. John Tillotson
They who give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. Benjamin Franklin
Abuse is the very hallmark of liberty. Lord Quintin Hogg Hailsham
Political liberty is to be found only in moderate governments. Charles De Montesquieu
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. Barry Goldwater
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. Archibald Macleish
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. Norman Vincent Peale
A free spirit takes liberties even with liberty itself. Francis Picabia
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. John Philpot Curran
If liberty has any meaning it means freedom to improve. Philip Wylie
He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself. Thomas Paine
When liberty comes with hands dabbled in blood it is hard to shake hands with her. Oscar Wilde
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. Simone Weil
The deadliest foe of democracy is not autocracy but liberty frenzied. Otto Herman Kahn
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. Lord Byron
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. George Santayana
Liberty doesn't work as well in practice as it does in speeches. Will Rogers
What a pity we don't pursue the salvation of humans with the same verve we pursue the salvation of animals. Anonymous
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. Wyndham Lewis
Corruption, the most infallible symptom of constitutional liberty. Edward Gibbon
There is nothing with which it is so dangerous to take liberties as liberty itself. Andre Breton
There can be no liberty that isn't earned. Robert R. Young
I would rather belong to a poor nation that was free than to a rich nation that had ceased to be in love with liberty. Woodrow T. Wilson
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