Individual Freedom Quotes - Page 4

• While an equality of rights under a limited government is possible and an essential condition of individual freedom, a claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Government, Rights, Essentials

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• I start ... from a belief in individual freedom and that derives fundamentally from a belief in the limitations of our knowledge, from a belief ... that nobody can be sure that what he believes is right, is really right ... I'm an imperfect human being who cannot be certain of anything, so what position ... involved the least intolerance on my part? ... The most attractive position ... is putting individual freedom first.

  Milton Friedman

  Freedom, Believe, Firsts

  Interview with Tibor Machan, Joe Cobb, Ralph Raico, reason.com. December 1974.

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• Hollywood is in somewhat the same position as Las Vegas these days. It went from being the capital of sin to Disneyland, and now it's landed somewhere in between. It tries to keep the sins hidden away and outwardly present itself as a defender of American virtues: justice, individual freedom, and the power of one innocent soul to save the world.

  Hanna Rosin

  Vegas, Justice, Soul

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• There is no free society without silence, without the internal and external spaces of solitude in which the individual freedom can develop.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Space, Silence, Solitude

  Herbert Marcuse (2004). “The New Left and the 1960s: Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse”, p.117, Routledge

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• To reverse the trend and reduce the role of government in our lives, and thus alleviate the government deficit and inflation pressures, is a giant educational task. The social and economic ideas that gave birth to the transfer system must be discredited and replaced with old values of individual independence and self-reliance. The social philosophy of individual freedom and unhampered private property must again be our guiding light.

  Hans F. Sennholz

  Educational, Philosophy, Self

  Hans F. Sennholz (1979). “Age of inflation”

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• I mean, it's real hard to be free when you are bought and sold in the marketplace. Of course, don't ever tell anybody that they're not free, 'cause then they're gonna get real busy killin' and maimin' to prove to you that they are. Oh yeah, they're gonna talk to you and talk to you and talk to you about individual freedom. But they see a free individual, it's gonna scare 'em.

  Jack Nicholson

  Real, Mean, Scare

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• Tyranny destroys or strengthens the individual; freedom enervates him, until he becomes no more than a puppet. Man has more chances of saving himself by hell than by paradise.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Men, Saving, Paradise

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• By 1980, we knew it was time to renew our faith, to strive with all our strength toward the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with an orderly society. We believed then and now there are no limits to growth and human progress when men and women are free to follow their dreams.

  Ronald Reagan

  Dream, War, Men

  Second Inaugural Address, delivered 21 January 1985, Rotunda of the Capitol, Washington D.C.

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• China has to go along with world trends. That's democracy, liberty, individual freedom. China sooner or later has to go that way. It cannot go backward.

  Dalai Lama

  Liberty, Democracy, World

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• France placed the state above society , democracy above constitutionalism, and equality above liberty. As a result, for much of the nineteenth century it was democratic, with broad suffrage and elections, but hardly liberal. it was certainly a less secure home for individual freedom than was England or America.

  Fareed Zakaria

  Home, America, Democracy

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• Despite the campaign rhetoric, the bureaucracies-big business and big government-are here to stay. The centralization effort cannot be checked. but it can be rationally directed towards our species goal: Space Migration, which in turn offers the only way to re-attain individual freedom of space-time and the small-group social structures which obviously best suit our nervous systems. It is another paradox of neuro-genetics that only in space habitats can humanity return to the village life and pastoral style for which we all long.

  Timothy Leary

  Moon, Village Life, Space

  Timothy Leary, Robert Anton Wilson, George A. Koopman (1988). “Neuropolitique”, New Falcon Publications

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• We are resolved to protect individual freedom of belief. This freedom must include the child as well as the parent. The freedom for which we stand is not freedom of belief as we please,... not freedom to evade responsibility, ...but freedom to be honest in speech and action, freedom to respect one's own integrity of thought and feeling, freedom to question, to investigate, to try, to understand life and the universe in which life abounds, freedom to search anywhere and everywhere to find the meaning of Being, freedom to experiment with new ways of living that seem better than the old.

  Sophia Lyon Fahs

  Children, Integrity, Responsibility

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• Democracy is essentially a means, a utilitarian device for safeguarding internal peace and individual freedom. As such it is by no means infallible or certain. Nor must we forget that there has often been much more cultural and spiritual freedom under an autocratic rule than under some democracies and it is at least conceivable that under the government of a very homogeneous and doctrinaire majority democratic government might be as oppressive as the worst dictatorship.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Spiritual, Mean, Government

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• The true patriot scrutinizes the actions of his own government with unceasing vigilance. And when his government violates the morality and rightness associated with principles of individual freedom and private property, he immediately rises in opposition to his government.

  Jacob G. Hornberger

  Government, Principles, Morality

  Jacob G. Hornberger (1997). “The tyranny of gun control”

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• When we got organized as a country and we wrote a fairly radical Constitution with a radical Bill of Rights, giving a radical amount of individual freedom to Americans, it was assumed that the Americans who had that freedom would use it responsibly.

  William J. Clinton

  Country, Moving, Weekend

  "Interview on MTV's "Enough is Enough" Forum". www.presidency.ucsb.edu. April 19, 1994.

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• Well, I'm a libertarian conservative, so I believe in limited government/maximum individual freedom.

  John Bolton

  Believe, Government, Libertarian

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• The communitarians may say you've been enjoying too much individual freedom, and that you must give up some of that for the benefit of the community. But they really mean that they want more power over your life - to force you to subsidize, obey and conform to their choices.

  Harry Browne

  Giving Up, Mean, Choices

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• There can be no real individual freedom in the presence of economic insecurity.

  Chester Bowles

  Real, Insecurity, Economic

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• Northeastern and most coastal states will vote for the candidate who is more closely aligned with international cooperation and engagement, secularism and science, gun control, individual freedom in culture and sexuality, and a greater role for the government in protecting the environment and ensuring economic equality.

  Steven Pinker

  Gun, Government, Culture

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• Humanity needs a new soil - the soil of freedom. Bohemianism was a reaction, a necessary reaction, but if my vision succeeds then there will be no bohemianism because there will be no so-called collective mind trying to dominate people. Then everybody will be at ease with himself. Of course, you have not to interfere with anybody, but as far as your life is concerned you have to live it on your own terms. Then only is there creativity. Creativity is the fragrance of individual freedom.

  Rajneesh

  Creativity, People, Humanity

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• Most of the major ills of the world have been caused by well-meaning people who ignored the principle of individual freedom, except as applied to themselves, and who were obsessed with fanatical zeal to improve the lot of mankind.

  Henry Grady Weaver

  Freedom, People, Liberty

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• When we speak of peace, we should not mean just the absence of war. True peace rests on the pillars of individual freedom, human rights, national self-determination, and respect for the rule of law.

  Ronald Reagan

  Determination, Freedom, War

  Ronald Reagan (2004). “Speaking My Mind: Selected Speeches”, p.249, Simon and Schuster

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• It is not our affluence, or our plumbing, or our clogged freeways that grip the imagination of others. Rather, it is the values upon which our system is built. These values imply our adherence not only to liberty and individual freedom, but also to international peace, law and order, and constructive social purpose. When we depart from these values, we do so at our peril.

  J. William Fulbright

  Peace, Order, Law

  Congressional Record, vol. 107, p. 11703., June 29, 1961.

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• The more laws that governments pass, the less individual freedom there is. Any student of history will tell you that. Totalitarian countries ban pretty much everything.

  Bill O'Reilly

  Country, Government, Law

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• Democracy is not an easy form of government, because it is never final; it is a living, changing organism, with a continuous shifting and adjusting of balance between individual freedom and general order.

  Ilka Chase

  Government, Order, Democracy

  Ilka Chase (1945). “Past Imperfect”, Pocket Books of Canada

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