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“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) first seen 1755 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: This was first used by Franklin for the Pennsylvania Assembly in its "Reply to the Governor" (November 11, 1755) Reply to the Governor
“He (Robert A. Heinlein) always pictured himself a libertarian, which to my way of thinking means “I want the liberty to grow rich and you can have the liberty to starve.” It’s easy to believe that no one should depend on society for help when you yourself happen not to need such help.”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. 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 (1737–1809) said by 1809 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As apt and applicable as the Declaration of Independence is today, we would do well to honor that other historic document drafted in this hall — the Constitution of the United States. For it stressed not independence but interdependence — not the individual liberty of one but the indivisible liberty of all.”
John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Liberty will not descend to a people, a people must raise themselves to liberty; it is a blessing that must be earned before it can be enjoyed.”
Charles Caleb Colton (1777–1832) said by 1832 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I shall defer my visit to Faneuil Hall, the cradle of American liberty, until its doors shall fly open on golden hinges to lovers of Union as well as lovers of liberty.”
Daniel Webster (1782–1852) first seen 1851 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter (April 1851)
“A country cannot subsist well without liberty, nor liberty without virtue.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) said by 1778 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in A Dictionary of Thoughts: Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations from the Best Authors of the World, Both Ancient and Modern (1908) by Tryon Edwards, p. 301.
“Limiting the liberty of each by the like liberty of all, excludes a wide range of improper actions, but does not exclude certain other improper ones.”
Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) said by 1903 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Would it not be as well to liberate and make soldiers at once of the blacks themselves, as to make them instruments for enlisting white soldiers? It would certainly be more consonant to the principles of liberty which ought never to be lost sight of in a contest for liberty...”
James Madison (1751–1836) first seen 1780 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Joseph Jones (28 November 1780)
“Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires. But it could not be less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction, than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency.”
James Madison (1751–1836) said by 1836 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No man — prince, peasant, pope, — has all the light, who says else is a mountebank. I claim no private lien on truth, only a liberty to seek it, prove it in debate, and to be wrong a thousand times to reach a single rightness. It is that liberty they fear. They want us to be driven to God like sheep, not running to him like lovers, shouting joy!”
Morris West (1916–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No rack can torture me, My soul 's at liberty. Behind this mortal bone There knits a bolder oneYou cannot prick with saw, Nor rend with scymitar. Two bodies therefore be; Bind one, and one will flee.The eagle of his nest No easier divest And gain the sky, Than mayest thou,Except thyself may be Thine enemy; Captivity is consciousness, So's liberty.”
Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) said by 1886 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Liberty without obedience is confusion, and obedience without liberty is slavery.”
William Penn (1644–1718) said by 1718 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Memoirs of the Private and Public Life of William Penn : Who Settled the State of Pennsylvania, and Founded the City of Philadelphia (1827) by S. C. Stevens, p. 117
“Political liberty’s a swindle because a man doesn’t spend his time being political. He spends it sleeping, eating, amusing himself a little and working — mostly working. When they’d got all the political liberty they wanted — or found they didn’t want — they began to understand this.”
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The object and practice of liberty lies in the limitation of governmental power. Through the ages the constantly expanding grasp of government has been liberty's greatest threat.”
Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am a great admirer of Professor Hayek. Some of his books are absolutely supreme—“The Constitution of Liberty” and the three volumes on “Law, Legislation and Liberty”—and would be well read by almost every hon. Member.”
Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) first seen 1981 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (10 March 1981)
“Liberty and good government do not exclude each other; and there are excellent reasons why they should go together. Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end. It is not for the sake of a good public administration that it is required, but for security in the pursuit of the highest objects of civil society, and of private life.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The idea that religious liberty is the generating principle of civil, and that civil liberty is the necessary condition of religious, was a discovery reserved for the seventeenth century.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Liberalism is really opposed to liberty. ... Modern liberalism in England as well as abroad, in America as well as in Europe, has done more to destroy liberty than monarchy has done.”
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.…
“Our stubbornness is right, because we want to preserve the liberty which we have in Christ. Only by preserving our liberty shall we be able to retain the truth of the Gospel inviolate.”
Martin Luther (1483–1546) said by 1546 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The liberty of the citizen to do as he likes so long as he does not interfere with the liberty of others to do the same, which has been a shibboleth for some well known writers, is interfered with by school laws, by the Post Office, by every state or municipal institution which takes his money for purposes thought desirable, whether he likes it or not.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (1841–1935) said by 1935 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Declaration of Independence states that the Creator gave man the right to liberty. It seems man can realize that liberty only if he does not forget the One who endowed him with it.”
Václav Havel (1936–2011) said by 2011 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I had reasoned dis out in my mind; there was one of two things I had a right to, liberty, or death; if I could not have one, I would have de oder; for no man should take me alive; I should fight for my liberty as long as my strength lasted, and when de time came for me to go, de Lord would let dem take me.”
Harriet Tubman (1820–1913) said by 1913 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“These are vital issues, in which the Nation greatly needs a revival of interest and concern. It is senseless to boast of our liberty when we find that to so shocking an extent it is merely the liberty to go ill-governed. It is time to take warning that neither the liberties we prize nor the system under which we claim them are safe while such conditions exist.”
Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What did the two words "Liberty and Empire" mean in the Roman mouth? They meant simply this: liberty for ourselves, empire over the rest of mankind.”
William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) first seen 1878 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in West Calder, Scotland (27 November 1879), quoted in The Times (28 November 1878), p. 10. The Conservative Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli had proclaimed his policy as "Imperium et Libertas".
“Now is the time for the true friend of his country to remind the masses that their present political elevation is owing to no principles less broad and noble than these—the love of liberty, of liberty for all without distinction of class, creed, or country, and the resolute preference of the interests of the whole to any interest, be it what it may, of a narrower scope.”
William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) first seen 1894 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Sir John Cowan (17 March 1894), quoted in The Times (22 March 1894), p. 8
“The first statement of the two principles reads as follows. First: each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others. Second: social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both(a)reasonably expected to be to everyone's advantage, and (b) attached to positions and offices open to all.”
John Rawls (1921–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was an old struggle that Liberalism stood for. There was the great battle of Naseby when that great Liberal leader Oliver Cromwell planted the standard of liberty, fought a very good by-election for liberty, and won.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1927 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Hinckley during the Bosworth by-election campaign (30 May 1927), quoted in The Times (31 May 1927), p. 18
“No Peace without Hope, No Hope without Liberty, No Liberty without Integrity, No Integrity without Virtue, No Virtue without Enlightenment, No Enlightenment without Truth.”
Glenn Beck (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Let Mr. Madison tell me when did liberty ever exist when the sword and the purse were given up from the people? Unless a miracle shall interpose, no nation ever did, nor ever can retain its liberty after the loss of the sword and the purse.”
Patrick Henry (1736–1799) said by 1799 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in The Debates in the Several States Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution also known as Elliot's Debates, Jonathan Elliot, edit. (1941) J. B. Lippincott Co., pp. 168-169, originally publishe…
“There are times we don't want to hear about the need to temper our best hopes in order to achieve our most vital security. But we still need to do it. Before we can triumph, we must survive. Before liberty can prevail, the possibility of liberty must be preserved.”
Alan Keyes (born 1950) first seen 2000 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech at McKay Events Center in Orem, Utah (22 September 2000)
“I am very liberal on social issues, but I don’t believe we can have personal liberty, which is what that means, without having economic liberty. We have economic tyranny when you add in Obamacare, we have about 50 percent of the U.S. GDP in the public sector. That means that you have a tyrannical and overregulating, and politicized economy, not a market economy, not the invisible hand.”
Scott McNealy (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When used by the Christian Right, the term "liberty" means the liberty that comes with accepting a very narrowly conceived Christ and the binary world-view that acceptance promotes. (p15)”
Chris Hedges (born 1956) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All religions united with government are more or less inimical to liberty. All, separated from government, are compatible with liberty.”
Henry Clay (1777–1852) first seen 1818 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech on the Emancipation of South America, House of Representatives (24 March 1818); The Life and Speeches of the Hon. Henry Clay, vol. I (1857), ed. Daniel Mallory
“We know Mr. Gladstone is an authority...that the Soudanese are struggling for their liberty. My impression of the matter is that the Soudanese are struggling for abridging the liberty of other people in the shape of the slave trade. (Laughter and cheers.)”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1884 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Plymouth on the Mahdist War (4 June 1884), quoted in The Times (5 June 1884), p. 6
“If I like to drink beer it is no reason that I should be prevented from taking it because my neighbour does not like it. If you sacrifice liberty on the matter of alcohol you will eventually sacrifice it on more important matters also, and those advantages of civil and religious liberty for which we have fought hard will gradually be whittled away.”
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1885 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Newport, Montgomeryshire (7 October 1885), quoted in The Times (8 October 1885), p. 7
“Everything is what it is: liberty is liberty, not equality or fairness or justice or culture, or human happiness or a quiet conscience.”
Isaiah Berlin (1909–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Liberty of the people is not my liberty!”
Max Stirner (1806–1856) said by 1856 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Cambridge 1995, p. 190
“Next to the right of liberty, the right of property is the most important individual right guaranteed by the Constitution and the one which, united with that of personal liberty, has contributed more to the growth of civilization than any other institution established by the human race.”
William Howard Taft (1857–1930) first seen 1913 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Popular Government: Its Essence, Its Permanence and Its Perils, chapter 4, p.90 (1913).
“The laws of certain states …give an ownership in the service of negroes as personal property…. But being men, by the laws of God and nature, they were capable of acquiring liberty—and when the captor in war …thought fit to give them liberty, the gift was not only valid, but irrevocable.”
Alexander Hamilton (1757–1804) said by 1804 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Papers of Alexander Hamilton, ed. Harold C. Syrett (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961-), 19:101-2
“Our formidable factions, for all their nonsense and violence, served to protect the liberty of the subject. It is only in States based on the less civilized principle that no party may exist save the party of government, that liberty of press and person can be totally destroyed, whether in the Eighteenth or the Twentieth Century. That is not the English tradition.”
G. M. Trevelyan (1876–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Inequality is one of nature's written laws, it is the consequence of liberty and the liberty of the individual is a necessary postulate of human progress.”
Ernest Renan (1823–1892) said by 1892 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Those who sell their liberty for security are understandable, if pitiable, creatures. Those who sell the liberty of others for wealth, power, or even a moment's respite deserve only the end of a rope.”
L. Neil Smith (1946–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It must cut up Liberty by the root and poison the Fountain of Publick Security; and who that has an English heart can ever be weary of asserting Liberty?”
William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham (1708–1778) first seen 1739 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Denouncing corruption in a draft speech (November 1739), quoted in Basil Williams, The Life of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham. Volume I (1913), p. 80
“Liberty in the most literal sense is the negation of law for law is restraint, and the absence of restraint is anarchy. On the other hand, anarchy by destroying restraint would leave liberty the exclusive possession of the strong or the unscrupulous.”
Benjamin N. Cardozo (1870–1938) said by 1938 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Bills of rights give assurance to the individual of the preservation of his liberty. They do not define the liberty they promise.”
Benjamin N. Cardozo (1870–1938) said by 1938 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Liberty trains for liberty. Responsibility is the first step in responsibility.”
W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963) first seen 1909 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: John Brown: A Biography (1909): "The Legacy of John Brown
“The Intention and the End of Monarchy, is the Glory of the Citizens, of the State, and of the Sovereign. But, from this Glory, a Sense of Liberty arises in a People governed by a Monarch; which may produce in these States as much Energy in transacting the most important Affairs, and may contribute as much to the Happiness of the Subjects, as even Liberty itself....”
Catherine II of Russia (1729–1796) said by 1796 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The political Liberty of a Citizen is the Peace of Mind arising from the Consciousness, that every Individual enjoys his peculiar Safety; and in order that the People might attain this Liberty, the Laws ought to be so framed, that no one Citizen should stand in Fear of another; but that all of them should stand in Fear of the same Laws....”
Catherine II of Russia (1729–1796) said by 1796 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Of liberty I would say that, in the whole plenitude of its extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will. But 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 (1743–1826) first seen 1819 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Isaac H. Tiffany (4 April 1819)