Quotes About Liberty

That liberty [is pure] which is to go to all, and not to the few or the rich alone. (to Horatio Gates, 1798)

The policy of the American government is to leave its citizens free, neither restraining them nor aiding them in their pursuits.

The ground of liberty is to be gained by inches. We must be contented to secure what we can get from time to time and eternally press forward for what is yet to get. It takes time to persuade men to do even what is for their own good.

The rights hereby asserted are of the natural rights of mankind, and that if any act shall be hereafter passed to repeal the present or to narrow its operation, such act will be an infringement of natural right.

In every country and every age, the priest had been hostile to Liberty.

It is a] happy truth that man is capable of self-government, and only rendered otherwise by the moral degradation designedly superinduced on him by the wicked acts of his tyrant.

I shall not die without a hope that light and liberty are on a steady advance. Even should the cloud of barbarism and despotism again obscure the science and liberties of Europe, this country remains to preserve and restore light and liberty to them. In, short, the flames kindled on the 4th of July, 1776, have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism; on the contrary, they will consume these and all who work for them.

no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.

No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms

If Americans desire to be both ignorant and free, they want what never has been and what never will be.

He [Weishaupt] says, no one ever laid a surer foundation for liberty than our grand master, Jesus of Nazareth.

Freedom, the first-born of science.

Postpone to the great object of Liberty every smaller motive and passion.

Let us, then, fellow citizens, unite with one heart and one mind. Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things. And let us reflect that having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little if we countenance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions.

El árbol de la libertad debe ser vigorizado de vez en cuando con la sangre de patriotas y tiranos: es su fertilizante natural»

Under the law of nature, all men are born free, every one comes into the world with a right to his own person, which includes the liberty of moving and using it at his own will. This is what is called personal liberty, and is given him by the author of nature, because necessary for his own sustenance.

I shall not die without a hope that light and liberty are on a steady advance....The flames kindled on the 4th of July 1776, have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism.

Nothing then is unchangeable but the inherent and inalienable rights of man.

Liberty is the parent of science and of virtue, and a nation will be great in both in proportion as it is free.

The people are the only safe depositories of their own liberty, & they are not safe unless enlightened to a certain degree.

Todavía doy importancia a mi libertad, o al menos a ese resto de libertad y dignidad humana que aún conservamos.

The cause of liberty becomes a mockery if the price to be paid is the wholesale destruction of those who are to enjoy liberty. Ghandi, quoted in Merton, p. 68

It is true, the Zen-man's contempt for conventional and formalistic social custom is a healthy phenomenon, but it is healthy only because it presupposes a spiritual liberty based on freedom from passion, egotism and self-delusion. A pseudo-Zen attitude which seeks to justify a complete moral collapse with a few rationalizations based on the Zen Masters is only another form of bourgeois self-deception.

If these seeds would take root in my liberty, and if His will would grow from my freedom, I would become the love that He is, and my harvest would be His glory and my own joy. And