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liberty quotes

  • Fetters of gold are still fetters, and the softest lining can never make them so easyas liberty.

    - Mary Astell
      An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex.

  •    It is a strange desire to seek power and to lose liberty.

    - Francis,Viscount St Albans Bacon
      Essays, no.11,'Of Great Place'.

  • The most ordinary cause of a single life is liberty, especially in certain self-pleasing and humorous minds, which are so sensible of every restraint, as they will go near to think their girdles and garters to be bonds and shackles.

    - Francis,Viscount St Albans Bacon
      Essays, no.8,'Of Marriage and the Single Life'.

  • Only reasoncan convinceus ofthosethreefundamental truths without a recognition of which there can be no effective liberty: that what we believe is not necessarily true; that what we like is not necessarily good; and that all questions are open.

    - (Arthur) Clive Howard Bell
      Civilization, ch.5.

  • Mr Sammler with his screwy visions! He saw the increasing triumph of EnlightenmentLiberty, Equality, Adultery!

    - Saul Bellow
      Mr Sammler's Planet, ch.3.

  • Every law is an evil, for every law is an infraction of liberty.

    -Jeremy Bentham
      An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation.

  • Liberty is liberty, not equality or fairness or justice or human happiness or a quiet conscience.

    - Sir Isaiah Berlin
      Two Concepts of Liberty, note.

  • The Spirit of the Lord G isuponme; becausethe Lhath anointed meto preach good tidings untothemeek; he hath sent me, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound;To proclaim the acceptable yearofthe L, and the dayof vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn;To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for thespirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the L, that he might be glorified.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    ODORD ORDORDIsaiah 61:1^3.

  • Liberty lendsus her wings and Hope guides us by her star.

    - Charlotte Bronte« 
      Villette, ch.6.

  •    I am floated along, as if I should die Of Liberty's exquisite pain.

    - Elizabeth ne  e Barrett Browning
      'The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point', stanza 36.

  • Liberty too must be limited in order to be possessed.

    - Edmund Burke
      Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol.

  • Among a people generally corrupt, liberty cannot long exist.

    - Edmund Burke
      Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol.

  • A fig for those by law protected! Liberty's a glorious feast! Courts for Cowards were erected, Churches built to please the Priest.

    - Robert Burns
    c.1786  'The  Jolly Beggars', or 'Love and Liberty, a Cantata', chorus to a song to the tune'Jolly Mortals, fill your glasses'.

  • Liberty's in every blow! Let us do or die!

    - Robert Burns
      'Bruce's  Address at Bannockburn', stanza 3.

  • When I speak about the blessings of liberty, coarse videos and crass commercialism are not what I have in mind.

    - GeorgeW(alker) Bush
      Speaking in Istanbul, 29  Jun.

  • Wommen, of kynde, desiren libertee, And nat to been constreyned as a thral; And so doon men, if I sooth seyen shal.

    - Geoffrey Chaucer
      Canterbury  Tales,'The Franklin's Tale', l.768^70.

  • It was like walking down the street with the Statue of Liberty.

    - (Donald) Pat(rick) Conroy
      On walking in Manhattan with the instantly recognizable Barbra Streisand. In WAMU, 4 Sep.

  • Individuality is the aim of political liberty.

    -James Fenimore Cooper
      The American Democrat,'Individuality'.

  • It is a misfortune that necessity has induced men to accord greater licensetothis formidable engine, inorder to obtain liberty, than can be borne with less important objects in view; for the press, like fire, is an excellent servant, but a terrible master.

    -James Fenimore Cooper
      The American Democrat,'On the Press'.

  •    why talk of beauty what could be more beaut- iful than these heroic happy dead who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter they did not stop to think they died instead then shall the voices of liberty be mute? He spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of water.

    - e e pen name of  Edward Estlin Cummings cummings
      is 5,'Two, III'.

  • The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime, and the punishment of his guilt.

    -John Philpot Curran
      Speech, Dublin,10  Jul.

  • A University should be a place of light, of liberty, and of learning.

    - Benjamin, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield Disraeli
      Speech, House of Commons,11 Mar.

  • Errors look so very ugly in persons of small meansone feels they are taking quite a liberty in going astray; whereas people of fortunemay naturally indulgeina few delinquencies.

    - George pseudonym of  MaryAnn Evans Eliot
      Scenes of Clerical Life, ch.25.

  • There are even times when any assumption of dignity becomes ludicrous, and the traveller must, as Mungo Park once had to do,'lay down as a rule to make himself as useless and as insignificant as possible, as the only means of recovering his liberty'.

    - Sir Francis Galton
      The Art of  Travel.

  • Corruption, the most infallible symptom of constitutional liberty.

    - Edward Gibbon
    ^88  The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ch.21.

  • Extremism in the defence of liberty is no vice, and moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.

    - Barry M(orris) Goldwater
      Speech to the Republican convention,16  Jul.

  • When the people contend for their liberty, they seldom get anything by their victory but new masters.

    - George Savile, 1st Marquis of Halifax
    c.1687  Political Thoughts and Reflections,'Of Prerogative, Power and Liberty'.

  • The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right.

    - (Billings) Learned Hand
       Address at 'I  Am  An  American Day' in NewYork's Central Park, recalled on his death,18  Aug1961.

  • The love of liberty isthelove ofothers; thelove of power is the love of ourselves.

    -William Hazlitt
      Political Essays,'The Times Newspaper'.

  • But liberty, as we all know, cannot flourish in a country that is permanently on a war footing, or even a near-war footing. Permanent crisis justifies permanent control of everybody and everything by the agencies of central government.

    - Aldous Leonard Huxley
      'Brave New World Revisited', in Esquire.

  • The bird, the beste, the fisch eke in the see, They lyve in fredome, euerich in his kynd, And I, a man, and lakkith libertee!

    -James I
    c.1435  The Kingis Quair, stanza 27.

  • We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable; that all men are created equal and independent; that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent and inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, and liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

    -Thomas Jefferson
    c.1776  Draft of the  American Declaration of Independence. Collected in  J P Boyd et al Papers of  Thomas Jefferson (1950), vol.1.

  • The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

    -Thomas Jefferson
      Letter to W S Smith,13 Nov.

  • Liberty is, to the lowest rank of every nation, little more than the choice of working or starving.

    - Samuel known as Dr Johnson Johnson
      'The Bravery of the English Common Soldier', in The British Magazine,  Jan.

  • The notion of libertyamuses the people of England, and helps to keep off the taedium vitae.When a butcher tells you that his heart bleeds for his country he has, in fact, no uneasy feeling.

    - Samuel known as Dr Johnson Johnson
      Remark,16 May. Quoted in  James Boswell The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), vol.1.

  • Now, sir, there isthelibertyof thepress, whichyou know is a constant topic. Suppose you and I and two hundred more were restrained from printing our thoughts: what then? What proportionwould that restraint uponusbear to the private happiness of the nation?

    - Samuel known as Dr Johnson Johnson
      Remark, May. Quoted in  James Boswell The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), vol.2.

  • How isitthat wehear theloudest yelpsforlibertyamong the drivers of negroes?

    - Samuel known as Dr Johnson Johnson
      Taxation No Tyranny.

  • Resolve not to be poor; whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy tohumanhappiness; itcertainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult. 446

    - Samuel known as Dr Johnson Johnson
      Letter to Boswell,7 Dec. Quoted in  James Boswell  The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), vol.4.

  • Nor shall our cups make any guilty men: But, at our parting, we will be, as when We innocently met. No simple word, That shall be utter'd at our mirthful board, Shall make us sad next morning: or affright The liberty, that we'll enjoy tonight.

    - Ben Jonson
      Epigrams,'On Inviting a Friend to Supper'.

  •   Let it be impressed upon your minds, let it be instilled into your children, that the liberty of the press is the Palladium of all the civil, political, and religious rights of an Englishman.

    -'Junius' possibly the pseudonym of  Sir Philip Francis
      Letters, Dedication to the  Authorized Edition.

  • Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans, born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined bya hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage, and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world. Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall payany price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and success of liberty.

    -John F(itzgerald) Kennedy
      Inaugural address, Washington, 20  Jan.

  • At its birth, the republic gave voice to three wordsLiberty,Equality,Fraternity! If Europeiswiseand just, each of those words signifies Peace.

    - Alphonse Marie Louis de Lamartine
      A Manifesto to the Powers, 4 Mar.

  •    Then let us have our libertyagain, And challenge to yourselves no sovereignty. You came not in the world without our pain, Make that a bar against your cruelty; Your fault being greater, why should you disdain Our being your equals, free from tyranny?

    - Aemilia Lanyer
    Salve Deus Ex Judaeorum,'Eve's  Apology in Defense of Women'.

  • Four score and sevenyears ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal†we here highly resolve that the dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth. 510

    - Abraham Lincoln
      Dedication address, Gettysburg NationalCemetery,19 Nov.

  • Freedom of men under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society, and made by the legislative power vested in it; a liberty to follow my own will in all things when the rule prescribes not, and not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary rule of another man.

    -John Locke
    Second Treatise on Civil Government (published anonymously1690).

  •    When I lie tangled in her hair, And fettered to her eye; The Gods, that wanton in the air Know no such liberty.

    - Richard Lovelace
      Lucasta,'To  Althea, from Prison'.

  • Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage; Minds innocent and quiet take That for a hermitage; If I have freedom in my love, And in my soul am free; Angels along that soar above, Enjoy such liberty.

    - Richard Lovelace
      Lucasta,'To  Althea, from Prison'.

  • There is onlyone cure for the evilswhichnewlyacquired freedom produces; and that is freedom† The blaze of truth and liberty mayat first dazzle and bewilder nations which have become half blind in the house of bondage. But let them gaze on, and they will soon be able to bear it.

    -1st Baron
      'Milton', in the Edinburgh Review,  Aug.

  • Many politicians of our time are in the habit of laying it Macaulay down as a self-evident proposition, that no people ought to be free till theyare fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story, who resolved not to go into the water till he had learnt to swim. If men are to wait for liberty till they become wise and good in slavery, they may indeed wait for ever.

    -1st Baron
      'Milton', in the Edinburgh Review,  Aug.

  • Liberty, asit is conceived bycurrent opinion, hasnothing inherent about it; it is a sort of gift or trust bestowed on the individual by the state pending good behavior.

    -Joseph R(aymond) McCarthy
      Speech. Collected as 'The Contagion of Ideas', in On the Contrary (1961).

  • We are great as our belief in human libertyno greater. And our belief in human liberty is only ours when it is larger than ourselves.

    - Archibald MacLeish
      'Now Let Us  Address The Main Question: Bicentennial of What?', in the NewYork Times, 3  Jul.

  • There is one expanding horror in American life. It is that our long odyssey toward liberty, democracy and freedom-for-all may be achieved in such a way that utopia remains forever closed, and we live in freedom and hell, debased of style, not individual from one another, void of courage, our fear rationalized away.

    - Norman Kingsley Mailer
      Cannibals and Christians,'My Hope For  America'.

  • We recipients of the boon of liberty have always been ready, whenfacedwith discomfort, to discard anyand all first principles of liberty, and,further, toindictthosewho do not freely join with us in happily arrogating those principles.

    - David Alan Mamet
      Writing in Restaurants,'First Principles'.

  • The soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty to think, feel, do just as one pleases.We go on a journeychiefly to be free of all impediments and of all inconveniences; to leave ourselves behind, much moretoget rid of others.It is because I want a little breathing space to muse on different matters†that I absent myself from thetown for a while.

    - Morris Marples
    Quoted in  John Hillaby  Journey through Britain (1968).

  • Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.

    -John Milton
      Areopagitica: a speech for the liberty of unlicensed printing.

  • I did but prompt the age to quit their clogs By the known rules of ancient liberty, When strait a barbarous noise environs me Of owls and cuckoos, asses, apes and dogs.

    -John Milton
    c.1646  'On the Detraction Which Follow'd Upon My Writing Certain Treatises'.

  • Il se faut reserver une arriere boutique toute nostre, toute franche, en laquelle nous establissons nostre vraye liberte   et principale retraite et solitude. We must reserve a backshop, wholly our own and entirely free, wherein to settle our true liberty, our principle solitude and retreat.

    - Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
      Essais, bk.1, ch.39 (translated by Charles Cotton).

  • He that is a traveller must have the back of an ass to bear all, atonguelikethetail ofa dog toflatterall, themouthof a hog to eat all what is set before him, the ear of a merchant to hear all and say nothing; and if this be not the highest step of thraldom, there is no liberty or freedom.

    -Thomas Nashe
      The Unfortunate Traveller, or the Life of  Jack Wilton.

  • I sometimes think the price of liberty is not so much eternal vigilance as eternal dirt.

    - George pseudonym of  Eric Arthur Blair Orwell
      The Road to Wigan Pier, ch.4.

  • If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

    - George pseudonym of  Eric Arthur Blair Orwell
       Written for a rejected preface to  Animal Farm.

  • Literature is doomed if liberty of thought perishes.

    - George pseudonym of  Eric Arthur Blair Orwell
      'The Prevention of Literature', in Polemic,  Jan.

  • The people die so, that now it seems theyare fain to carry the dead to be buried by daylight, the nights not sufficing to do it in. And my Lord Mayor commands people to be within at 9 at night, all (as they say) that the sick may have liberty to go abroad for ayre.

    - Samuel Pepys
      Diary entry,12 Aug.

  • I rejoice that America has resisted. Three millions of people, so dead to all the feelings of liberty, as voluntarily to submit to be slaves, would have been fit instruments to make slaves of the rest.

    -William, 1st Earl of Chatham known as  the Elder Pitt
      Speech to the House of Commons,14 Jan.

  • The spirit that now resists your taxation in America is†the same spirit that established the great fundamental, essential maxim of your libertiesthat no subject of England shall betaxed but byhis ownconsent. The glorious spirit of Whiggismanimates three million in America, who prefer poverty with liberty to gilded chains and sordid affluence; and who will die in defence of their rights as men, as free men.

    -William, 1st Earl of Chatham known as  the Elder Pitt
      Speech to the House of Lords, 20 Jan.

  • We must recollect†what it is we have at stake, what it is we have to contend for. It is for our property, it is for our liberty, it is for our independence, nay for our existence as a nation; it is for our character, it is for our very name as Englishmen, it is for everything dear and valuable to man on this side of the grave.

    -William known as  theYounger Pitt
      Speech, 22 Jul, on the breaking of the Peace of Amiens and the resumption of the war with Napoleon. Quoted in Speeches of the Rt. Hon.William Pitt (1806), vol.4.

  • Oh happy state! when souls each other draw, When love is liberty, and nature, law: All then is full, possessing, and possessed, No craving void left aching in the breast.

    - Alexander Pope
      'Eloisa to Abelard'.

  • We are fighting in the quarrel of civilization against barbarism, of liberty against tyranny.Germany has become a menace to the whole world. She is the most dangerous enemy of liberty now existing.

    -Theodore Roosevelt
      Speech at Oyster Bay, Long Island, Apr.

  •    Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.

    - George Bernard Shaw
      Man and Superman,'Maxims for Revolutionists: Liberty and Equality'.

  • In honoured poverty thy voice did weave Songs concentrate to truth and liberty, Deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve, Thus having been, that thou shouldst cease to be.

    - Percy Bysshe Shelley
      'ToWordsworth'.

  • Give me the liberty of the Press, and I will give the Minister a venal House of Peers, I will give him a corrupt and servile House of Commons†armedwiththeliberty of the Press, I will go forth to meet him undismayed.

    - Richard Brinsley Sheridan
      Speech, House of Commons.

  • My country,'tis of thee, Sweet land of liberty, Of thee I sing: Land where my fathers died, Land of the pilgrims'pride, From every mountain-side Let the freedom ring.

    - Samuel Francis Smith
      'America'.

  • The liberty that the citizen enjoys is to be measured not by the governmental machinery that he lives under, whether representative or otherwise, but by the paucity of restraints that it imposes upon him.

    - Herbert Spencer
      The ManVersus the State.

  • Nempe falluntur homines, quod se liberos esse putant; quae opinioinhoc soloconsistit, quodsuarum actionum sint conscii, et ignari causarum, a quibus determinantur. Haec ergo est eorum libertatis idea, quod suarum actionum nullam cognoscant causam. Men are mistaken in thinking themselves free; and this opinion consists of this alone, that theyare conscious of their actions and ignorant of the causes by which they are determined. This, therefore, is their idea of liberty, that they should know no cause of their actions.

    - Baruch also known as Benedict de Spinoza Spinoza
      Ethics, bk.2, prop.35, note.

  • We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

    - Elizabeth ne  e  Cady Stanton
      'Declaration of Sentiments', Seneca FallsWomen's Rights Convention,19^20 Jul.This is modelled on theAmerican Declaration of Independence of 4 Jul1776.

  • The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the republican model of government, are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally staked, on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.

    - BookerTaliaferro Washington
      Inaugural address, 30 Apr.

  • The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted on the tested foundations of political liberty.

    - (Thomas) Woodrow Wilson
      Speech before a joint session of Congress, 2 Apr, to request a declaration that a state of war exists between Germany and the US.

  •    Liberty isthemotherof virtue, and if women be, by their very constitution, slaves, and not allowed to breathe the sharp invigorating air of freedom, they must ever languish like exotics, and be reckoned beautiful flaws in nature.

    - Mary also known as Mrs Godwin Wollstonecraft
      AVindication of the Rights ofWoman, pt.1, ch.2.

  • Two voices are there; one is of the sea, One of the mountains; each a mighty voice: In both from age to age thou didst rejoice, They were thy chosen music, Liberty!

    -William Wordsworth
      'Thought of a Briton on the Subjugation of Switzerland', l.1^4.

  • In lusty leas at liberty I walk.

    - SirThomas (the Elder) Wyatt
      'Mine Own John Poins'.

  • Wine gives you liberty, love takes it away.

    -William Wycherley
      The CountryWife, act1, sc.1.

Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations Copyright © 2010 by Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Published by Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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