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Freedom

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“Our policy is not built on envy or hatred, but on liberty for the individual man or woman.”
Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This small book is part of a big career devoted to pulverizing cant, deflating oppression, and maximizing human liberty. Not a day went by that Hitch didn’t enter the lists against some iniquity.”
Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) said by 2011 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The days of Black Power are numbered. Its course, indeed is onward. But with the swiftness of an arrow, it rushes to the tomb. While crushing its millions, it is also crushing itself. The sword of Retribution, suspended by a single hair, hangs over it. That sword must fall. Liberty must triumph.”
Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) said by 1895 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in "Sustaining Black Studies", by Winston A. Van Horne, Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 37, No. 3, (January 2007)
“This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony.”
Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) said by 1895 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Liberty I will have, or die in the attempt to gain it.”
Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) said by 1895 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The lonely billows of the Atlantic, where every breeze speaks of courage and liberty.”
Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) said by 1895 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The fathers of this republic waged a seven years war for political liberty. Thomas Jefferson taught me that my bondage was, in its essence, worse than ages of that which your fathers rose in rebellion to oppose.”
Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) first seen 1864 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted by Jefferson's Monticello, Extract from Frederick Douglass’s Address in Baltimore (17 November 1864)
“Gentleman, I am a republican, a radical republican, a Black republican, a republican dyed in the wool, and for one I want the republican party to live as long as I do… It is the party of law and order, of liberty and progress, of honor and honesty, as against disloyalty, moral stagnation, dishonest voting, and repudiation.”
Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) first seen 1870 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech: “I Speak to You as an American Citizen” speech, Oct. 1, 1870, Douglas Papers, ser. I, 4:275
“We wish, in a word, equality — equality in fact as a corollary, or rather, as primordial condition of liberty. From each according to his faculties, to each according to his needs; that is what we wish sincerely and energetically.”
Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876) said by 1876 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in The Old Order and the New (1890) by J. Morris Davidson
“There is but one way to bring about the triumph of liberty, of justice, and of peace in Europe's international relations, to make civil war impossible between the different peoples who make up the European family; and that is the formation of the United States of Europe.”
Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876) said by 1876 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Liberty is so great a magician, endowed with so marvelous a power of productivity, that under the inspiration of this spirit alone, North America was able within less than a century to equal, and even surpass, the civilization of Europe.”
Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876) said by 1876 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The peoples' revolution .... will arrange its revolutionary organisation from the bottom up and from the periphery to the centre, in keeping with the principle of liberty.”
Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876) said by 1876 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The liberty of man consists solely in this: that he obeys natural laws because he has himself recognized them as such, and not because they have been externally imposed upon him by any extrinsic will whatever, divine or human, collective or individual.”
Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876) said by 1876 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Oh! hear a pensive captive's prayer, For liberty that sighs; And never let thine heart be shut Against the prisoner's cries.”
Anna Laetitia Barbauld (1743–1825) said by 1825 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Love and what generates it. Rebellion and what creates it. Liberty and what nourishes it. Three manifestations of God. And God is the conscience of the rational world.”
Kahlil Gibran (1883–1931) said by 1931 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Ours was the first society openly to define itself in terms of both spirituality and of human liberty. It is that unique self-definition which has given us an exceptional appeal, but it also imposes on us a special obligation, to take on those moral duties which, when assumed, seem invariably to be in our own best interests.”
Jimmy Carter (1924–2024) said by 2024 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We have already found a high degree of personal liberty, and we are now struggling to enhance equality of opportunity. Our commitment to human rights must be absolute, our laws fair, our natural beauty preserved; the powerful must not persecute the weak, and human dignity must be enhanced.”
Jimmy Carter (1924–2024) said by 2024 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is no slavery but ignorance. Liberty is the child of intelligence. The history of man is simply the history of slavery, of injustice and brutality, together with the means by which he has, through the dead and desolate years, slowly and painfully advanced.”
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) said by 1899 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The infidels have been the brave and thoughtful men; the flower of all the world; the pioneers and heralds of the blessed day of liberty and love; the generous spirits of the unworthy past; the seers and prophets of our race; the great chivalric souls, proud victors on the battlefields of thought, the creditors of all the years to be.”
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) said by 1899 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Christians mistake an incident for a cause, and honestly imagine that the Bible is the foundation of modern liberty and law. They forget physical conditions, make no account of commerce, care nothing for inventions and discoveries, and ignorantly give the credit to their inspired book.”
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) said by 1899 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If there is one subject in this world worthy of being discussed, worthy of being understood, it is the question of intellectual liberty. Without that, we are simply painted clay; without that, we are poor, miserable serfs and slaves.”
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) said by 1899 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What light is to the eyes, what love is to the heart, Liberty is to the soul of man. Without it, there come suffocation, degradation and death.”
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) said by 1899 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The memory of Tom Paine will outlive all this. No man who helped to lay the foundations of our liberty — who stepped forth as the champion of so difficult a cause — can be permanently obscured by such attacks. Tom Paine should be read by his countrymen. I commend his fame to their hands.”
Thomas Edison (1847–1931) said by 1931 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But it can be laid down as a rule that those who speak most of liberty are least inclined to use it.”
John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Criminals are never materially handicapped by such rules; the only effect is to disarm the peaceful citizen and put him fully at the mercy of the lawless. Such rules look very pretty on paper; in practice they are as foolish and footless as the attempt of the mice to bell the cat. Such is my thesis, that the licensing of weapons is subversive of liberty and self-defeating in its pious purpose.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The United States appear to be destined by Providence to plague America with misery in the name of liberty.”
Simón Bolívar (1783–1830) first seen 1829 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Statement of 1829, as quoted in The Great Fear : The Reconquest of Latin America by Latin Americans (1963) by John Gerassi
“Liberty, says Rousseau, is a succulent food, but difficult to digest. Our feeble fellow citizens will have to strengthen their mind much before they will be ready to assimilate such wholesome nourishment.”
Simón Bolívar (1783–1830) said by 1830 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in The World’s Great Speeches, Lewis Copeland and Lawrence Lamm, edit., Dover Publications Inc. (1958) p. 388
“To proclaim the Pope infallible was their compendious security against hostile States and Churches, against human liberty and authority, against disintegrating tolerance and rationalizing science, against error and sin.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) first seen 1870 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Vatican Council", The North British Review (1870)
“Liberty, next to religion has been the motive of good deeds and the common pretext of crime, from the sowing of the seed at Athens, two thousand four hundred and sixty years ago, until the ripened harvest was gathered by men of our race.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No obstacle has been so constant, or so difficult to overcome, as uncertainty and confusion touching the nature of true liberty. If hostile interests have wrought much injury, false ideas have wrought still more; and its advance is recorded in the increase of knowledge, as much as in the improvement of laws.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“By liberty I mean the assurance that every man shall be protected in doing what he believes his duty against the influence of authority and majorities, custom and opinion.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Don't suspect me of denying the principle of nationality altogether. Only, if I were to say as much as you say, I should be afraid of being driven to admit the priority of National Independence before individual liberty,—of the figurative conscience before the real. We do not find that Nationalists are always Liberals, especially in Austria.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) first seen 1888 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to William Ewart Gladstone (26 February 1888), quoted in J. N. Figgis and R. V. Laurence (eds.), Selections from the Correspondence of the First Lord Acton, Vol. I (1917), p. 185
“The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern. The law of liberty tends to abolish the reign of race over race, of faith over faith, of class over class.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The law of liberty tends to abolish the reign of race over race, of faith over faith, of class over class. It is not the realisation of a political ideal: it is the discharge of a moral obligation.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The immediate purpose with which the Italians and Germans effected the great change in European constitution was unity, not liberty. They constructed, not securities, but forces. Machiavelli's hour had come.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) first seen 1891 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Introductory note to L. Arthur Burd's Il Principe by Niccolo Machiavelli, p. xxxlv (1891)
“There is no example of liberty established by Protestants resisting Catholics. The French tried it and failed. The Dutch in like manner. The victory came out of the conflict of Protestants with Protestants.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Private notes, quoted in Herbert Butterfield, ‘Acton: His Training, Methods and Intellectual System’, in A. O. Sarkissian (ed.), Studies in Diplomatic History and Historiography in honour of G. P. Gooch, C.H. (1961), p.…
“Religious liberty came not from the Reformation or from the sects as a whole but from particular sects...especially those which the Reformation sought to exterminate.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Private notes, quoted in Herbert Butterfield, ‘Acton: His Training, Methods and Intellectual System’, in A. O. Sarkissian (ed.), Studies in Diplomatic History and Historiography in honour of G. P. Gooch, C.H. (1961), p.…
“Liberty becomes a question of morals more that politics.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Selected Writings of Lord Acton, ed. J. Rufus Fears, 3 vols. (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1985-88), 3:490
“Authority that does not exist for Liberty is not authority but force.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Selected Writings of Lord Acton, ed. J. Rufus Fears, 3 vols. (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1985-88), 3:519
“Liberty is the prevention of control by others. This requires self-control and, therefore, religious and spiritual influences; education, knowledge, well-being.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Faith in Freedom : Libertarian Principles and Psychiatric Practices (2004) by Thomas Stephen Szasz, p. 10. Selected Writings of Lord Acton, ed. J. Rufus Fears, 3 vols. (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1985-88),…
“Property, not Conscience, is the basis of liberty. For the defence of Conscience need not arise. Property is always exposed to State interference. It is the constant object of policy.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Private notes, quoted in G. E. Fasnacht, Acton's Political Philosophy. An Analysis (1952), p. 19, n. 7
“Liberty must at all hazards be supported. We have a right to it, derived from our Maker. But if we had not, our fathers have earned and bought it for us, at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasure, and their blood.”
John Adams (1735–1826) said by 1826 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The encroachments upon liberty in the reigns of the first James and the first Charles, by turning the general attention of learned men to government, are said to have produced the greatest number of consummate statesmen which has ever been seen in any age or nation.”
John Adams (1735–1826) said by 1826 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Let them revere nothing but religion, morality and liberty.”
John Adams (1735–1826) first seen 1776 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Abigail Adams (15 April 1776)
“We took the liberty to make some enquiries concerning the ground of their pretentions to make war upon nations who had done them no injury, and observed that we considered all mankind as our friends who had done us no wrong, nor had given us any provocation.”
John Adams (1735–1826) said by 1826 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Also quoted by: Thomas Jefferson
“And may that Being who is supreme over all, the Patron of Order, the Fountain of Justice, and the Protector in all ages of the world of virtuous liberty, continue His blessing upon this nation and its Government and give it all possible success and duration consistent with the ends of His providence.”
John Adams (1735–1826) said by 1826 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And who cannot but remember, That Religion, Liberty and Property were all lost and gone, when the Monarchy was shaken off, and could never be reviv'd till that was restored.”
Charles II of England (1630–1685) first seen 1678 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: His Majesty's Declaration to all his Loving Subjects, touching the Causes and Reasons that moved Him to Dissolve the Two last Parliaments (8 April 1681), quoted in Memoirs Relating to the Impeachment of Thomas Earl of D…
“Your Majesties, Your Highnesses, Distinguished Guests, Comrades and Friends. Today, all of us do, by our presence here, and by our celebrations in other parts of our country and the world, confer glory and hope to newborn liberty. Out of the experience of an extraordinary human disaster that lasted too long, must be born a society of which all humanity will be proud.”
Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Human progress having reached a high level through respect for the liberty and dignity of men, it has become desirable to re-affirm these evident truths:”
Will Durant (1885–1981) said by 1981 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source