Quotes About Freedom

The Greeks by their laws, and the Romans by the spirit of their people, took care to put into the hands of their rulers no such engine of oppression as a standing army. Their system was to make every man a soldier, and oblige him to repair to the standard of his country whenever that was reared. This made them invincible and the same remedy will make us so.

The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket, nor breaks my leg.

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and governments to gain ground.

The press, confined to truth, needs no other legal restraint.

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then.

The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.

This institution will be based upon the illimitable freedom of the human mind. For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments ar

I predict future happiness for Americans, if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.

The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions any more than our opinions in physics or geometry...

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away all this artificial scaffolding... { Letter to John Adams , April 11, 1823 }

If you want to be free, he suggests, if you want to heal your relationship with God, with others and yourself, enter your inner room—the office, where the Divine Therapy takes place. Close the door so you don't run away. Quiet your interior dialogue so that you can listen to what the Spirit is saying to you.

Where are you?" God's question to us never changes. In some cases, life has been so tragic that we are not free to decide where we are. But the power of divine grace, especially as it is experienced in contemplative prayer, opens us to the unconscious and introduces us to a world of unlimited possibilities that are unknown to us now.

Similarly, Jesus invites us to change the direction in which we are looking for happiness and to join the new humanity that is opening to interior freedom and self-transcendence. The primary issue for the human family at its present level of evolutionary development is to become fully human. But that, as we have seen, means rediscovering our connectedness to God, which was repressed somewhere in early childhood.

Once a story is told, it cannot be called back. Once told, it is loose in the world.

Democracy ….[is not]… simply a form of government but an organizing principle that bundles individual freedoms, Christianity, and capitalism into a marketable product carrying with it the unexamined promise of wealth and prosperity.

the [Hawthorn] report revealed the logical fallacy that has haunted Indian history and policy in North America since contact - to wit, that all people yearn for the individual freedom to pursue economic goals. Indians are people, ergo, they want to make money and create wealth for themselves and their families.

There is no simple harmony between what is good for social or personal stability, for civic commitment and attachment, and what is good for genuine freedom of the mind.

Within the strictures of commonsense reality and personal ability, we can choose to do anything we like in this world … with one exception: We cannot choose what any of our choices will be.

Indeed, Dr Haxhausen fought to preserve his freedom with very good reason, for he required a great deal of it—freedom, not reason—to pursue his plans for the future.

Stringently considered, then, our only natural birthright is a right to die.

What a relief, what an unburdening to have closed the book on humankind.