Liberty Quotations

Quotations about our ideals of liberty, freedom, and justice.

Showing 37 through 72 of 82 quotations in this category.

"The only thing that permits us to acquiesce in an erroneous theory is the lack of a better one; analogously, an injustice is tolerable only when it is necessary to avoid an even greater injustice."

-John Rawls

"Man was born free, and everywhere he is in chains."

-Jean-Jacques Rousseau

"You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it."

-Scott McNealy, CEO Sun Microsystems

"And that the said Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms."

-Samuel Adams

"If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves."

-Winston Churchill

"Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice, and moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue."

-Barry Goldwater

"Because of what appears to be a lawful command on the surface, many Citizens, because of respect for the law, are cunningly coerced into waiving their rights due to ignorance."

-Supreme Court opinion, U.S. v. Minker

"We have to fight the terrorists as if there were no rules and preserve our open society as if there were no terrorists."

-Thomas Friedman

"As much as we wish to be safe forever from [terrorism], we simply cannot protect freedom by forsaking freedom."

-Paul McMasters

"I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is; I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat, or a prostitute."

-Rebecca West

"Where a government has come into power through some form of popular vote, fraudulent or not, and maintains at least an appearance of constitutional legality, the guerrilla outbreak cannot be promoted, since the possibilities of peaceful struggle have not yet been exhausted."

-Ernesto "Che" Guevara

"There are no boundaries in this struggle to the death. We cannot be indifferent to what happens anywhere in the world, for a victory by any country over imperialism is our victory; just as any country's defeat is a defeat for all of us."

-Ernesto "Che" Guevara

"I came to America because of the great, great freedom which I heard existed in this country. I made a mistake in selecting America as a land of freedom, a mistake I cannot repair in the balance of my lifetime."

-Albert Einstein

"Revenge feels right only to those directly involved. Justice feels right even to outsiders."

-Marilyn Vos Savant

"The simple truth is that there isn't a single civil right I would deny to an evangelical Christian. I've defended their freedom of religion, of association, of disassociation, and believe they should be treated with respect. I wouldn't dream of drumming them out of the military, firing them for their faith, tearing up their relationships, or taking their children away from them. The favor, alas, is not returned."

-Andrew Sullivan, spoken as an openly-gay man

"Maybe abortion goes on the long list of things [people] officially disapprove of—like getting drunk, lying, not believing in God, sex outside marriage—but that they don't think about a whole lot unless they have to, and when that day comes, they are very glad to avail themselves of the legal medical procedure they tell pollsters they find morally unacceptable."

-Katha Pollitt

"Any time you hear 'we respect civil liberties, but...' you know the next part is going to be bad. It's almost like 'I'm not a racist, but...'"

-DragonWriter, on Slashdot.org

"This plea comes from the bottom of my heart. Every friend of freedom must be as revolted as I am by the prospect of turning the United States into an armed camp, by the vision of jails filled with casual drug users and of an army of enforcers empowered to invade the liberty of citizens on slight evidence."

-Milton Friedman

"Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves."

-Henry David Thoreau

"Americans used to roar like lions for liberty; now we bleat like sheep for security."

-Norman Vincent Peale

"Guantanamo Bay is the anti-Statue of Liberty."

-Thomas Friedman

"Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it."

-Mark Twain

"I am not a pretend citizen, and I don't belong to a pretend family. If you start with the premise that I am less than you, then you have already lost the argument."

-gay commenter "KG"

"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and success of liberty."

-John F. Kennedy

"[Constitutional guarantees in the 4th amendment] apply to all invasions on the part of government and its employees of the sanctity of a man's home and the privacies of life. It is not the breaking of his doors, and the rummaging in his drawers, that constitutes the essence of the offense; but it is the invasion of his indefeasible right of personal security, personal liberty and private property."

-Justice Joseph Bradley

"If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost."

-Aristotle

"If you say, I'm living in America and I have freedom of speech but I choose not to use it because it's going to cost me, well, you're not living in freedom. You're not free."

-Tim Robbins

"To none will we sell, to none deny or delay, right or justice."

-The Magna Carta

"Money is coined liberty."

-Fyodor Dostoevsky

"The real danger is the gradual erosion of individual liberties through automation, integration, and interconnection of many small, separate record-keeping systems, each of which alone may seem innocuous, even benevolent, and wholly justifiable."

-U.S. Privacy Protection Study Commission, 1977

"The principles of justice are chosen behind a veil of ignorance."

-John Rawls

"Technology now allows employers to cross the line from monitoring the work to monitoring the worker."

-Cindia Cameron

"I expect nothing. I fear no one. I am free."

-Nikos Kazantzakis

"The revolution ... is a dictatorship of the exploited against the exploiters."

-Fidel Castro

"I'm the one that has to die when it's time for me to die, so let me live my life, the way I want to."

-Jimi Hendrix

"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evilminded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."

-Justice Louis D. Brandeis