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Freedom

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“This looks to be a moment when atheism is capturing the imagination of many millions of people. At exactly the same time, fundamental religious belief is growing unchecked. These two events are likely intimately related, as rational people are frightened back to their rationality by fundamentalism and believers dig in harder against liberty, justice, and reason.”
Eric Maisel (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The sense of liberty and power, and of belief in the capacity and destiny of man, which was quickened by the new discoveries, distinguishes the literature of the Elizabethan age from the great backward-looking periods of romance. It is a literature of youth and hope, with none of the subtle and poignant flavours that are to be tasted in a literature of regret and memory.”
Walter Raleigh (professor) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I say, listen to the Iranians. During twenty-two years, you forgot the Iranians, they are close to 70 millions today who hanker for liberty. I say to the west: the oil that flows in your pipelines is not more important than the blood that flows in the veins of Iranians.”
Reza Pahlavi (born 1960) first seen 2001 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted by Afsané Bassir, Interview with Prince Reza Pahlavi, son of the late Shah of Iran, Le Monde, June 6, 2001.
“It is only when social movements have receded into past history... that the Church with pride turns around to claim that it was she who abolished slavery, aroused the people to liberty, and emancipated woman.”
Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) said by 1918 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was the moment when the British ideal of liberty bit back. It was the moment when the British Empire began to tear itself apart. On the village green of Lexington, Massachusetts, British redcoats exchanged fire for the first time with armed American colonists. It was 19 April 1775.”
Niall Ferguson (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The economic truths of Socialism, its industrialism, and its sociology, must remain the vainest of vain dreamings unless we preserve among the people the political frame of mind which can appreciate democratic liberty and worth. When "a man's a man for a' that" is recited without making the blood tingle, the man has ceased to be.”
Ramsay MacDonald (1866–1937) first seen 1909 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Socialism and Government (1909), p. xxvi
“Greater liberty will be given to localities to regulate their own affairs, to acquire property for that purpose, to promulgate byelaws and more particularly to organise themselves as markets after the manner of co-operative societies.”
Ramsay MacDonald (1866–1937) first seen 1909 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Socialism and Government (1909), p. 129
“No doubt, I am proud of the people. I am from the people and I am the son of the people. I will work for the sake of the people. I will sacrifice my life for the liberty of this people and safeguarding, protecting and preserving it from all evils.”
Abd al-Karim Qasim (1914–1963) first seen 1959 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech delivered at the second congress of the peace partisans (April 14, 1959).
“Those who saw him hushed. On Church Street. Liberty. Cortlandt. West Street. Fulton. Vesey. It was a silence that heard itself, awful and beautiful.”
Colum McCann (born 1965) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The U.S. government is crushing liberty at nearly every turn. Our Constitutional rights are under attack like never before and we must fight back.”
Ted Cruz (born 1970) first seen 2015 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On Facebook September 29, 2015
“Truly Conservative policies [are] freeing markets, freeing the economy, giving the economy buoyancy, moving to liberty and the desirable goal of freeing payments and trade.”
Rab Butler (1902–1982) first seen 1954 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech at the Conservative Party conference of 1954, quoted in Ralph Harris, Politics Without Prejudice. A Political Appreciation of The Rt. Hon. Richard Austen Butler C.H., M.P. (1956), p. 159
“the Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty enacted in by the Knesset in 1992, to anchor in a Basic Law the values of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state two strands – the Jewish heritage and the democratic tradition... and it is the task of the courts to interweave them into the synthesis indicated by the Basic Law”
Menachem Elon (1923–2013) first seen 1994 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: see: Menachem Elon, English translation of Jewish Law : History, Sources, Principles / Jewish Publication Society, 1994
“Taxation and representation are inseparable... whatever is a man's own, is absolutely his own; no man has a right to take it from him without his consent, either expressed by himself or representative; whoever attempts to do it, attempts an injury; whoever does it, commits a robbery; he throws down and destroys the distinction between liberty and slavery.”
Charles Pratt, 1st Earl Camden (1714–1794) first seen 1766 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Lords, on the taxation of Americans by the British parliament, 7 March 1766; as reported in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (1990), 2nd edn., p. 60
“The legislature of the United States shall pass no law on the subject of religion nor touching or abridging the liberty of the press.”
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney (1746–1825) first seen 1787 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Resolution offered in the Philadelphia Convention, May 29, 1787. The United States Constitution was enacted without any protection for religion or the press, but with the understanding that a Bill of Rights would shortl…
“Scarce a month had elapsed since the law was to have gone into effect before it was clear to the discerning that, for all their professions, most of the "better sort" were not genuine Sons of Liberty at all, but timid sycophants, pliant instruments of despotism, far more intent upon the ruin of Mr. Adams and of America in general than any minister could be shown to be.”
Carl L. Becker (1873–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“, a former French colonial minister, explained that the French Revolution was not fought on behalf of the blacks of Africa. Bourgeois liberty, equality, and fraternity was not for colonial subjects. Africans had to make do with bayonets, riot acts, and gunboats.”
Walter Rodney (1942–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Greeks, God has signed our Liberty and will not go back on his promise.”
Theodoros Kolokotronis (1770–1843) first seen 1770 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Theodoros Kolokotronis, quoted in: Stathis Paraskevopoulos (2008) "History of Kolokotronis: Theodoros Kolokotronis (1770-1843)" at kolokotronis.org, Accessed May 23, 2014.
“The animated contest of liberty is waiting for you, but you’ve got to take it in your hands. You’ve got to have a will to accept the truth and buck the system and the group collective. Do that and you’ll earn your way to the next level. This is the info war.”
Alex Jones (born 1974) first seen 2016 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Donald Trump's Final Message to America The Alex Jones Show (Oct 18, 2016)
“Sure, I get angry. I get very, very angry and indignant. I don't like being locked up for something I didn't do, and I don't like my liberty taken away, and I don't like being treated like an animal, and I don't like people walking around and ogling me like I'm some sort of weirdo, because I'm not.”
Ted Bundy (1946–1989) said by 1989 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The emergence of an openly gay and lesbian population is simply the latest stage of the evolution of individual liberty, and a reaffirmation of American tradition. Gay men and women don't come out because it's fashionable, popular, easy, safe, mandatory, or conventional; they do it to be true to themselves.”
Michael Nava (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Liberty is a great celestial Goddess, strong, beneficent, and austere, and she can never descend upon a nation by the shouting of crowds, nor by arguments of unbridled passion, nor by the hatred of class against class.”
Annie Besant (1847–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The UN is worse than disaster. The UN creates conflicts. Look at the disgraceful UN Human Rights Council. It transmits norms which are harmful, anti-liberty, and anti-Semitic among other things. The world would be better off in its absence.”
Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview with Der Spiegel published on October 26, 2009.
“If a client be present in Court, and stand by and see his solicitor enter into terms of an agreement, and makes no objection whatever to it, he is not at liberty afterwards to repudiate it.”
John Romilly, 1st Baron Romilly (1802–1874) first seen 1857 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Swinfen v. Swinfen (1857), 24 Beav. 559.
“This is our turn at the wheel, and history will judge us based on how we handle it. Decline is a choice, but so is liberty.”
Dinesh D'Souza (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Civil liberty is the status of the man who is guaranteed by law and civil institutions the exclusive employment of all his own powers for his own welfare.”
William Graham Sumner (1840–1910) first seen 1883 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Forgotten Man and Other Essays (corrected edition), “The Forgotten Man” 1883 .
“The history of civil liberty is made up of campaigns against abuses of taxation. Protectionism is the great modern abuse of taxation; the abuse of taxation which is adapted to a republican form of government. Protectionism is now corrupting our political institutions just as slavery used to do.”
William Graham Sumner (1840–1910) first seen 1888 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Protectionism: the -ism which teaches that waste makes wealth, 1888, paragraph 155 .
“Damn the king and all his adherents. Fox and Liberty for ever!”
Joseph Ritson (1752–1803) said by 1803 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This liberalism says, in other words, that what makes the just society just is not the telos or purpose or end at which it aims, but precisely its refusal to choose in advance among competing purposes and ends. In its constitution and its laws, the just society seeks to provide a framework within which its citizens can pursue their own values and ends, consistent with a similar liberty for others”
Michael Sandel (born 1953) first seen 1984 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Michael J. Sandel, "The Procedural Republic and the Unencumbered Self" (1984)
“Unlike the liberty of the early republic, the modern version permits — in fact even requires — concentrated power.”
Michael Sandel (born 1953) first seen 1984 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Michael J. Sandel, "The Procedural Republic and the Unencumbered Self" (1984)
“To put the point another way, the republican sees liberty as internally connected to self-government and the civic virtues that sustain it.”
Michael Sandel (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The moral foundation of authority is neither as solid nor as wide, under a regime of monopoly or of communism, as it could be under a regime of liberty.”
Gustave de Molinari (1819–1912) said by 1912 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Tragic paradox that the subject of #NiceAttack was the people celebrating liberty, equality and fraternity.”
Donald Tusk (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I must beg leave to recommend to your Excellency's consideration the appointing an officer to write and sign the necessary passes. The person I should wish to be appointed is Lieutenant Bio d get. If it was put in general orders, that passes signed by him should be deemed authentic, as if signed by me, it would leave me at liberty to pursue the more important employments of my station.”
Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) said by 1786 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Lincoln, as we know, supported that Act as part of the Compromise of 1850. But in his inaugural address he mentioned several respects in which that law should be modified so that it would be consistent, at least, with the principles of civil liberty. But that was the temper of the country.”
Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) said by 2015 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No, on the contrary, the Constitution exists to protect that right. The important point is that the Constitution exists to protect individual liberty and individual property. In fact, the most important of all of the rights, really the foundation of all rights, are the rights to private property. But the right to private property is a right for each individual human being to own himself.”
Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) said by 2015 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What seems to me to be driving our whole civilization toward the abyss at present is a one-sided conception of liberty, a conception that is purely centrifugal, that would get rid of all outer control and then evade or deny openly the need of achieving inner control.”
Irving Babbitt (1865–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Court is at liberty to transpose and mould clauses and words in a will so as to make the whole take effect.”
Sir Francis Buller, 1st Baronet (1745–1800) first seen 1788 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Doe v. Wilkinson (1788), 2 T. R. 223.
“How did we recover our liberty? By fraud and violence. We tried to overcome the thirty thousand majority by honest methods, which was a mathematical impossibility. After we had borne these indignities for eight years life became worthless under such conditions. Under the leadership and inspiration of Mart[in] Gary ... we won the fight.”
Benjamin Tillman (1847–1918) first seen 1895 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in "The Question of Race in the South Carolina Constitutional Convention of 1895" (July 1952), by George B. Tindall. The Journal of Negro History, 37 (3): 277–303. JSTOR 2715494., p. 94.
“Art is the illusion of disorientation, the illusion of liberty, the illusion of presence, the illusion of the sacred, the illusion of Nature. ... Not the painting of Buren, Mosset, Parmentier or Toroni.... Art is a distraction, art is false. Painting begins with Buren, Mosset, Parmentier, Toroni.”
Daniel Buren (born 1938) first seen 1966 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Daniel Buren, , and , at the Paris Biennale in October 1967. Translated and cited in: Lucy R. Lippard, Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972, New York: Praeger, (1973), p. 30.
“Democracy has meant to many "natural" rights, "liberty" and "equality." The acceptance of the group principle defines for us in truer fashion those watchwords of the past. If my true self is the group-self, then my only rights are those which membership in a group gives me.”
Mary Parker Follett (1868–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Risk-savvy citizens are indispensable pillars of a society that is ready for positive liberty.”
Gerd Gigerenzer (born 1947) first seen 2014 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Risk Savvy: How to Make Good Decisions (2014), Ch. 1 : Are People Stupid?
“The best parent and guardian of liberty amongst men is truth.”
Pope Leo XIII (1810–1903) first seen 1885 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Encyclical: Immortale Dei (1885)
“E pluribus unum, the constructive principle of federation, In God We Trust, the recognition of God's limitless fatherhood — these two watchwords, together with that of Liberty, should be our creed, not that spurious label democracy which our American forebears despised and execrated.”
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Liberty and equality are in essence contradictory.”
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“American values, or Americanism, refers to what I call the "American Trinity": "Liberty," "In God We Trust," and "E Pluribus Unum" ("Out of Many, One"), the three values that appear on all American coins.”
Dennis Prager (born 1948) first seen 2012 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Dennis Prager. Still the Best Hope: Why the World Needs American Values to Triumph, 2012.
“Those who profess outrageous zeal for the liberty and prosperity of their country, and at the same time infringe her laws, affront her religion and debauch her people, are but despicable quacks.”
Soame Jenyns (1704–1787) said by 1787 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The sword of Mahomet and the Coran are the most fatal enemies of civilization, liberty, and truth which the world has yet known.”
William Muir (1819–1905) first seen 1861 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Life of Mahomet, Vol. IV (1861), p. 322
“I believe that every human being has the right to his life and to his liberty, and to act in this world so as to secure his own happiness.”
Henry Wilson (1812–1875) said by 1875 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Put these values together and you can see how the radical middle draws holistically on our entire political tradition. Each value is a sort of updated version of an aspect of our 18th-century political heritage – liberty, equality, happiness, and fraternity, respectively.”
Mark Satin (born 1946) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What were these rights and liberties for which Confederates contended? The right to own slaves; the liberty to take this property into the territories.”
James M. McPherson (born 1936) first seen 1988 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: James M. McPherson. Battle Cry of Freedom (1988) p. 241