Free Society Quotes - Page 2

• I think it's an intellectual duty for a person who lives in a free society to read material not only with which you agree, but with which you disagree. Because every so often somebody you think is wrong will actually turn out to be right.

  Tom Clancy

  Thinking, Intellectual, Duty

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• Free speech is essential to education, especially to a liberal education, which encourages the search for truths in art and science. If expression is restricted, the range of inquiry is also curtailed... The beneficiaries of a free society have a duty to pursue the truth and to protect the freedom of expression that makes possible the search for a new enlightenment.

  Norman Dorsen

  Education, Art, Truth

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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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• Free societies are hopeful societies. And free societies will be allies against these hateful few who have no conscience, who kill at the whim of a hat.

  George W. Bush

  Freedom, Hopeful, Allies

  George W. Bush “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, George W. Bush, 2004, Book 2, July 1 to September 30, 2004”, Government Printing Office

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• We can't impose freedom, but we can eliminate roadblocks to freedom, and to allow free societies to develop.

  George W. Bush

  Freedom, Roadblock

  George W. Bush (1982). “Public paper of the presidents of the United States”, p.1035, Government Printing Office

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• I want people to take thought about their condition and to recognize that the maintainence of a free society is a very difficult and complicated thing and it requires a self-denying ordinance of the most extreme kind. It requires a willingness to put up with temporary evils on the basis of the subtle and sophisticated understanding that if you step in to do something about them you not only may make them worse, you will spread your tenticles and get bad results elsewhere.

  Milton Friedman

  Self, People, Evil

  Interview with Richard Heffner on "The Open Mind", December 7, 1975.

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• A truly free society must not include a peace which oppresses us. We must learn on our own terms what peace and freedom mean together. There can be no peace if there is social injustice and suppression of human rights, because external and internal peace are inseparable. Peace is not just the absence of mass destruction, but a positive internal and external condition in which people are free so that they can grow to their full potential.

  Petra Kelly

  Peace, Mean, Rights

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• In a free society, government reflects the soul of its people. If people want change at the top, they will have to live in different ways. Our major social problems are not the cause of our decadence. They are a reflection of it.

  Cal Thomas

  Change, Reflection, Government

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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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• Very few people really care about freedom, about liberty, about the truth, very few. Very few people have guts, the kind of guts on which a real democracy has to depend. Without people with that sort of guts a free society dies or cannot be born.

  Doris Lessing

  Real, Democracies Have, People

  Doris May Lessing (1994). “The Golden Notebook”, HarperCollins Publishers

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• In a free society, one does not have to deal with those who are irrational. One is free to avoid them.

  Ayn Rand

  Freedom, Stupid People, Society

  Ayn Rand (1964). “The Virtue of Selfishness”, p.53, Penguin

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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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• The first principle of a free society is an untrammeled flow of words in an open forum.

  Adlai E. Stevenson

  Freedom Of Speech, Society, Principles

  The New York Times, January 19, 1962.

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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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• Under the United States Constitution, the federal government has no authority to hold states "accountable" for their education performance...In the free society envisioned by the founders, schools are held accountable to parents, not federal bureaucrats.

  Ron Paul

  School, Government, Parent

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• I think the enemy is self-censorship. In a free society the biggest danger is that you're afraid to the point where you censor yourself.

  Tim Robbins

  Thinking, Self, Enemy

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• The path towards a free society has not been simple. There are tragic and glorious pages in our history.

  Vladimir Putin

  Simple, Pages, Path

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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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• 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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• 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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