Freedom Quotes
All I've ever tried to tell anyone is that I'm not a black man or a white man or anything else. All I've ever been was an
American.
--George Foreman (1984)
Liberty ... was a two-headed boon. There was, first, the liberty of the people as a whole to determine the forms of their own
government, to levy their own taxes, and to make their own laws .... There was, second, the liberty of the individual man to live
his own life, within the limits of decency and decorum, as he pleased -- freedom from the despotism of the majority.
--H.L. Mencken (1926)
But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness,
without tuition or restraint.
--Edmund Burke (1790)
Freedom of men under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society, and made by the
legislative power vested in it; a liberty to follow my own will in all things, when the rule prescribes not, and not to be subject to
the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary will of another man.
--John Locke (1690)
Since the general civilization of mankind, I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by
gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.
--James Madison (1788)
I am for the people of the whole nation doing just as they please in all matters which concern the whole nation; for that of each
part doing just as they choose in all matters which concern no other part; and for each individual doing just as he chooses in all
matters which concern nobody else.
--Abraham Lincoln (1858)
While I trust that liberty and free institutions, as we have experienced them, may ultimately spread over the whole globe, I am
by no means sure that all people are fit for them; nor am I desirous of imposing or forcing our peculiar forms upon any other
nation that does not wish to embrace them.
--Daniel Webster (1847)
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
--John Adams
Sir, there have existed, in every age and every country, two distinct orders of men -- the lovers of freedom and the devoted
advocates of power.
--Senator Robert Y. Hayne (1830)
The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.
--Justice Louis D. Brandeis (1928)
Who then is free? The wise who can command his passions, who fears not want, nor death, nor chains, firmly resisting his
appetites and despising the honors of the world, who relies wholly on himself, whose angular points of character have all been
rounded off and polished.
--Horace (25 B.C.)
If men use their liberty in such a way as to surrender their liberty, are they thereafter any the less slaves? If people by a
plebiscite elect a man despot over them, do they remain free because the despotism was of their own making?
--Herbert Spencer (1884)
Freedom cannot be trifled with. You cannot surrender it for security unless in a state of war, and then you must guard carefully
the methods of so doing.
--Arthur Hays Sulzberger (1952)
These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service
of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily
conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too
cheap, we esteem too lightly; 'tis dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon
its goods; and it would be strange indeed, if so celestial an article as Freedom should not be highly rated.
--Thomas Paine (1776)
