Our contest is not only whether we ourselves shall be free, but whether there shall be left to mankind an asylum on earth for civil and religious liberty.
Fear is the foundation of most governments.
I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom.
The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to fill the world with fools.
Naturally the common people don't want war. . . but after all it is the leaders of a country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along. . .
Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.
I have sworn upon the altar of god.
Freedom, morality, and the human dignity of the individual consists precisely in this; that he does good not because he is forced to do so, but because he freely conceives it, wants it, and loves it.
[Our Constitution] is an instrument for the people to restrain the government.
You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.
Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide.
The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.
Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.
Order without liberty and liberty without order are equally destructive.
The Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions
Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.
Laws that forbid the carrying of arms . . . disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes . . . Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.
Men fight for liberty and win it with hard knocks. Their children, brought up easy, let it slip away again, poor fools. And their grandchildren are once more slaves.
Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.
None who have always been free can understand the terrible fascinating power of the hope of freedom to those who are not free.
The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppose.
No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.
A right is not what someone gives you; it's what no one can take from you.
The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.
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