Free State Quotes

• If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Education, Freedom, War

  Letter to Colonel Charles Yancey, 6 January 1816

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• A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed. - Second Amendment to the Constitution An armed society is a polite society.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Gun, Libertarian Party, Assault Weapons

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• The Free State men, myself among them, took it for granted that Missouri was a slave state.

  Buffalo Bill

  Men, Slave, Granted

  Buffalo Bill (1879). “The Life of Hon. William F. Cody, Known as Buffalo Bill, the Famous Hunter, Scout, and Guide: An Autobiography”, p.125, U of Nebraska Press

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• If one wants to abide in the thought-free state, a struggle is inevitable.
  One must fight one's way through before regaining one's original primal state.
  If one succeeds in the fight and reaches the goal, the enemy, namely the thoughts,
  will all subside in the Self and disappear entirely.

  Ramana Maharshi

  Struggle, Fighting, Thinking

  Maharshi Ramana, Swami Saraswati Ramananda (1963). “Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi”

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• This is the first nation that organized government on the basis of universal liberty with a free Church and a free State. This meant much at the time; it means much now and will continue to be the beacon of light and guidance for ourselves and of other nations. All that is good and practical and wise in the new developments can best be worked out under our form of government without destroying any of the basic principles upon which it rests.

  Oscar Straus

  Wise, Mean, Light

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• There is not only no free state which would now establish it, but there is no slave state, which, if it had had the free alternative as we now have, would have founded slavery.

  William H. Seward

  Alternatives, Slavery, States

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• The Irish Free State was one of dozens of new European democracies to emerge from the cauldron of the 1914-1918 war. It was one of the very few that was still democratic in 1939. This book shows how the steely determination of one man, Kevin O'Higgins, made this possible. O'Higgins faced down mutinies in both the Gardai and the Army. He dissolved the Dáil Courts which were a parallel system that might easily have undermined the conventional courts. With WT Cosgrave, he put through a constitution which reconciled the local opponents of independence with the new State.

  John Bruton

  Determination, War, Book

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• Excessive dealings with tyrants are not good for the security of free states.

  Demosthenes

  Tyrants, States, Dealings

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• The proposition of an established classification of states as slave states and free states, as insisted on by some, and into northern and southern, as maintained by others, seems to me purely imaginary, and of course the supposed equilibrium of those classes a mere conceit.

  William H. Seward

  Class, Southern, Slave

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• I spend a lot of time in a sort of free state when I'm writing in the beginning and sketching.

  Tony Gilroy

  Writing, Sketching, States

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• Disunion and civil war are at hand; and yet I fear disunion and war less than compromise. We can recover from them. The free States alone, if we must go on alone, will make a glorious nation.

  Rutherford B. Hayes

  War, Hands, Goes On

  Rutherford B. Hayes (2016). “Conspicuous Gallantry: Civil War Diary and Letters of Rutherford B. Hayes (Abridged)”, p.4, BIG BYTE BOOKS

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• The real disturbers of the peace are those who, in a free state, seek to curtail the liberty of judgment which they are unable to tyrannize over.

  Baruch Spinoza

  Real, Liberty, Judgment

  "Theological-Political Treatise". Book by Baruch Spinoza, Ch. 20, That In a Free State Every Man May Think What He Likes, and Say What He Thinks, 1670.

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• Baptists have long upheld the ideal of a free church in a free state. And from the beginning, they believed that forcing a person to worship against his will violated the principles of both Christianity and civility.

  George W. Bush

  Long, Church, Atheism

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• The liberty of the press is indeed essential to the nature of a free state: but this consists in laying no previous restraints upon publications, and not in freedom from censure for criminal matter when published. Every freeman has an undoubted right to lay what sentiments he pleases before the public: to forbid this, is to destroy the freedom of the press: but if he publishes what is improper, mischievous, or illegal, he must take the consequence of his own temerity.

  William Blackstone

  Liberty, Matter, Criminals

  Sir William Blackstone, Joseph Chitty, Edward Christian, John Eykyn Hovenden, Thomas Lee (1861). “Commentaries on the laws of England: in four books, with an analysis of the work”

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• In a free state there should be freedom of speech and thought.

  Tiberius

  Freedom Of Speech, States, Should

  "The Twelve Caesars" by Suetonius, (Ch. 28), 121 AD.

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• I deny the right of Congress to force a slaveholding State upon an unwilling people. I deny their right to force a free State upon an unwilling people. I deny their right to force a good thing upon a people who are unwilling to receive it. The great principle is the right of every community to judge and decide for itself, whether a thing is right or wrong, whether it would be good or evil for them to adopt it; and the right of free action, the right of free thought, the right of free judgment upon the question is dearer to every true American than any other under a free government.

  Stephen A. Douglas

  War, Government, People

  Bob Blaisdell, Stephen A. Douglas (2012). “The Lincoln-Douglas Debates”, p.16, Courier Corporation

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• Close alliances with despots are never safe for free states.

  Demosthenes

  Safety, Alliances, States

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• Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Peace, War, House

  Thomas Jefferson, Brett F. Woods (2009). “Thomas Jefferson: Thoughts on War and Revolution”, p.257, Algora Publishing

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• The commerce of a free people is many times more valuable than that of slaves. Freemen produce and consume vastly more than slaves. They have therefore more to buy and more to sell. Hence the free states have a direct pecuniary interest in the civil freedom of all the other states. Commerce between free and slave states is not reciprocal or equal.

  Lysander Spooner

  People, Slave, States

  Lysander Spooner (1845). “The Unconstitutionality of Slavery”, p.130

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• A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

  James Madison

  Gun, Libertarian Party, Assault Weapons

  James Madison, Gaillard Hunt, James Brown Scott (1999). “The Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787: Which Framed the Constitution of the United States of America”, p.690, The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd.

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• The plain truth is that what holds a free state together is neither general will nor a common interest, but simply politics itself.

  Bernard Crick

  Political, Together, Politics

  Bernard Crick (2013). “In Defence of Politics”, p.97, A&C Black

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• I hold it to be a paramount duty of us in the free states, due to the Union of the states, and perhaps to liberty itself (paradox though it may seem) to let the slavery of the other states alone; while, on the other hand, I hold it to be equally clear, that we should never knowingly lend ourselves directly or indirectly, to prevent that slavery from dying a natural death--to find new places for it to live in, when it can no longer exist in the old.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Hands, Dying, Liberty

  "Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. Volume 1" by Abraham Lincoln, New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers University Press, 1953.

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• The free state offers what a police state denies - the privacy of the home, the dignity and peace of mind of the individual.

  William O. Douglas

  Home, Police, Mind

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• The Congo Free State is unique in its kind. It has nothing to hide and no secrets and is not beholden to anyone except its founder.

  Leopold II of Belgium

  Unique, Secret, Kind

  "The Tyrants: 2500 Years of Absolute Power and Corruption". Book by Clive Foss, 2006.

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• A man in twenty-four hours converts as much as seven ounces of carbon into carbonic acid; a milch cow will convert seventy ounces, and a horse seventy-nine ounces, solely by the act of respiration. That is, the horse in twenty-four hours burns seventy-nine ounces of charcoal, or carbon, in his organs of respiration to supply his natural warmth in that time ..., not in a free state, but in a state of combination.

  Michael Faraday

  Horse, Men, Twenties

  Michael Faraday, Hermann L. F. Von Helmholtz (2010). “Scientific Papers: Physics, Chemistry, Astronomy, Geology”, p.175, Cosimo, Inc.

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