Liberty Quotes - Page 14

• The right to revolt has sources deep in our history.

  William O. Douglas

  Religious, War, Political

  William O. Douglas (1954). “An Almanac of Liberty”

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• The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.

  Frederick Douglass

  Honesty, Integrity, War

  Speech on the twenty-third anniversary of emancipation in the District of Columbia,Washington, D.C., Apr. 1885

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• Terrorism is a direct response to the crimes our government has committed against foreigners (besides which, the actual terrorists are within our own government)

  Gore Vidal

  Government, Libertarian, Terrorism

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• Politics ought to be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free people and who would preserve what is good and fruitful in our national heritage.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Peace, Freedom, Rights

  Eisenhower, Dwight D. (1960). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1954”, p.219, Best Books on

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• The economic miracle that has been the United States was not produced by socialized enterprises, by government-unon-industry cartels or by centralized economic planning. It was produced by private enterprises in a profit-and-loss system. And losses were at least as important in weeding out failures, as profits in fostering successes. Let government succor failures, and we shall be headed for stagnation and decline.

  Milton Friedman

  Letting Go, Weed, Loss

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• If [drugs] didn't exist, our government would have to invent them, the better to enact laws aimed at keeping the citizens "sinless and obedient."

  Gore Vidal

  Government, Law, Drug

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• Government is necessary, but the only rights we can delegate to government are the ones we possess. For example, we all have a natural right to defend ourselves against predators. Since we possess that right, we can delegate authority to government to defend us. By contrast, we don't have a natural right to take the property of one person to give to another; therefore, we cannot legitimately delegate such authority to government.

  Walter E. Williams

  Rights, Government, Giving

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• For the average American, freedom of speech is simply the freedom to repeat what everyone else is saying and no more.

  Gore Vidal

  Average, Freedom Of Speech, Libertarian

  Gore Vidal (2011). “Burr: A Novel”, p.598, Vintage

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• People who create things nowadays can expect to be prosecuted by highly moralistic people who are incapable of creating anything. There is no way to measure the chilling effect on innovation that results from the threats of taxation, regulation and prosecution against anything that succeeds. We'll never know how many ideas our government has aborted in the name protecting us.

  Joseph Sobran

  Ideas, Creating, Government

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• Resistance to tyranny is service to God.

  James Madison

  Libertarian, Resistance, Service To God

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• It's wrong for someone to confiscate your money, give it to someone else, and call that "compassion."

  Harry Browne

  Compassion, Giving, Libertarian

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• Men who have greatness within them don't go in for politics.

  Albert Camus

  Greatness, Men, Libertarian

  Carnets, 1935-42 (Notebooks, 1962) p. 99

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• 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, Minorities, Libertarian

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• Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Memories, Freedom, Political

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• The only tyrant I accept in this world is the still voice within.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Faith, Freedom, Acceptance

  Mahatma Gandhi (1965). “Glorious Thoughts of Gandhi: Being a Treasury of about Ten Thousand Valuable and Inspiring Thougths of Mahatma Gandhi, Classified Under Four Hundred Subjects”

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• I want a government small enough to fit inside the Constitution.

  Harry Browne

  Government, Want, Libertarian

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• Equality, rightly understood as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences; wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism.

  Barry Goldwater

  Father, Equality, Differences

  Speech Accepting the Republican Presidential Nomination, delivered 16 July 1964, San Francisco

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• [V]irtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government.

  George Washington

  Spring, Government, Morality

  George Washington (1855). “Maxims of Washington: Political, Social, Moral, and Religious”, p.308

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• Liberty is to the collective body, what health is to every individual body. Without health no pleasure can be tasted by man; without liberty, no happiness can be enjoyed by society.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Men, Healthy, Individuality

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• Liberty may be endangered by the abuse of liberty, but also by the abuse of power.

  James Madison

  Patriotic, Power, Presidential

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• The American Dream was not about government's taking huge sums of money (under the label of "taxation") from citizens by force. The American Dream was about individualism and the opportunity to achieve success without interference from others.

  Robert Ringer

  Dream, Opportunity, Government

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• Bureaucracy, the rule of no one, has become the modern form of despotism.

  Mary McCarthy

  Libertarian, Modern, Form

  "The Vita Activa". The New Yorker, October 18, 1958.

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• Men are never so likely to settle a question rightly as when they discuss it freely.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Men, Confusion, Political

  "Southey's Colloquies on Society" by Thomas B. Macaulay, 1830.

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• [Oppose] with manly firmness [any] invasions on the rights of the people.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Freedom, Rights, People

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• Let us contemplate our forefathers, and posterity, and resolve to maintain the rights bequeathed to us from the former, for the sake of the latter. The necessity of the times, more than ever, calls for our utmost circumspection, deliberation, fortitude and perseverance. Let us remember that "if we suffer tamely a lawless attack upon our liberty, we encourage it, and involve others in our doom," it is a very serious consideration that millions yet unborn may be the miserable sharers of the event.

  Samuel Adams

  Perseverance, Rights, Suffering

  Essay in The Boston Gazette under the pseudonym "Candidus", October 14, 1771.

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