LIBERTY and FREEDOM
Thoughts on LIBERTY:
* A library is an arsenal of liberty. - Unknown
* Discipline must come through liberty. . . . We do not consider an
individual disciplined only when he has been rendered as artificially silent as
a mute and as immovable as a paralytic. He is an individual annihilated, not
disciplined. - Maria Montessori
* Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty
when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally
alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest
dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning
but without understanding. - Justice Louis D. Brandeis, dissenting, Olmstead v.
United States, 277 US 479 (1928)
* For what is liberty but the unhampered translation of will into act? -
Dante Alighieri
* Free people, remember this maxim: We may acquire liberty, but it is never
recovered if it is once lost. - Rousseau
* God grant that not only the love of liberty but a thorough knowledge of
the rights of man may pervade all the nations of the earth, so that a
philosopher may set his foot anywhere on its surface and say: "This is my
country." - Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), letter to David Hartley,
December 4, 1789
* Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who
approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright
force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined. - Patrick Henry
* 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
* In any free society, the conflict between social conformity and
individual liberty is permanent, unresolvable, and necessary. - Kathleen Norris
* Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of
chains or slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may
take but as for me; give me liberty or give me death! - Patrick Henry
* It is easy to take liberty for granted when you have never had it taken
from you. - M. Grundler
* It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once. - David Hume
(1711-1776)
* Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, we shall pay any
price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe,
to assure the survival and success of liberty. - John F. Kennedy
* Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have. - Harry
Emerson Fosdick
* Liberty is the possibility of doubting, the possibility of making a
mistake, the possibility of searching and experimenting, the possibility of
saying No to any authority--literary, artistic, philosophic, religious, social
and even political. - Ignazio Silone, The God That Failed (1950)
* Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no
constitution, no law, no court can save it.... While it lies there, it needs no
constitution, no law, no court to save it. - Learned Hand, jurist
* 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 Peter Zenger
* The condition upon which God has given liberty to man is eternal
vigilance. - John Philpot Curran
* The condition upon which God has given liberty to man is eternal
vigilance. - John Philpot Curran, in a speech July 10, 1790
* The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of
zeal, well-meaning but without understanding. - Justice Louis D. Brandeis
* The history of Liberty is a history of the limitation of government
power. - Woodrow Wilson
* The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the
republican model of government are justly considered... deeply, ...finally,
staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people. - George
Washington, First Inaugural Address, Apr. 30, 1789
* The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, for which the sheep
thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same
act as the destroyer of liberty. - Abraham Lincoln
* The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of
patriots and tyrants. - Thomas Jefferson
* They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. - Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
* What more felicity can fall to creature, Than to enjoy delight with
liberty. - Spenser, Fate of the Butterfly
* Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes,
there is the least of real liberty. - Henry M. Robert
...and some thoughts on FREEDOM:
* A free press can of course be good or bad, but, most certainly,
without freedom it will never be anything but bad. . . . Freedom is nothing else
but a chance to bet better, whereas enslavement is a certainty of the worse. -
Albert Camus, Resistance, Rebellion and Death (1960)
* All we have of freedom -- all we use or know -- This our fathers bought
for us, long and long ago. - Kipling
* As it is an ancient truth that freedom cannot be legislated into
existence, so it is no less obvious that freedom cannot be censored into
existence. - Dwight D. Eisenhower
* At no time is freedom of speech more precious than when a man hits his
thumb with a hammer. - Marshall Lumsden
* Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as
numbers increase. ...The human question is not how many can possibly survive
within the system, but what kind of existence is possible for those who do
survive. - Frank Herbert, Dune
* Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty
when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally
alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest
dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning
but without understanding. - Justice Louis D. Brandeis, dissenting, Olmstead v.
United States, 277 US 479 (1928)
* Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err. It
passes my comprehension how human beings, be they ever so experienced and able,
can delight in depriving other human beings of that precious right. - Ghandi,
1931
* Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better. - Albert Camus
* Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right to do wrong. - John G.
Riefenbaker
* Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself
secure. - Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
* Freedom of speech and freedom of action are meaningless without freedom
to think. And there is no freedom of thought without doubt. - Bergen Evans
* Freedom of speech and freedom of action are meaningless without freedom
to think. And there is no freedom of thought without doubt. - Bergen Evans, The
Natural History of Nonsense (1946)
* I know but one freedom and that is the freedom of the mind. -
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
* It is by the fortune of God that, in this country, we have three
benefits: freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and the wisdom never to use
either. - Mark Twain
* It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three
unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the
prudence never to practice either. - Mark Twain
* Liberty is the right to choose. Freedom is the result of the right
choice. - Anonymous
* Nothing's ever really changed. What difference does it make whether it's
the Corporate state or the Nation state? In our struggle for freedom we still
find ourselves fighting the state. - Jay Terpstra
* People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought
which they avoid. - Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
* Politics [is] the art of achieving the maximum amount of freedom for
individuals that is consistent with the maintenance of social order. - Barry
Goldwater
* The greatest lesson we can learn from the past. . . is that freedom is at
the core of every successful nation in the world. - Frederick Chiluba
* The outward freedom that we shall attain will only be in exact proportion
to the inward freedom to which we may have grown at a given moment. And if this
is a correct view of freedom, our chief energy must be concentrated on achieving
reform from within. - Gandhi
* The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. - Thomas Jefferson
* The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedom. -
Supreme Court Justice William Orville Douglas
* The secret of Happiness is Freedom, and the secret of Freedom, Courage. -
Thucydides
* The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of
one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive
laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is
to be stopped at all. - H. L. Mencken
* The willingness to sacrifice is the prelude to freedom. - Pesach Seder
* Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo
the fatigue of supporting it. - Thomas Paine
* Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men
who want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the
roar of its many waters. - Frederick Douglass
* Will people ever be wise enough to refuse to follow bad leaders or to
take away the freedom of other people? - Eleanor Roosevelt
An nescis, mi fili, quantilla prudentia regitur orbis?
(Dost thou not know, my son, with how little wisdom the world is governed?)
Count Oxenstierna in a letter to his son 1648
Sent In By Ralph Nelson
Last Modified:
29-Mar-2000