Liberty Quotes

The most fatal thing a man can do is try to stand alone.

~ Carson Mccullers

I have never thought, for my part, that man's freedom consists in his being able to do whatever he wills, but that he should not, by any human power, be forced to do what is against his will.

~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

America is the greatest engine of innovation that has ever existed, and it can't be duplicated anytime soon, because it is the product of a multitude of factors: extreme freedom of thought, an emphasis on independent thinking, a steady immigration of new minds, a risk-taking culture with no stigma attached to trying and failing, a noncorrupt bureaucracy, and financial markets and a venture capital system that are unrivaled at taking new ideas and turning them into global products.

~ Thomas L. Friedman

Every election is determined by the people who show up.

~ Larry J. Sabato

Until we are all free, we are none of us free.

~ Emma Lazarus

Most gun control arguments miss the point. If all control boils fundamentally to force, how can one resist aggression without equal force? How can a truly “free” state exist if the individual citizen is enslaved to the forceful will of individual or organized aggressors? It cannot.

~ Tiffany Madison

Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.

~ Benjamin Franklin

When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.

~ Frédéric Bastiat

We are the offspring of history, and must establish our own paths in this most diverse and interesting of conceivable universes—one indifferent to our suffering, and therefore offering us maximum freedom to thrive, or to fail, in our own chosen way.

~ Stephen Jay Gould

Someday, the realm of liberty and justice will encompass the planet. Freedom is not just the birthright of the few, it is the God-given right of all His children, in every country. It won't come by conquest. It will come, because freedom is right and freedom works. It will come, because cooperation and good will among free people will carry the day.

~ Ronald Reagan

Government leaders are amazing. So often it seems they are the last to know what the people want.

~ Aung San Suu Kyi

I love my country, not my government.

~ Jesse Ventura

Our faith in freedom does not rest on the foreseeable results in particular circumstances but on the belief that it will, on balance, release more forces for the good than for the bad.

~ Friedrich A. Hayek

... how terrible is the pain of the mind and heart when the freedom of mankind is suppressed!

~ E.a. Bucchianeri

United States: the country where liberty is a statue.

~ Nicanor Parra

Our liberty will not be secured at the sword's point... We must secure it by making ourselves worthy of it. And when the people reaches that height, God will provide a weapon, the idols will be shattered, tyranny will crumble like a house of cards, and liberty will shine out like the first dawn.

~ José Rizal

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

How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy!

~ Thomas Jefferson

So much of liberalism in its classical sense is taken for granted in the west today and even disrespected. We take freedom for granted, and because of this we don't understand how incredibly vulnerable it is.

~ Niall Ferguson

The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law and particularly to deny him the judgement of his peers is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist.

~ Winston S. Churchill

You have to remember, rights don't come in groups we shouldn't have 'gay rights'; rights come as individuals, and we wouldn't have this major debate going on. It would be behavior that would count, not what person belongs to what group.

~ Ron Paul

Democracy is the best revenge.

~ Benazir Bhutto

No Statue of Liberty ever greeted our arrival in this country...we did not, in fact, come to the United States at all. The United States came to us.

~ Luis Valdez

When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty and there is nothing to fear from them then he is always stirring up some wary or other in order that the people may require a leader.

~ Plato

America... goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all.

~ John Quincy Adams

But who would build the roads if there were no government? You mean to tell me that 300 million people in this country and 7 billion people on the planet would just sit around in their houses and think “Gee, I’d like to go visit Fred, but I can't because there isn’t a flat thing outside for me to drive on, and I don’t know how to build it and the other 300 million or 7 billion people can’t possibly do it because there aren’t any politicians and tax collectors. If they were here then we could do it. If they were here to boss us around and steal our money and really inefficiently build the flat places, then we would be set. Then I would be comfortable and confident that I could get places. But I can’t go to Fred’s house or the market because we can’t possibly build a flat space from A to B. We can make these really small devices that enable us to contact people from all over the word that fits in our pockets; we can make machines that we drive around in, but no, we can’t possibly build a flat space.

~ Larken Rose

Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day.Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.Steal a fish from one guy and give it to another--and keep doing that on a daily basis--and you'll make the first guy pissed off, but you'll make the second guy lazy and dependent on you. Then you can tell the second guy that the first guy is greedy for wanting to keep the fish he caught. Then the second guy will cheer for you to steal more fish. Then you can prohibit anyone from fishing without getting permission from you. Then you can expand the racket, stealing fish from more people and buying the loyalty of others. Then you can get the recipients of the stolen fish to act as your hired thugs. Then you can ... well, you know the rest.

~ Larken Rose

Don't interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.

~ Abraham Lincoln

The strength of the Constitution lies entirely in the determination of each citizen to defend it. Only if every single citizen feels duty bound to do his share in this defense are the constitutional rights secure.

~ Albert Einstein

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 understan

~ Louis D. Brandeis

Deep pockets and empty hearts rule the world. We unleash them at our peril.

~ Stefan Molyneux

The paralysis of potential is essential to the manufacturing of victims.

~ Stefan Molyneux

Perfect Liberty follows no rules, law, or any virtue for that matter. It disregards respect, courteousness, and love.

~ Veronica Mist

We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.

~ Abraham Lincoln

It is because every individual knows little and, in particular, because we rarely know which of us knows best best that we trust the independent and competitive efforts of many to induce the emergence of what we shall want when we see it.

~ Friedrich A. Hayek

When poverty declines, the need for government declines, which is why expecting government to solve poverty is like expecting a tobacco company to mount an aggressive anti-smoking campaign.

~ Stefan Molyneux

Here beyond men's judgments all covenants were brittle.

~ Cormac Mccarthy

When enough people understand reality, tyrants can literally be ignored out of existence. They can't ever be voted out of existence.

~ Larken Rose

The truth is, one who seeks to achieve freedom by petitioning those in power to give it to him has already failed, regardless of the response. To beg for the blessing of “authority” is to accept that the choice is the master’s alone to make, which means that the person is already, by definition, a slave.

~ Larken Rose

And yet even among the friends of liberty, many people are deceived into believing that government can make them safe from all harm, provide fairly distributed economic security, and improve individual moral behavior. If the government is granted a monopoly on the use of force to achieve these goals, history shows that power is always abused. Every single time.

~ Ron Paul