Free Society Quotes - Page 5

• The fact throughout history is that whenever government dominates the economic affairs of its citizenry, a free society is eroded, then destroyed, and a minority government ensues. Personal liberty without economic liberty is an absolute contradiction; the one cannot exist without the other.

  William E. Simon

  Government, Liberty, Minorities

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• Advertising and the free society are closely connected. Advertising helps to make a free society remain so by increasing competition, and by helping to maintain the freedom of the mass media themselves. The free society is one where advertising and advertising agencies are likely to be in considerable demand, though it is true that even in a totally centralist society there would still be a need for organisations and people to have access to mass communication media.

  John Treasure

  Business, Communication, Agency

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• Human envy is certainly not one of the sources of discontent that a free society can eliminate. It is probably one of the essential conditions for the preservation of such a society that we do not countenance envy, not sanction its demands by camouflaging it as social justice, but treat it, in the words of John Stuart Mill, as 'the most anti-social and evil of all passions.'

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Passion, Evil, Envy

  "The Constitution of Liberty". Book by Friedrich Hayek (p. 93), 1960.

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• What a free society offers to the individual is much more than what he would be able to do if only he were free.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Society, Liberty, Would Be

  "The Constitution of Liberty". Book by Friedrich August von Hayek, 1960.

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• The notion that the church, the press, and the universities should serve the state is essentially a Communist notion. In a free society these institutions must be wholly free - which is to say that their function is to serve as checks upon the state.

  Alan Barth

  Government, Church, Liberty

  "The Rights of Free Men: An Essential Guide to Civil Liberties". Book by Alan Barth, 1984.

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• I've always felt that homophobic attitudes and policies were unjust and unworthy of a free society and must be opposed by all Americans who believe in democracy. The civil rights movement thrives on unity and inclusion, not division and exclusion. My husband's struggle parallels that of the gay rights movement.

  Coretta Scott King

  Husband, Attitude, Believe

  Chicago Sun Times, April 1, 1998.

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• But I'm mindful in a free society that people can worship if they want to or not. You're equally an American if you choose to worship an Almighty and if you choose not to. If you're a Christian, Jew or Muslim you're equally an American. That's the great thing about America is the right to worship the way you see fit. Prayer and religion sustain me. I receive calmness in the storms of the presidency. I love the fact that people pray for me and my family all around the country. Somebody asked me one time, how do you know? I said I just feel it.

  George W. Bush

  Faith, Christian, Country

  Transcript of Third Presidential Debate at Arizona State University, Tempe, Ariz., www.washingtonpost.com. October 13, 2004.

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• Freedom is on the march in this world. I believe everybody in the Middle East desires to live in freedom. I believe women in the Middle East want to live in a free society. I believe mothers and fathers want to raise their children in a free and peaceful world. I believe all these things, because freedom is not America's gift to the world, freedom is the almighty God's gift to each man and woman in this world.

  George W. Bush

  Faith, Mother, Children

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• The black masses want not to be shrunk from as though they are plague-ridden. They want not to be walled up in slums, in the ghettos, like animals. They want to live in an open, free society where they can walk with their heads up, like men, and women! Few white people realize that many black people today dislike and avoid spending more time than they must about white people. This 'integration' image, as it is popularly interpreted, has millions of vain, self-exalted white people convinced that black people want to sleep in bed with them - and that's a lie!

  Malcolm X

  Lying, Sleep, Ghetto

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• The ultimate foundation of a free society is the binding tie of cohesive sentiment.

  Felix Frankfurter

  Freedom, Ties, Liberty

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• Freedom of the press is not an end in itself but a means to the end of a free society.

  Felix Frankfurter

  Freedom, Mean, Liberty

  The New York Times, November 28, 1954.

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• Yet we can maintain a free society only if we recognize that in a free society no one can win all the time. No one can have his own way all the time, and no one is right all the time.

  Richard M. Nixon

  Time, Freedom, Winning

  Nixon, Richard M. (1971). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Richard M. Nixon, 1970”, p.758, Best Books on

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• In a free society, government has the responsibility of protecting us from others, but not from ourselves.

  Walter E. Williams

  Responsibility, Government, Liberty

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• The act of taking my own life is not something that I do without a lot of thought. I don't believe that people should take their own lives without deep and thoughtful reflection over a considerable period of time. I do believe strongly, however, that the right to do so is one of the most fundamental rights anyone in a free society should have. For me much of the world makes no sense, but my feelings about what I am doing ring loud and clear to an inner ear and to a place where there is no self, only calm. Love always, Wendy.

  Wendy O. Williams

  Believe, Suicidal, Reflection

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• The preservation of our free society in the years and decades to come will depend ultimately on whether we succeed or fail in directing the enormous power of human knowledge to the enrichment of our own lives and the shaping of a rational and civilized world order....It is the task of education, more than any other instrument of foreign policy to help close the dangerous gap between the economic and technological interdependence of the people of the world and their psychological, political and spiritual alienation.

  J. William Fulbright

  Spiritual, Educational, Order

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• Anyone in a free society where the laws are unjust has an obligation to break the law.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Courage, Law, Liberty

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• I favor free trade in drugs for the same reason the Founding Fathers favored free trade in ideas: in a free society it is none of the government's business what ideas a man puts into his mind; likewise, it should be none of its business what drugs he puts into his body.

  Thomas Szasz

  Father, Men, Ideas

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• Religious institutions that use government power in support of themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths, or of no faith, undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of an established religion tends to make the clergy unresponsive to their own people, and leads to corruption within religion itself. Erecting the 'wall of separation between church and state,' therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Religious, Wall, Rights

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• I love America because it is a confused, chaotic mess - and I hope we can keep it this way for at least another thousand years. The permissive society is the free society.

  Edward Abbey

  Confused, Years, America

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• I'm against ObamaCare, which is imposing radical change, and I would be against a conservative imposing radical change.... I don't think right-wing social engineering is any more desirable than left-wing social engineering... I don't think imposing radical change from the right or the left is a very good way for a free society to operate.

  Newt Gingrich

  Thinking, Engineering, Wings

  "One-on-one with Newt Gingrich". "Meet the Press" with David Gregory, www.nbcnews.com. May 15, 2011.

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• The most important element of a free society, where individual rights are held in the highest esteem, is the rejection of the initiation of violence.

  Ron Paul

  Rights, Rejection, Historical

  Ron Paul (1987). “Freedom Under Siege”, p.38, Ludwig von Mises Institute

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• Perhaps Vanderbilt's most important role in the interest of our free society is to give the world educated men and women of character, possessing a fundamental integrity that affects both their thoughts and their actions.

  Joe B Wyatt

  Integrity, Character, Men

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• I am absolutely opposed to a national ID card. This is a total contradiction of what a free society is all about. The purpose of government is to protect the secrecy and the privacy of all individuals, not the secrecy of government. We don't need a national ID card.

  Ron Paul

  Freedom, Government, Society

  The Republicans' First Presidential Candidates Debate, www.nytimes.com. May 3, 2007.

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• The proposition that Muslims are welcome in Britain if, and only if, they stop behaving like Muslims is a doctrine which is incompatible with the principles that guide a free society.

  Roy Hattersley

  Wisdom, Islamic, Ifs And

  The Independent, July 21, 1989.

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• We cannot, by total reliance on law, escape the duty to judge right and wrong... There are good laws and there are occasionally bad laws, and it conforms to the highest traditions of a free society to offer resistance to bad laws, and to disobey them.

  Alexander Bickel

  War, Law, Judging

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