Quotes About Freedom

The only liberty that is valuable is a liberty connected with order; that not only exists along with order and virtue, but which cannot exist at all without them. It inheres in good and steady government, as in its substance and vital principle.

The restraints on men, as well as their liberties, are both to be reckoned among their rights.

Such sanguine declarations tend to lull authority asleep,—to encourage it rashly to engage in perilous adventures of untried policy,—to neglect those provisions, preparations, and precautions which distinguish benevolence from imbecility, and without which no man can answer for the salutary effect of any abstract plan of government or of freedom. For want of these, they have seen the medicine of the state corrupted into its poison.

To make a government requires no great prudence. Settle the seat of power; teach obedience: and the work is done. To give freedom is still more easy. It is not necessary to guide; it only requires to let go the rein. But to form a free government; that is, to temper together these opposite elements of liberty and restraint in one consistent work, requires much thought, deep reflection, a sagacious, powerful, and combining mind.

Who but a tyrant (a name expressive of every thing which can vitiate and degrade human nature) could think of seizing on the property of men, unaccused, unheard, untried, by whole descriptions, by hundreds and thousands together?

lie together in one short sentence: namely, that we have acquired a right 1. To choose our own governors. 2. To cashier them for misconduct. 3. To frame a government for ourselves. This new, and hitherto unheard-of bill of rights

The Constitution was made for the people and not the people for the Constitution.

We must never exercise our rights either wickedly or thoughtlessly; we can continue to preserve them in but one possible way, by making the proper use of them.

he is the most dangerous foe to human liberty that has ever set foot on American soil."16

Later I would know some real workers—heavily tattooed, hair worn in ponytails, motorcycle-riding, manga-reading, and pill-popping—and I realized they were as batty as we were, far from the standardized robots of our fantasies. Americans, rich or poor, were a nation of weirdos.

Reading books for pleasure, of course, is the greatest joy. No need to underline, press on, try out mentally summarizing or evaluating phrases. One is free to read as a child reads—no duties, no goals, no responsibilities, no clock ticking: pure rapture.

Whoever has not known the pleasures of open stacks—with their erotically charged corridors.

Youngsters can plunder a text and find what they want in the margins.

A closed country is a dying country... A closed mind is a dying mind.' from a radio broadcast in 1947

If it's freedom you want, come to Texas. No one there tells you what to do and how you have to do it.

I tend not to look at the prison wall of life, but to look up at the sky, as it is more beautiful and more spacious. Try

She had always thought that people who had once loved one another kept the faintest trace of it in their being, but not him. He was free of her. Marked of course, but free in a way that she was not. She was still joined by fear, by sexual necessity, by what she knew as love.

The Dove Fly your flight my dear dove Sing your song, make it reach the ocean I want my freedom I want to live in peace I want to sing your song To have your wings To be able to fly I want my destiny to leave the path that it is taking now.

There's no limit to you, is there?

Thank god I'm gay! It's so liberating!

The principles of a free constitution are irrecoverably lost, when the legislative power is nominated by the executive.

Augustus was sensible that mankind is governed by names; nor was he deceived in his expectation, that the senate and the people would submit to slavery, provided they were respectfully assured that they still enjoyed their ancient freedoms.

Freedom is the first step to curiosity and knowledge.

The forests and morasses of Germany were filled with a hardy race of barbarians, who despised life when it was separated from freedom;