Liberty Quotes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King_Jr.

“There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.”

--Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr.; 15 January 1929 - 4 April 1968)

A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches

“You're not to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it.”

--Malcolm X (born Malcolm Little, later el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz; 19 May 1925 - 21 February 1965)

Speech at the founding rally of The Organization of Afro-American Unity : By Any Means Necessary, 28 June 1964

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_X

“Now, there's one thing you might have noticed I don't complain about: politicians. Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don't fall out of the sky. They don't pass through a membrane from another reality. They come from American parents and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses and American universities, and they are elected by American citizens. This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It's what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out. If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're going to get selfish, ignorant leaders. Term limits ain't going to do any good; you're just going to end up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans. So, maybe, maybe, maybe, it's not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here... like, the public. Yeah, the public sucks. There's a nice campaign slogan for somebody: 'The Public Sucks. F*ck Hope.”

--George Denis Patrick Carlin (12 May 1937 - 22 June 2008)

American comedian, actor, author, and social critic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Carlin

“This Nation was founded by men of many nations and backgrounds. It was founded on the principle that all men are created equal, and that the rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened.”

--John F. Kennedy (29 May 1917 - 22 November 1963), POTUS

Radio and Television Report To The American People On Civil Rights, 11 June 1963

“The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.”

--Ayn Rand (Alice O'Connor (born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum; 2 February 1905 - 6 March 1982))

Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, 1966-1967

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Eddings

“There's a peculiar dichotomy in the nature of almost anyone who calls himself a historian. Such scholars all piously assure us that they're telling us the real truth about what really happened, but if you turn any competent historian over and look at his damp underside, you'll find a storyteller, and you can believe me when I tell you that no storyteller's ever going to tell a story without a few embellishments. Add to that the fact that we've all got assorted political and theological preconceptions that are going to color what we write, and you'll begin to realize that no history of any event is entirely reliable...”

--David Carroll Eddings (7 July 1931 - 2 June 2009)

Belgarath the Sorcerer, 1995

“Forget the politicians. The politicians are put there to give you the idea you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land, they own and control the corporations that've long since bought and paid for, the senate, the congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pocket, and they own all the big media companies so they control just about all of the news and the information you get to hear. They got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else. But I'll tell you what they don't want. They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that. That doesn't help them.”

--George Denis Patrick Carlin (12 May 1937 - 22 June 2008)

American comedian, actor, author, and social critic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Carlin

10)

"Don't go stupid places. Don't hang out with stupid people. Don't do stupid things."

--John S. Farnam, president of Defensive Training International

Layers of Response (advice for avoiding violence), 19 March 2003

https://defense-training.com/about/

11)

“The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government - lest it come to dominate our lives and interests.”

--Patrick Jake O'Rourke (14 November 1947 - 15 February 2022)

Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut‎ (p. 227) , 1996

(many times falsely attributed to Patrick Henry)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._J._O%27Rourke

12)

“I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.”

--Robert A. Heinlein (7 July 1907 - 8 May 1988)

The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, 1966

13)

“A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.”

--Thomas Paine (born Thomas Pain; 9 February 1737 - 8 June 1809)

Common Sense, 1776

https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q15429114

14)

"Our freedoms are vanishing. If you do not get active to take a stand now against all that is wrong while we still can, then maybe one of your children may elect to do so in the future, when it will be far more riskier - and much, much harder."

--Suzy Kassem (1 December 1975 - living)

Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem, 2011

15)

"No single person, including the President of the United States, should ever be given the power to make a medical decision for potentially millions of Americans. Freedom over one's physical person is the most basic freedom of all, and people in a free society should be sovereign over their own bodies. When we give government the power to make medical decisions for us, we in essence accept that the state owns our bodies."

--Ron Paul (Ronald Ernest Paul; 20 August 1935 - living), former US Rep. from Texas

Government Vaccines- Bad Policy, Bad Medicine - 10 December 2002

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2002/12/ron-paul/government-vaccinations/

https://oll.libertyfund.org/title/herbert-the-right-and-wrong-of-compulsion-by-the-state-and-other-essays-1978-ed

16)

“Liberty means refusing to allow some men to use the state to compel other men to serve their interests or opinion.”

--Auberon Herbert (Auberon Edward William Molyneux Herbert; 18 June 1838 - 5 November 1906)

The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State and Other Essays, 1885

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auberon_Herbert

17)

“The fact that so many successful politicians are such shameless liars is not only a reflection on them, it is also a reflection on us. When the people want the impossible, only liars can satisfy.”

--Thomas Sowell (30 June 1930 - living)

American economist, author, and social commentator

Thomas Sowell: Big lies in politics, 24 May 2012

https://www.staugustine.com/story/opinion/2012/05/24/thomas-sowell-big-lies-politics/16174975007/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Sowell

18)

“The surest way to damage society is to call for a "great man" to lead it. The surest way to improve society is to become a great man to lead oneself and convince others to do likewise.”

--Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski (Living)

Libertarian theorist and a researcher in the tradition of the Austrian School of Economics.

https://mises.org/profile/jakub-bozydar-wisniewski

19)

"So this is how liberty dies, with thunderous applause."

--[Padme Amidala] George Lucas (14 May 1944 - Living)

Star Wars Episode III - Revenge of the Sith, 2005

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Lucas

20)

“How fortunate for leaders that men do not think.”

--Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 - 30 April 1945)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler

(falsely attributed to? https://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/what_good_fortune_for_governments )

21)

"The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword. If you would take a man's life, you owe it to him to look into his eyes and hear his final words. And if you cannot bear to do that, then perhaps the man does not deserve to die."

--George R.R. Martin (20 September 1948 - living)

A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, #1), 1996

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_R._R._Martin

22)

"It isn't a coincidence that governments everywhere want to educate children. Government education, in turn, is supposed to be evidence of the state's goodness and its concern for our well-being. The real explanation is less flattering. If the government's propaganda can take root as children grow up, those kids will be no threat to the state apparatus. They'll fasten the chains to their own ankles."

--Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr. (1 July 1944 - living)

American author, editor, and political consultant.

Ron Paul and the Future, August 27, 2012

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2012/08/lew-rockwell/ron-paul-and-the-future

https://mises.org/profile/llewellyn-h-rockwell-jr

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lew_Rockwell

23)

"Liberty is never unalienable; it must be redeemed regularly with the blood of patriots or it always vanishes. Of all the so-called natural human rights that have ever been invented, liberty is least likely to be cheap and is never free of cost."

--Robert A. Heinlein (7 July 1907 - 8 May 1988)

Starship Troopers, 1959

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Goodkind

24)

"Absolute power corrupts absolutely" full quote in context...

Lord John Dalberg-Acton writes to Bishop Mandell Creighton in 1887:

"I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favourable presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption it is the other way against holders of power, increasing as the power increases. Historic responsibility has to make up for the want of legal responsibility. Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it. That is the point at which the negation of Catholicism and the negation of Liberalism meet and keep high festival, and the end learns to justify the means. You would hang a man of no position, like Ravaillac; but if what one hears is true, then Elizabeth asked the gaoler to murder Mary, and William III ordered his Scots minister to extirpate a clan. Here are the greater names coupled with the greater crimes. You would spare these criminals, for some mysterious reason. I would hang them, higher than Haman, for reasons of quite obvious justice; still more, still higher, for the sake of historical science."

People often cite a portion of this letter and miss the bigger issue addressed here.

"... Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it..."

Our Leaders, our "Great Men", need to be held accountable for their actions. If anything, they should be held to a higher standard than us ordinary folk. Big or small, rich or poor, righteous or pagan, we all must answer to the same Laws. We must All be held accountable for our actions, because

"...We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal...".

If the "Great Men" of our nation will not allow the Rule of Law to be equal and impartial, applying to themselves as well as others, then we must remove them.

"... Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

If we do not consent, then the government is unjust, illegitimate, and a tyranny...

--Thomas Risner

25)

"If you want to be a slave in life, then continue going around asking others to do for you. They will oblige, but you will find the price is your choices, your freedom, your life itself. They will do for you, and as a result you will be in bondage to them forever, having given your identity away for a paltry price. Then, and only then, you will be a nobody, a slave, because you yourself and nobody else made it so."

--Terry Goodkind (11 January 1948)

The Pillars of Creation (Sword of Truth, #7), 2001

26)

“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animated contest of freedom — go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen!”

--Samuel Adams (27 September 1722 - 2 October 1803)

Speech delivered at the State House in Philadelphia, 1 August 1776

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Henry

27)

“Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”

--Patrick Henry (29 May 1736 - 6 June 1799)

speech to the Second Virginia Convention, St. John's Church in Richmond, Virginia, 23 March 1775

28)

"The story we tell nowadays says the poor grasshopper was freezin' to death, and the ant took him in the house and fed him. And then after that, the grasshopper learned his lesson. That's not the real story, folks. If you're gonna tell your kids the story, you need to tell them the way it happened. The grasshopper DIES. He freezes to death. And honestly, the ant probably cuts him up in little pieces and brings him into his den, because ants EAT grasshoppers."

--Jack Spirko (1972 - living), The Survival Podcast

The Ant and the Grasshopper, The Survival Podcast, 2010

https://youtu.be/F0nCQs_oCNs

https://www.thesurvivalpodcast.com/about-tspc/who-is-jack-spirko

29)

"Our natural, inalienable rights are now considered to be a dispensation from government, and freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp as it is at this moment."

--Ronald Reagan (6 February 1911 - 5 June 2004)

A Time for Choosing Speech, 27 October 1964

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Reagan

30)

“Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.”

--George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 - 2 November 1950)

Maxims for Revolutionists,1903

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Bernard_Shaw

31)

“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it.”

--Thomas Paine (born Thomas Pain; 9 February 1737 - 8 June 1809),

"The Crisis," no. 4; 11 September 1777

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Philpot_Curran

32)

“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.”

[original quote in a speech in Dublin on 10 July 1790,

“It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt.”]

--Jeohn Philpot Curran (24 July 1750 – 14 October 1817)

Speech On the Right of Election, 10 July 1790

33)

"It's not an endlessly expanding list of rights — the 'right' to education, the 'right' to health care, the 'right' to food and housing. That's not freedom, that's dependency. Those aren't rights, those are the rations of slavery — hay and a barn for human cattle."

--P. J. O'Rourke (November 14, 1947 - February 15, 2022)

Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut‎ (p. 227), 1996

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._J._O%27Rourke

34)

"Unalienable rights are endowed by our Creator upon every human by virtue of being human, and privileges are given by our American government to a specific group of people — Americans. The U.S. Constitution is only five pages. It’s not complicated. That’s because it doesn’t grant rights to the American people, it grants specific, limited powers to the federal government to operate in accordance with the Declaration’s mandate: preserving and protecting the rights we the people already possess. For example, Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution grants Congress the power to legislate in very specific, limited subject matters. Article II grants specific, limited powers to the federal executive branch, and Article III grants specific, limited powers to the federal judiciary. The Bill of Rights (I prefer to call it the Bill of Protections) enumerates — but importantly does not grant — specific rights that civil governments most often infringe and abridge, and acts as a redundancy safeguard. Just in case Congress isn’t clear on its limited powers listed, the Founders told Congress specifically what it cannot do. "

--Jenna Lynn Ellis (November 1, 1984 - living)

American conservative lawyer

Ninth circuit travel ban decision rests fundamental misunderstanding constitution, 10 February 2017

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/444798/ninth-circuit-travel-ban-decision-rests-fundamental-misunderstanding-constitution

35)

“Instruction in world history in the so-called high schools is even today in a very sorry condition. Few teachers understand that the study of history can never be to learn historical dates and events by heart and recite them by rote; that what matters is not whether the child knows exactly when this battle or that was fought, when a general was born, or even when a monarch (usually a very insignificant one) came into the crown of his forefathers. No, by the living God, this is very unimportant. To 'learn' history means to seek and find the forces which are the causes leading to those effects which we subsequently perceive as historical events.”

--Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 - 30 April 1945)

Mein Kampf, 1925

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler

36)

“The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men's labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatable things, called by the same name — liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatable names - liberty and tyranny."

--Abraham Lincoln (12 February 1809 - 15 April 1865), POTUS

address at sanitary fair, Baltimore, Maryland, 18 April 1864

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln

37)

"We must, therefore, emphasize that “we” are not the government; the government is not “us.” The government does not in any accurate sense “represent” the majority of the people. But, even if it did, even if 70 percent of the people decided to murder the remaining 30 percent, this would still be murder and would not be voluntary suicide on the part of the slaughtered minority. No organicist metaphor, no irrelevant bromide that “we are all part of one another,” must be permitted to obscure this basic fact."

--Murray Newton Rothbard (2 March 1926 - 7 January 1995)

Anatomy of a State, 1974

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Rothbard

38)

"Anarchists did not try to carry out genocide against the Armenians in Turkey; they did not deliberately starve millions of Ukrainians; they did not create a system of death camps to kill Jews, gypsies, and Slavs in Europe; they did not fire-bomb scores of large German and Japanese cities and drop nuclear bombs on two of them; they did not carry out a ‘Great Leap Forward’ that killed scores of millions of Chinese; they did not attempt to kill everybody with any appreciable education in Cambodia; they did not launch one aggressive war after another; they did not implement trade sanctions that killed perhaps 500,000 Iraqi children.

In debates between anarchists and statists, the burden of proof clearly should rest on those who place their trust in the state. Anarchy’s mayhem is wholly conjectural; the state’s mayhem is undeniably, factually horrendous."

--Robert Higgs Ph.D. (1 February 1944 - living)

The State Is Too Dangerous to Tolerate, lecture was presented by Higgs at the 2013 Mises University, hosted by the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on 27 July 2013. (Archived from the live Mises.tv broadcast)

https://mises.org/profile/robert-higgs

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Higgs

39)

"I hope we once again have reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There's a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts."

--Ronald Reagan (6 February 1911 - 5 June 2004)

Farewell Address, Washington, D. C., 11 January 1989

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Reagan

40)

“But let me offer you my definition of social justice: I keep what I earn and you keep what you earn. Do you disagree? Well then tell me how much of what I earn belongs to you - and why?”

--Walter E. Williams (31 March1936 - 1 December 2020)

All It Takes is Guts: A Minority View , 1987

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_E._Williams

41)

"The truth is, one who seeks to achieve freedom by petitioning those in power to give it to him has already failed, regardless of the response.

To beg for the blessing of “authority” is to accept that the choice is the master’s alone to make, which means that the person is already, by definition, a slave."

--Larken Rose

The Most Dangerous Superstition, 2011

https://www.larkenrose.com

42)

“Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day.

Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.

Steal a fish from one guy and give it to another--and keep doing that on a daily basis--and you'll make the first guy pissed off, but you'll make the second guy lazy and dependent on you. Then you can tell the second guy that the first guy is greedy for wanting to keep the fish he caught. Then the second guy will cheer for you to steal more fish. Then you can prohibit anyone from fishing without getting permission from you. Then you can expand the racket, stealing fish from more people and buying the loyalty of others. Then you can get the recipients of the stolen fish to act as your hired thugs. Then you can ... well, you know the rest.”

--Larken Rose (living)

https://www.larkenrose.com

43)

"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law', because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual."

--Thomas Jefferson (13 April 1743 - 4 July 1826), POTUS

Letter to Isaac H. Tiffany, 4 April 1819

44)

"Any power that you do not trust an opposing politician to have would be wrong for your own politician to have as well."

--Thomas Risner

45)

“If ever a time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin.”

--Samuel Adams (27 September 1722 - 2 October 1803)

Letter to James Warren, 24 October 1780

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Rothbard

46)

"Moreover, in the system of criminal punishment in the libertarian world, the emphasis would never be, as it is now, on "society's" jailing the criminal; the emphasis would necessarily be on compelling the criminal to make restitution to the victim of his crime. The present system, in which the victim is not recompensed but instead has to pay taxes to support the incarceration of his own attacker — would be evident nonsense in a world that focuses on the defense of property rights and therefore on the victim of crime."

--Murray Newton Rothbard (2 March 1926 - 7 January 1995)

For a New Liberty. The Libertarian Manfesto. Second Edition. (Auburn, AL.: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1973, 1978, 2006), "The State," pp. 55-86.

47)

"There is nothing virtuous or noble about being "tolerant" of people whose attitudes and behaviors you approve of. If you don't defend the freedom of even those individuals whose attitudes and behaviors you find disgusting, narrow-minded and offensive, then you are not tolerant. To "tolerate" doesn't mean you like it or approve of it; it means only that you ALLOW it to EXIST--i.e., you refrain from violently interfering. The people who look to "government" to FORCE people to be "nice" are not tolerant."

--Larken Rose (living)

https://www.larkenrose.com

48)

"Libertarians make no exceptions to the golden rule and provide no moral loophole, no double standard, for government. That is, libertarians believe that murder is murder and does not become sanctified by reasons of state if committed by the government. We believe that theft is theft and does not become legitimated because organized robbers call their theft "taxation." We believe that enslavement is enslavement even if the institution committing that act calls it "conscription." In short, the key to libertarian theory is that it makes no exceptions in its universal ethic for government."

--Murray N. Rothbard

Myth and Truth About Libertarianism, 20 July 2019

https://mises.org/library/myth-and-truth-about-libertarianism

49)

"These examples and many others demonstrate an alarming trend whereby the privacy and dignity of our citizens is being whittled away by sometimes imperceptible steps. Taken individually, each step may be of little consequence. But when viewed as a whole, there begins to emerge a society quite unlike any we have seen -- a society in which government may intrude into the secret regions of man's life at will."

-- William Orville Douglas (16 October 1898 - 19 January 1980), SCOTUS

Osborn v. United States, 385 U.S. 323, 343 (1966) (dissenting)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_O._Douglas

50)

"Even the richest person, provided the riches comes from mutually beneficial exchange, does not need to give anything "back" to the community, because this person took nothing out of the community. Indeed, the reverse is true: Enterprises give to the community. Their owners take huge risks, and front the money for investment, precisely with the goal of serving others. Their riches are signs that they have achieved their aims."

--Jeffrey Tucker

Does Money Taint Everything?, 8 May 2008

https://mises.org/library/does-money-taint-everything

51)

"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 (Alice O'Connor, born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum; February 2, 1905 - March 6, 1982)

Textbook of Americanism, 1946

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/10/091.html

https://www.unionofegoists.com/authors/barnhill

52)

"Where the people fear the government you have tyranny. Where the government fears the people you have liberty."

--John Basil Barnhill (24 April 1864 - 21 January 1929)

Writer, lecturer, debater, ed. of various journals a.k.a. John Erwin McCall

The American Anti-socialist, 1912

(commonly falsely attributed to Thomas Jefferson)

53)

"Years ago, a member of Congress slipped a laminated quote into my hand that he must have thought I would find meaningful. I paid little attention at first and unfortunately I don’t recall just who gave me the quote. I placed it next to my voting card and have carried it ever since. The quote came from Elie Wiesel’s book One Generation After. The quote was entitled “Why I Protest.”

Author Elie Wiesel tells the story of the one righteous man of Sodom, who walked the streets protesting against the injustice of this city. People made fun of him, derided him. Finally, a young person asked: “Why do you continue your protest against evil; can’t you see no one is paying attention to you?” He answered, “I’ll tell you why I continue. In the beginning, I thought I would change people. Today, I know I cannot. Yet, if I continue my protest, at least I will prevent others from changing me.”

I’m not that pessimistic that we can’t change people’s beliefs or that people will not respond to the message of liberty and peace. But we must always be on guard not to let others change us once we gain the confidence that we are on the right track in the search for truth."

--Ron Paul (Ronald Ernest Paul; 20 August 1935 - present), former US Rep. from Texas

Liberty Defined: 50 Essential Issues That Affect Our Freedom

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horatius_Bonar

54)

"It is forgiveness that sets a man working for God. He does not work in order to be forgiven, but because he has been forgiven, and the consciousness of his sin being pardoned makes him long for its entire removal than ever he did before. An unforgiven man cannot work. He has not the will, nor the power, nor the liberty. He is in chains. Israel in Egypt could not serve Jehovah. "Let my people go, that they may serve Me." was God's message to Pharaoh (exodus 8:1) first liberty, then service."

--Horatius Bonar (19 December 1808 - 31 July 1889), Scottish churchman and poet

God's Way of Holiness, 1864

55)

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy."

--Elmer Theodore Peterson (1884-1969)

This is the Hard Core of Freedom, The Daily Oklahoman, 9 December 1951

( Often misattributed to Alexis de Tocqueville as "The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money." )

56)

"...We have had 13. states independant 11. years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half for each state. What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure..."

--Thomas Jefferson (13 April 1743 - 4 July 1826), POTUS

Letter to William Stephens Smith, 13 November 1787

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_G._Ingersoll

57)

“The man who does not do his own thinking is a slave, and is a traitor to himself and to his fellowmen.”

--Colonel Robert Green Ingersoll (August 11, 1833 - July 21, 1899)

The Liberty of Man, Woman and Child, lecture at Corinthian Hall in Rochester on January 11, 1878

58)

“When the taste for physical gratifications among them has grown more rapidly than their education . . . the time will come when men are carried away and lose all self-restraint . . . . It is not necessary to do violence to such a people in order to strip them of the rights they enjoy; they themselves willingly loosen their hold. . . . they neglect their chief business which is to remain their own masters.”

--Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859)

Democracy in America, 1835

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexis_de_Tocqueville

59)

“If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.”

--John Stuart Mill (20 May 1806 - 7 May 1873)

On Liberty, 1859

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stuart_Mill

60)

“Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it."

--Abraham Lincoln (12 February 1809 - 15 April 1865), POTUS

Letter to Henry L. Pierce, 1859

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln

61)

“Freedom (n.): To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing.”

--Ayn Rand (Alice O'Connor, born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum; February 2, 1905 - March 6, 1982)

The Fountainhead, 1943

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auberon_Herbert

62)

“Justice requires that you should not place the burdens of one man on the shoulders of another man, even though he is better able to bear them. In plainer words, that you should not make one set of men pay for what is used by another set of men.”

--Auberon Herbert (Auberon Edward William Molyneux Herbert; 18 June 1838 - 5 November 1906)

The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State and Other Essays, 1885

63)

“I am a believer in liberty. That is my religion — to give to every other human being every right that I claim for myself, and I grant to every other human being, not the right — because it is his right — but instead of granting I declare that it is his right, to attack every doctrine that I maintain, to answer every argument that I may urge — in other words, he must have absolute freedom of speech."

--Colonel Robert Green Ingersoll (August 11, 1833 - July 21, 1899)

The trial of Charles B. Reynolds for blasphemy, May 1887

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_G._Ingersoll

64)

“I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.”

--Thomas Jefferson (13 April 1743 - 4 July 1826), POTUS

Letter to Archibald Stewart, 23 December 1791

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin

65)

“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

--Benjamin Franklin (17 January 1706 - 17 April 1790)

the Pennsylvania Assembly in its "Reply to the Governor", 11 November 1755

66)

“If this nation is to be wise as well as strong, if we are to achieve our destiny, then we need more new ideas for more wise men reading more good books in more public libraries. These libraries should be open to all - except the censor. We must know all the facts and hear all the alternatives and listen to all the criticisms. Let us welcome controversial books and controversial authors. For the Bill of Rights is the guardian of our security as well as our liberty.”

--John F. Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), POTUS

Response to questionnaire in Saturday Review, 29 October 1960

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Twain

67)

“History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes.”

--Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens; 30 November 1835 - 21 April 1910)

(attributed to; no proof, no source).

68)

"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.”

--Benjamin Franklin(17 January 1706 - 17 April 1790)

Silence Dogood / The Busy-Body / Early Writings

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin

69)

“Politics: the art of using euphemisms, lies, emotionalism and fear-mongering to dupe average people into accepting--or even demanding--their own enslavement.”

--Larken Rose (living)

(still seeking original speech/text)

https://www.larkenrose.com/

70)

“The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And even if he is not romantic personally he is very apt to spread discontent among those who are.”

--H.L. Mencken (Henry Louis Mencken; 12 September 1880 - 29 January 1956)

American journalist, essayist, satirist, cultural critic, and scholar of American English

A Mencken Chrestomathy, 1949

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._L._Mencken

71)

“As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air – however slight – lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.”

--William Orville Douglas (16 October 1898 - 19 January 1980), SCOTUS

The Douglas Letters: Selections from the Private Papers of Justice William O. Douglas

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_O._Douglas

72)

“The framers of the constitution knew human nature as well as we do. They too had lived in dangerous days; they too knew the suffocating influence of orthodoxy and standardized thought. They weighed the compulsions for restrained speech and thought against the abuses of liberty. They chose liberty."

--William Orville Douglas (16 October 1898 - 19 January 1980), SCOTUS

Beauharnais v. Illinois, 342 U.S. 250, 287 (dissenting), 1952

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_O._Douglas

73)

“When people have invested their identities into clichés, the only counter argument they have is 'being offended'.”

--Stefan Molyneux (24 September 1966 - living)

The Art of The Argument

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan_Molyneux

74)

"Here's what we're not taught [about the Declaration and Constitution]: Those words at the time they were written were blazingly, electrifyingly subversive. If you understand them truly now, they still are. You are not taught - and it is a disgrace that you aren't - that these men and women were radicals for liberty; that they had a vision of equality that was a slap in the face of what the rest of their world understood to be the unchanging, God-given order of nations; and that they were willing to die to make that desperate vision into a reality for people like us, whom they would never live to see."

--Naomi Wolf (12 November 1962 - living)

American feminist author and journalist

The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naomi_Wolf

75)

"I have no reason to suppose that he, who would take away my Liberty, would not when he had me in his Power, take away everything else."

--John Locke (29 August 1632 - 28 October 1704)

Two Treatises on Government (Force without Right, a State of War), 1689

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Treatises_of_Government

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Locke

76)

“All men by nature are equal in that equal right that every man hath to his natural freedom, without being subjected to the will or authority of any other man; being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions.”

--John Locke (29 August 1632 - 28 October 1704)

Two Treatises on Government (Popular Basis of Political Authority

), 1689

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Treatises_of_Government

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Locke

77)

"...every man has a "property" in his own "person." This nobody has any right to but himself. The "labor" of his body and the "work" of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever, then, he removes out of the state that Nature hath provided and left it in, he hath mixed his labor with it, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. It being by him removed from the common state Nature placed it in, it hath by this labor something annexed to it that excludes the common right of other men. For this "labor" being the unquestionable property of the laborer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to..."

--John Locke (29 August 1632 - 28 October 1704)

Two Treatises on Government (Of Property), 1689

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Treatises_of_Government

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Locke

78)

"The importance of this article will scarcely be doubted by any persons, who have duly reflected upon the subject. The militia is the natural defence of a free country against sudden foreign invasions, domestic insurrections, and domestic usurpations of power by rulers. It is against sound policy for a free people to keep up large military establishments and standing armies in time of peace, both from the enormous expenses, with which they are attended, and the facile means, which they afford to ambitious and unprincipled rulers, to subvert the government, or trample upon the rights of the people. The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them. And yet, thought this truth would seem so clear, and the importance of a well regulated militia would seem so undeniable, it cannot be disguised, that among the American people there is a growing indifference to any system of militia discipline, and a strong disposition, from a sense of its burdens, to be rid of all regulations. How is it practicable to keep the people duly armed without some organization, it is difficult to see. There is certainly no small danger, that indifference may lead to disgust, and disgust to contempt; and thus gradually undermine all the protection intended by this clause of our national bill of rights."

--Joseph Story (18 September 1779 - 10 September 1845), SCOTUS,

Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (vol. 3, pp. 746-747), 1833

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Story

79)

“Neither the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt.”

--Samuel Adams (27 September 1722 - 2 October 1803)

Essay published in The Advertiser, 1748

(full text) https://www.revolutionary-war-and-beyond.com/american-independence-speech-by-samuel-adams-august-1-1776.html

80)

“In a state of tranquility, wealth, and luxury, our descendants would forget the arts of war and the noble activity and zeal which made their ancestors invincible. Every art of corruption would be employed to loosen the bond of union which renders our resistance formidable. When the spirit of liberty which now animates our hearts and gives success to our arms is extinct, our numbers will accelerate our ruin and render us easier victims to tyranny.”

--Samuel Adams (27 September 1722 - 2 October 1803)

American Independence, State House in Philadelphia , 1 August 1776

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Publius_Flavius_Vegetius_Renatus

81)

"Sic Semper Tyrannis."

(Thus Always to Tyrants)

--Unknown original source

82)

"Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum" or "Si vis pacem, para bellum"

(Therefore let him who desires peace get ready for war.) or (If you want peace, prepare for war)

--Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus(about 390 AD)

De Re Militari (also Epitoma Rei Militaris) - Book III, "Dispositions for Action", 390

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetius

83)

"By liberty, then, we can only mean a power of acting or not acting, according to the determinations of the will; this is, if we choose to remain at rest, we may; if we choose to move, we also may. Now this hypothetical liberty is universally allowed to belong to every one who is not a prisoner and in chains."

Paraphrased as:

“There is no such thing as freedom of choice unless there is freedom to refuse.”

--David Hume (born David Home; 7 May 1711 - 25 August 1776)

Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section VIII, Of Liberty and Necessity, 1750

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hume

84)

“Better to die fighting for freedom then be a prisoner all the days of your life.”

--Bob Marley (Robert Nesta Marley; 6 February 1945 - 11 May 1981)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Marley

85)

“If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.”

--Noam Chomsky (Avram Noam Chomsky; 7 December 1928 - living)

The Big Little Book of Jewish Wit & Wisdom by Sally Ann Berk and Maria Carluccio (p. 228), 2000

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky

86)

“Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.”

--Sigmund Freud (born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 - 23 September 1939)

Civilization and Its Discontents, 1929

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigmund_Freud

87)

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”

--C. S. Lewis (Clive Staples Lewis; 29 November 1898 - 22 November 1963)

God in the Dock, 1948

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._S._Lewis

88)

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

--Henry David Thoreau (12 July 1817 - 6 May 1862)

???, 1847

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_David_Thoreau

89)

“Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide.”

--Napoléon Bonaparte (born Napoleone Buonaparte; 15 August 1769 - 5 May 1821)

(source unknown...)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon

90)

“Freedom is not defined by safety. Freedom is defined by the ability of citizens to live without government interference. Government cannot create a world without risks, nor would we really wish to live in such a fictional place. Only a totalitarian society would even claim absolute safety as a worthy ideal, because it would require total state control over its citizens’ lives. Liberty has meaning only if we still believe in it when terrible things happen and a false government security blanket beckons.”

--Ron Paul (Ronald Ernest Paul; 20 August 1935 - present), former US Rep. from Texas

Security and Liberty, 23 April 2007

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_S._Truman

91)

“Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear."

-- Harry S. Truman (8 May 1884 - 26 December 1972), POTUS

Special Message to the Congress on the Internal Security of the United States, 8 August 1950

92)

"...What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing 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 (born Thomas Pain; 9 February 1737 - 8 June 1809)

The American Crisis, 23 December 1776

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington

93)

"For if Men are to be precluded from offering their Sentiments on a matter, which may involve the most serious and alarming consequences, that can invite the consideration of Mankind, reason is of no use to us; the freedom of Speech may be taken away, and, dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep, to the Slaughter."

-George Washington (22 February 1732 - 14 December 1799), POTUS Primus,

address to the officers of the army, Newburgh, New York, 15 March 1783

94)

"...revolutions don't require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brushfires in people's minds."

--Diane Ackerman (7 October 1948 - living)

The Man Who Made a Revolution, Parade (Sunday newspaper suplement), 6 September 1987

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Diane_Ackerman

(misattributed to Samuel Adams or John Adams as "It does not take a majority to prevail ... but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.”)

95)

""Emergencies" have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded."

-- Friedrich August von Hayek (8 May 1899 - 23 March 1992)

Law, Legislation and Liberty, Vol. 2 : The Mirage of Social Justice (1976)

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Friedrich_Hayek

96)

"If all that Americans want is security, they can go to prison. They'll have enough to eat, a bed and a roof over their heads. But if an American wants to preserve his dignity and his equality as a human being, he must not bow his neck to any dictatorial government."

--Dwight D. Eisenhower (born David Dwight Eisenhower; 14 October 1890 - 28 March 1969), POTUS

New York Times, 9 December 1949

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwight_D._Eisenhower

97)

"Is the relinquishment of the trial by jury and the liberty of the press necessary for your liberty? Will the abandonment of your most sacred rights tend to the security of your liberty? Liberty, the greatest of all earthly blessings — give us that precious jewel, and you may take every thing else!… Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined."

--Patrick Henry (29 May 1736 - 6 June 1799)

Henry's speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 1788

(full text) https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Henry%27s_speech_in_the_Virginia_Ratifying_Convention

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Henry

98)

"This freedom of which men speak, for which they fight, seems to some people a perilous thing. It has to be earned at a bitter cost and then - it has to be lived with. For freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry his own weight, this is a frightening prospect.

We must all face an unpalatable fact that we have, too often, a tendency to skim over; we proceed on the assumption that all men want freedom. This is not as true as we would like it to be. Many men and women who are far happier when they have relinquish their freedom, when someone else guides them, makes their decisions for them, takes the responsibility for them and their actions. They don't want to make up their minds. They don't want to stand on their own feet."

--Anna Eleanor Roosevelt (11 October 1884 - 7 November 1962)

You Learn By Living, 1960

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleanor_Roosevelt

99)

"Freedom and justice cannot be parceled out in pieces to suit political convenience ... I don't believe you can stand for freedom for one group of people and deny it to others."

--Coretta Scott King (27 April1927 - 30 January 2006) wife of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Press Conference on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act of 1994, Washington D.C., 23 June 1994

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coretta_Scott_King

100)

"...conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth."

--John Fitzgerald Kennedy (29 May 1917 - 22 November 1963), POTUS

Address to the UN General Assembly, 25 September 1961

(full text) https://2009-2017.state.gov/p/io/potusunga/207241.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King_Jr.

101)

"Liberty has never come from Government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it. The history of liberty is a history of limitations of governmental power, not the increase of it."

--Thomas Woodrow Wilson (28 December 1856 - 3 February 1924)

Speech at New York Press Club, 9 September 1912

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodrow_Wilson

102)

"Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed."

--Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

letter from Birmingham Jail, Alabama, 16 April 1963

103)

"Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and under the rule of a just God, cannot long retain it."

--Abraham Lincoln (12 February 1809 - 15 April 1865), POTUS

Abraham Lincoln's Lost Speech, the Bloomington Convention, Bloomington, Illinois, 29 May 1856

(full text) https://www.gutenberg.org/files/61966/61966-0.txt

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln

104)

"What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don't like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don't expect freedom to survive very long."

--Thomas Sowell

Is Reality Optional?: And Other Essays, Hoover Institution Press, 1993

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Sowell

105)

"Aye, fight and you may die. Run and you’ll live, at least a while. And dying in your beds many years from now, would you be willing to trade all the days from this day to that for one chance, just one chance, to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they’ll never take our freedom!"

--(William Wallace) writer: Randall Wallace

Braveheart, 18 May 1995

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braveheart

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randall_Wallace

106)

"Perhaps the fact that we have seen millions voting themselves into complete dependence on a tyrant has made our generation understand that to choose one's government is not necessarily to secure freedom."

--Friedrich Hayek (Friedrich August von Hayek; 8 May 1899 - 23 March 1992)

The Constitution of Liberty, University of Chicago Press, 1960

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Hayek

107)

"You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once."

--Robert A. Heinlein (July 7, 1907 – May 8, 1988)

Time Enough for Love, June 1973

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln

108)

"Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable - a most sacred right - a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world."

--Abraham Lincoln (12 February 1809 - 15 April 1865), POTUS

Speech in United States House of Representatives: The War with Mexico, 12 January 1848

(full text) https://papersofabrahamlincoln.org/documents/D200444

109)

"We do not commonly see in a tax a diminution of freedom, and yet it clearly is one."

--Herbert Spencer (27 April 1820 - 8 December 1903)

The Principles of Ethics (pp. 241-43), 1887

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Spencer

110)

“There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.”

-- Robert A. Heinlein (July 7, 1907 – May 8, 1988)

The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, 1966

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King_Jr.

111)

"I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

...

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

--Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr.; 15 January 1929 - 4 April 1968)

"I Have a Dream" March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963

112)

“1. That the disposal of their own property is the inherent right of freemen; that there can be no property in that which another can, of right, take from us without our consent”

--Samuel Adams (27 September 1722 - 2 October 1803)

The Philadelphia Resolutions; The Pennsylvania gazette, 16 October 1773

113)

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

--Samuel Adams (27 September 1722 - 2 October 1803)

Article signed Candidus, 3 February 1776 (W.V. Wells - The Life of Samuel Adams, vol ii pp. 360-363)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auberon_Herbert

114)

"There is one and only one principle, on which you can build a true, rightful, enduring and progressive civilization, which can give peace and friendliness and contentment to all differing groups and sects into which we are divided—and that principle is that every man and woman should be held by us all sacredly and religiously to be the one true owner of his or her faculties, of his or her body and mind, and of all property, inherited or — honestly acquired. There is no other possible foundation — seek it wherever you will — on which you can build, if you honestly mean to make this world a place of peace and friendship, where progress of every kind, like a full river fed by its many streams, may flow on its happy fertilizing course, with ever broadening and deepening volume. Deny that self-ownership, that self-guidance of the individual, and however fine our professed motives may be, we must sooner or later, in a world without rights, become like animals who prey on each other. Deny human rights, and however little you may wish to do so, you will find yourself abjectly kneeling at the feet of that old-world god, Force — that grimmest and ugliest of gods that men have ever carved for themselves out of the lusts of their hearts; you will find yourselves hating and dreading all other men who differ from you; you will find yourselves obliged by the law of conflict into which you have plunged, to use every means in your power to crush them before they are able to crush you; you will find yourselves day by day growing more unscrupulous and intolerant, more and more compelled by the fear of those opposed to you, to commit harsh and violent actions, of which you would once have said 'Is thy servant a dog taht he should do these things?'; you will find yourselves clinging to and welcoming Force, as the one and only form of protection left to you, when you have destroyed the rule of the great principles."

--Auberon Herbert (Auberon Edward William Molyneux Herbert; 18 June 1838 - 5 November 1906)

Voluntaryist Creed: Being the Herbert Spencer Lecture Delivered at Oxford (1906)

115)

“The law is an opinion with a gun.”

--Stefan Molyneux (24 September 1966 - living)

Freedomain Radio - Podcast

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan_Molyneux

116)

"We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force."

--Ayn Rand (Alice O'Connor, born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum; February 2, 1905 - March 6, 1982)

The Nature of Government, 1 March 1964

117)

"It is not unfrequent to hear men declaim loudly upon liberty, who, if we may judge by the whole tenor of their actions, mean nothing else by it but their own liberty, - to oppress without control or the restraint of laws all who are poorer or weaker than themselves."

--Samuel Adams (27 September 1722 - 2 October 1803)

an essay published in The Advertiser, 1748

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Brandeis

118)

"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 evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."

--Louis Dembitz Brandeis (13 November 1856 - 5 October 1941), SCOTUS

Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 479, 1928

119)

"Those who won our independence believed that the final end of the state was to make men free to develop their faculties, and that in its government the deliberative forces should prevail over the arbitrary. They valued liberty both as an end and as a means. They believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty. They believed that freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth; that without free speech and assembly discussion would be futile; that with them, discussion affords ordinarily adequate protection against the dissemination of noxious doctrine; that the greatest menace to freedom is an inert people; that public discussion is a political duty; and that this should be a fundamental principle of the American government."

--Louis Dembitz Brandeis (13 November 1856 - 5 October 1941), SCOTUS

Whitney v. California, 274 U.S. 357, 375, at 375, 1927

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Brandeis

120)

"That the greatest security of the people, against the encroachments and usurpations of their superiors, is to keep the Spirit of Liberty constantly awake, is an undeniable truth."

--Edmund Burke (12 January 1729 - 9 July 1797)

A Free Briton's Advice to the Free Citizens of Dublin, number 2, 1748

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Burke

121)

"All who have ever written on government are unanimous, that among a people generally corrupt, liberty cannot long exist."

--Edmund Burke (12 January 1729 - 9 July 1797)

letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol, 3 April 1777

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Burke

122)

"Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor Liberty to purchase power."

--Benjamin Franklin (17 January 1706 - 17 April 1790)

Poor Richard's Almanack, 1738

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin

123)

"If each human being is to have liberty, he cannot also have the liberty to deprive others of their liberty.”

--John Hospers (June 9, 1918 – June 12, 2011)

Libertarianism: A Political Philosophy for Tomorrow, Los Angeles: CA, Nash Publishing (p. 13), 1971

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hospers

124)

"Liberty (or freedom) is the absence of coercion by other human beings."

--John Hospers (June 9, 1918 – June 12, 2011)

Libertarianism: A Political Philosophy for Tomorrow, Los Angeles: CA, Nash Publishing (p. 10), 1971

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hospers

125)

"The fundamental source of all your errors, sophisms and false reasonings is a total ignorance of the natural rights of mankind. Were you once to become acquainted with these, you could never entertain a thought, that all men are not, by nature, entitled to a parity of privileges. You would be convinced, that natural liberty is a gift of the beneficent Creator to the whole human race, and that civil liberty is founded in that; and cannot be wrested from any people, without the most manifest violation of justice. "

--Alexander Hamilton (11 January 1755 - 12 July 1804)

The Farmer Refuted, &c., New York, 23 February 1775

(full text) https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-01-02-0057

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Hamilton

126)

"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 Hayek (Friedrich August von Hayek; 8 May 1899 - 23 March 1992)

The Constitution of Liberty, University of Chicago Press, 1960

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Hayek

127)

"Truth is treason in the empire of lies."

--Ron Paul (Ronald Ernest Paul; 20 August 1935 - living), former US Rep. from Texas

The Revolution: A Manifesto, 2008

128)

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

--John F. Kennedy (May 29, 1917 - November 22, 1963), POTUS

Inaugural address, Washington D.C. (20 January 1961)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_du_Motier,_Marquis_de_Lafayette

129)

"Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else; hence the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits except those which assure to the other members of the society the enjoyment of the same rights."

--Gilbert du Motier, marquis de Lafayette (Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier de La Fayette, Marquis de La Fayette; 6 September 1757 - 20 May 1834)

Declaration of the Rights of Man, 1789

130)

"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."

--George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair; 25 June 1903 - 21 January 1950)

Original preface to Animal Farm, 1945

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Orwell

131)

"He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself."

--Thomas Paine (born Thomas Pain; 9 February 1737 - 8 June 1809)

Dissertation on First Principles of Government,1795

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_Parsons

132)

"The philosophy of anarchism is included in the word "Liberty"; yet it is comprehensive enough to include all things else that are conducive to progress. No barriers whatever to human progression, to thought, or investigation are placed by anarchism; nothing is considered so true or so certain, that future discoveries may not prove it false; therefore, it has but one infallible, unchangeable motto, "Freedom." Freedom to discover any truth, freedom to develop, to live naturally and fully."

--Lucy Parsons (Lucy Eldine Gonzalez Parsons, born Lucia Carter; 1851 - March 7, 1942)

The Principles of Anarchism, A lecture printed without date of publication, c. 1890

133)

"It is incorrect to think of liberty as synonymous with unrestrained action. Liberty does not and cannot include any action, regardless of sponsorship, which lessens the liberty of a single human being. To argue contrarily is to claim that liberty can be composed of liberty negations, patently absurd. Unrestraint carried to the point of impairing the liberty of others is the exercise of license, not liberty. To minimize the exercise of license is to maximize the area of liberty. Ideally, government would restrain license, not indulge in it; make it difficult, not easy; disgraceful, not popular. A government that does otherwise is licentious, not liberal."

--Leonard Edward Read (26 September 1898 - 14 May 1983), founder of the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)

Government—An Ideal Concept, Wednesday, September 26, 2018

(fulltext) https://fee.org/resources/governmentan-ideal-concept/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Read

134)

"Namque pauci libertatem, pars magna iustos dominos volunt."

("Few men desire freedom, the greater part desire just masters.")

--Sallust (Gaius Sallustius Crispus; 86 - c. 35 BC)

Histories, IV.67.18

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sallust

135)

"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."

--Benedictus de Spinoza (Baruch (de) Spinoza; 24 November 1632 - 21 February 1677)

Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, 1675-1976 (published posthumously in 1677)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tractatus_Theologico-Politicus

136)

"The saddest epitaph which can be carved in memory of a vanished liberty is that it was lost because its possessors failed to stretch forth a saving hand while yet there was time."

--George Alexander Sutherland (25 March 1862 - 18 July 1942), SCOTUS

Associated Press v. National Labor Relations Board, 301 US 141 (dissenting), 1938

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Sutherland

137)

"Since well before 1787, liberty has been understood as freedom from government action, not entitlement to government benefits."

--Clarence Thomas (23 June 1948 - living), SCOTUS

Obergefell v. Hodges, pp. 16-17 (dissenting), 26 June 2015

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarence_Thomas

138)

"Of course, there are dangers in religious freedom and freedom of opinion. But to deny these rights is worse than dangerous, it is absolutely fatal to liberty. The external threat to liberty should not drive us into suppressing liberty at home. Those who want the Government to regulate matters of the mind and spirit are like men who are so afraid of being murdered that they commit suicide to avoid assassination."

-- Harry S. Truman (8 May 1884 - 26 December 1972), POTUS

address at the National Archives dedicating a shrine for the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, 15 December 1952

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_S._Truman

139)

"No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session."

--Gideon John Tucker (10 February 1826 - July 1899)

Final Accounting in the Estate of A. B., 1866

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gideon_J._Tucker

140)

"Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of the government. The history of liberty is a history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it."

--Thomas Woodrow Wilson (28 December 1856 - 3 February 1924) POTUS

Speech at New York Press Club, 9 September 1912

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodrow_Wilson

141)

"Liberty sets the mind free, fosters independence and unorthodox thinking and ideas. But it does not offer instant prosperity or happiness and wealth to everyone. This is something that politicians in particular must keep in mind."

--Boris Yeltsin (Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin; 1 February 1931 - 23 April 2007), President of Russia from 1991 to 1999

Russia and the Independent States (1993) by Daniel C. Diller, p. 446

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Yeltsin

142)

"The power of the sword, say the minority..., is in the hands of Congress. My friends and countrymen, it is not so, for the powers of the sword are in the hands of the yeomanry of America from sixteen to sixty. The militia of these free commonwealths, entitled and accustomed to their arms, when compared with any possible army, must be tremendous and irresistible. Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man against his own bosom. Congress has no power to disarm the militia. Their swords and every terrible implement of the soldier are the birthright of Americans."

--Tench Coxe (May 22, 1755 – July 17, 1824)

American political economist and a delegate for Pennsylvania to the Continental Congress in 1788-1789 & writing under the pseudonym "A Pennsylvanian", Pennsylvania Gazette, 20 February 1788.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tench_Coxe

143)

"The constitutions of most of our States assert, that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves, … or they may act by representatives, freely and equally chosen; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed; that they are entitled to freedom of person, freedom of religion, freedom of property, and freedom of the press."

--Thomas Jefferson (13 April 1743 - 4 July 1826), POTUS

Letter to Major John Cartwright, 5 June 1824

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Madison

144)

"In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governd; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions."

--James Madison, Jr. (16 March 1751 - 28 June 1836), POTUS

Federalist No. 51, 8 February 1788

145)

"I ask, who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people, except a few public officers."

--George Mason IV (11 December 1725 - 7 October 1792) Virginia planter, politician, and delegate to the U.S. Constitutional Convention of 1787,

Virginia's U.S. Constitution ratification convention, 16 June 1788

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Mason

146)

"If circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people while there is a large body of citizens, little, if at all, inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their own rights and those of their fellow-citizens. This appears to me the only substitute that can be devised for a standing army, and the best possible security against it, if it should exist."

--Alexander Hamilton (11 January 11, 1755 - 12 July 1804)

Federalist No. 29, The Independent Journal, 9 January 1788

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Hamilton

147)

"A militia when properly formed are in fact the people themselves...and include all men capable of bearing arms...To preserve liberty it is essential that the whole body of the people always posses arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them...The mind that aims at a select militia, must be influenced by a truly anti-republican principle."

Melancton Smith (7 May 1744 - 29 July 1798)

Additional Letters From The Federal Farmer, 1788.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melancton_Smith

148)

"He therefore is the truest friend to the liberty of his country who tries most to promote its virtue, and who, so far as his power and influence extend, will not suffer a man to be chosen into any office of power and trust who is not a wise and virtuous man. We must not conclude merely upon a man's haranguing upon liberty, and using the charming sound, that he is fit to be trusted with the liberties of his country."

--Samuel Adams (27 September 1722 - 2 October 1803)

Essay published in The Advertiser, 1748

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068646/

149)

"I don't trust society to protect us, I have no intention of placing my fate in the hands of men whose only qualification is that they managed to con a block of people to vote for them."

--(Michael Corleone) Mario Puzo (15 October 1920 - 2 July 1999) & Francis Ford Coppola (7 April 1939 - living)

The Godfather, 1972

150)

“America was founded by men who understood that the threat of domestic tyranny is as great as any threat from abroad. If we want to be worthy of their legacy, we must resist the rush toward ever-increasing state control of our society. Otherwise, our own government will become a greater threat to our freedoms than any foreign terrorist.”

--Ron Paul (Ronald Ernest Paul; 20 August 1935 - living), former US Rep. from Texas

1988 Libertarian for President

Libertarian Party: Defending the Fourth Amendment for 42 years, 3 July 2013 https://www.lp.org/blogs-staff-libertarian-party-defending-the-fourth-amendment-for-42-years