Liberty Quotes - Page 28

• Patriots always talk of dying for their country and never of killing for their country.

  Bertrand Russell

  Country, Hippie, Patriotic

  Bertrand Russell (1962). “Has Man a Future?”

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• Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.

  Bertrand Russell

  4th Of July, Patriotic, Government

  "Sceptical Essays". Ch. 13: Freedom in Society. Book by Bertrand Russell, 1928.

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• Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites.

  Edmund Burke

  Men, Moral, Disposition

  Edmund Burke (1828). “The Beauties of Burke: Consisting of Selections from His Works”, p.86

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• I do not believe that the government should have its long nose poked into the private consensual relationships between people.

  John Anderson

  Believe, Government, Should Have

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• Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor liberty to purchase power.

  Benjamin Franklin

  4th Of July, Wealth, Virtue

  Benjamin Franklin (2013). “Poor Richard's Almanack”, p.17, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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• Every nation ridicules other nations, and all are right.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Philosophical, Libertarian, Ridicule

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• Self-sacrifice enables us to sacrifice other people without blushing.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Integrity, Sacrifice, Self

  Man and Superman (1903) "Maxims for Revolutionists: Self-Sacrifice"

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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, Anarchy

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• Shame on the men who can court exemption from present trouble and expense at the price of their own posterity's liberty!

  Samuel Adams

  Men, Trouble, Shame

  Samuel Adams (1968). “The Writings of Samuel Adams: 1773-1777: 1773-1777”

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• The future inhabitants of [both] the Atlantic and Mississippi states will be our sons. We think we see their happiness in their union, and we wish it. Events may prove otherwise; and if they see their interest in separating why should we take sides? God bless them both, and keep them in union if it be for their good, but separate them if it be better.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Son, Thinking, Wish

  Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Memoir, correspondence, and miscellanies from the papers of T. Jefferson”, p.512

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• Democracy, the practice of self-government, is a covenant among free men to respect the rights and liberties of their fellows.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Men, Self, Practice

  Franklin D. Roosevelt (1995). “The Essential Franklin Delano Roosevelt”, Gramercy

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• The only security men can have for their political liberty, consists in keeping their money in their own pockets.

  Lysander Spooner

  Men, Political, Pockets

  Lysander Spooner (1973). “No Treason and a Letter to Thomas F. Bayard”

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• The system of private property is the most important guaranty of freedom, not only for those who own property, but scarcely less for those who do not.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Important, Libertarian, Economics

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• To limit the press is to insult a nation; to prohibit reading of certain books is to declare the inhabitants to be either fools or slaves: such a prohibition ought to fill them with disdain.

  Claude Adrien Helvetius

  Book, Reading, Libertarian

  "A Treatise on Man: His Intellectual Faculties & His Education", Vol. I by Claude Adrien Helvetius, translated by W. Hooper, 1777.

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• Government cannot make us equal; it can only recognize, respect, and protect us as equal before the law.

  Clarence Thomas

  Respect, Government, Law

  Concurring in Adarand v. Pena, 515 U.S. 200, 1995.

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• Somehow, the fact that more poor people are on welfare, receiving more generous payments, does not seem to have made this country a nice place to live - not even for the poor on welfare, whose condition seems not noticeably better than when they were poor and off welfare. Something appears to have gone wrong; a liberal and compassionate social policy has bred all sorts of unanticipated and perverse consequences.

  Irving Kristol

  Country, Nice, People

  Irving Kristol (1995). “Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea”, p.48, Simon and Schuster

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• Government should be weak, amateurish and ridiculous. At present, it fulfills only a third of the role.

  Edward Abbey

  Government, Roles, Ridiculous

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.22, RosettaBooks

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• Civil liberty is only natural liberty, modified and secured by the sanctions of civil society.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Natural, Sanctions, Civil Liberties

  Alexander Hamilton, John Church Hamilton (1850). “The Works of Alexander Hamilton: Miscellanies, 1774-1789: A full vindication; The farmer refuted; Quebec bill; Resolutions in Congress; Letters from Phocion; New-York Legislature, etc”, p.61

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• Do not consider Collectivists as "sincere but deluded idealists". The proposal to enslave some men for the sake of others is not an ideal; brutality is not "idealistic," no matter what its purpose. Do not ever say that the desire to "do good" by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives.

  Ayn Rand

  Men, Stupidity, Lust

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• The welfare state is the oldest con game in the world. First you take people's money away quietly, and then you give some of it back to them flamboyantly.

  Thomas Sowell

  Games, People, Giving

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• In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Peace, War, Independent

  graf Leo Tolstoy (1904). “Essays, letters, miscellanies”

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• Liberty not only means that the individual has both the opportunity and the burden of choice; it also means that he must bear the consequences of his actions. Liberty and responsibility are inseparable.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Freedom, Mean, Responsibility

  "The Constitution of Liberty". Book by Friedrich Hayek. Part I: "The Value of Freedom". Chapter 5: "Responsibility and Freedom", 1960.

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• People willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Security And Freedom, People, Trade

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• The public school system: "Usually a twelve year sentence of mind control. Crushing creativity, smashing individualism, encouraging collectivism and compromise, destroying the exercise of intellectual inquiry, twisting it instead into meek subservience to authority." - Walter Karp, Editor Harper's Magazine
  The ground of liberty is to be gained by inches, and we must be contented to secure what we can get from time to time and eternally press forward for what is yet to get. It takes time to persuade men to do even what is for their own good.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Crush, Creativity, School

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• In every age its (liberty's) progress has been beset by its natural enemies, by ignorance and superstition, by lust of conquest and by love of ease, by the strong man's craving for power, and the poor man's craving for food

  Lord Acton

  Wisdom, Strong, Ignorance

  John Emerich Edward Dalberg, Lord Acton (2016). “The History of Freedom (and other Essays)”, p.28, Jazzybee Verlag

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