Liberty Quotes - Page 89

I'm convinced that you never have to give up liberties to be safe. I think you're less safe when you give up your liberties.

No matter how many pro-freedom politicians we elect to office, the only way to guarantee constitutional government is through an educated and activist public devoted to the ideals of liberty.

In wartime, people willing to sacrifice liberty for security.

Opinion polls consistently show that only about 5 percent of blacks have sensible political opinions, i.e. support the free market, individual liberty, and the end of welfare and affirmative action.

In this way, we end up spending (as Thoreau put it) “the best part of one's life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it.” We'd love to drop all and explore the world outside, we tell ourselves, but the time never seems right. Thus, given an unlimited amount of choices, we make none. Settling into our lives, we get so obsessed with holding on to our domestic certainties that we forget why we desired them in the first place.

There is no contending with necessity, and we should be very tender how we censure those that submit to it. It is one thing to be at liberty to do what we will, and another thing to be tied up to do what we must.

Any court which undertakes by its legal processes to enforce civil liberties needs the support of an enlightened and vigorous public opinion which will be intelligent and discriminating as to what cases really are civil liberties cases and what questions really are involved in those cases.

There is no such thing as an achieved liberty: like electricity, there can be no substantial storage and it must be generated as it is enjoyed, or the lights go out.

Liberty a word without which all other words are vain.

The combined wisdom and genius of all mankind cannot possibly conceive of an argument against liberty of thought.

Liberty sustains the same relation to mind that space does to matter.

Liberty cannot be sacrificed for the sake of anything.

Wait until the world is free before you write a creed. In this creed there will be but one word -- Liberty.

Liberty is the condition of progress. Without Liberty, there remains only barbarism. Without Liberty, there can be no civilization.

Take the word Liberty from human speech and all the other words become poor, withered, meaningless sounds - but with that word realized - with that word understood, the world becomes a paradise.

If society fits you comfortably enough, you call it freedom.

Wherefore, men are free according to the flesh; and all things are given them which are expedient unto man. And they are free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil

But little do or can the best of us: That little is achieved through Liberty.

I would always argue to my students that Canada is not necessarily or inherently a left-wing country, and the United States is not necessarily the citadel of right-wing liberty. The obvious case there is Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, which made the Americans much further left than the Canadians at the time, and Americans coming to Canada found us backward, conservative, and out of tune with the kind of free-spirited liberalism that there was in the States. Then things reversed, with medicare the prime example.

The copyright industry has managed to kill civil liberties for their own children, ushering in a dystopian surveillance machine, merely to avoid taking responsibility for their own business failures. I lack words to quantify my contempt for these utter parasites.

The first duty of government is to protect the citizen from assault. Unless it does this, all the civil rights and civil liberties in the world aren't worth a dime.

Being a musician is to live, not to survive. Surviving is going to work every day and giving up your liberty and your time. When you do music, it's a free life.

Civil liberties, good. Lawyers, bad.

Having the right to show up and speak are basic to survival, to dignity, and to liberty.

Some in Washington say that you have to trade your liberty for security.