Liberty - Quotes

A day, an hour of virtuous liberty is worth a whole eternity in bondage. - Joseph Addison

But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint. - Edmund Burke

By physical liberty I mean the right to do anything which does not interfere with the happiness of another. - Robert Ingersoll

Clearly when the liberties are left unrestricted they collide with one another. - John Rawls

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. - John Philpot Curran

Excess of liberty, whether it lies in state or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery. - Plato

Few men desire liberty; most men wish only for a just master. - Sallust

For liberty hath a sharp and double edge, fit only to be handled by just and virtuous men; to bad and dissolute, it becomes a mischief unwieldy in their own hands. - John Milton

For though the flame of liberty may sometimes cease to shine, the coal can never expire. - Thomas Paine

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

Half-liberty comes with wisdom, full liberty with death. - Austin O’Malley

How false is the conception, how frantic the pursuit, of that treacherous phantom which men call Liberty: most treacherous, indeed, of all phantoms; for the feeblest ray of reason might surely show us, that not only its attainment, but its being, was impossible. There is no such thing in the universe. There can never be. The stars have it not; the earth has it not; the sea has it not; and we men have the mockery and semblance of it only for our heaviest punishment. - John Ruskin

Idleness, ennui, noise, mischief, riot, and a nameless train of mistaken notions of pleasure, are often classed, in a young man's mind, under the general head of liberty. - Maria Edgeworth

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

If there is one subject in this world worthy of being discussed, worthy of being understood, it is the question of intellectual liberty. Without that, we are simply painted clay. - Robert G. Ingersoll

It is true that liberty is precious – so precious that it must be rationed. - Vladimir Lenin

Let us prefer the lonely cottage, while blest with liberty, to gilded palaces, surrounded with the ensigns of slavery. - Joseph Warren

Liberty cannot be preserved without general knowledge among the people. - John Adams

Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else; hence the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits except those which assure to the other members of the society the enjoyment of the same rights. - Gilbert du Motier

Liberty has as many chains as an iron-monger's shop, and as rusty. - Austin O’Malley

Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of the government. The history of liberty is a history of resistance. - Woodrow Wilson

Liberty is a blessing that must be earned before it can be enjoyed. - Charles Colton  

Liberty is equally desirable to the good and to the bad, to the brave and to the dastardly. - John Mair

Liberty is the right of doing whatever the laws permit. - Baron de Charles Montesquieu

Liberty is the soul's right to breathe, and when it cannot take a long breath, laws are girdled too tight. - Henry Ward Beecher

Liberty is to the collective body, what health is to every individual body; without health no pleasure can be tasted by man; without liberty, no happiness can be enjoyed by society. - Lord Bolingbroke

Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it. - Learned Hand

Liberty may be an uncomfortable blessing unless you know what to do with it. That is why so many freed slaves returned to their masters, why so many emancipated women are only too glad to give up the racket and settle down. For between announcing that you will live your own life, and the living of it lie the real difficulties of any awakening. - Walter Lippmann

Liberty may be endangered by the abuse of liberty, but also by the abuse of power. - James Madison

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it. - George Bernard Shaw

Liberty without learning is always in peril and learning without liberty is always in vain. - John F Kennedy

Liberty, as it is conceived by current opinion, has nothing inherent about it; it is a sort of gift or trust bestowed on the individual by the state pending good behaviour. - Mary McCarthy

Liberty, like health, appears most precious when lost. - Norman MacDonald

Man’s liberty ends, and it ought to end, when that liberty becomes the curse of its neighbors. - Frederic William Farrar

Man usually thinks liberty is the power of doing what he likes to do. That is license. - Austin O’Malley

Men fight for liberty and win it with hard knocks. Their children, brought up easy, let it slip away again, poor fools. And their grandchildren are once more slaves. - D. H. Lawrence

No form of liberty is worth a darn which doesn’t give us the right to do wrong now and then. - H. L. Mencken

Of liberty I would say that, in the whole plenitude of its extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will. But rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual. - Thomas Jefferson

Personal liberty is the paramount essential to human dignity and human happiness. - Edward Bulwer Lytton

The cause of liberty becomes a mockery if the price to be paid is the wholesale destruction of those who are to enjoy liberty. - Mahatma Gandhi

The higher your station, the less your liberty. - Sallust

The liberty of the individual is no gift of civilization. It was greatest before there was any civilization. - Sigmund Freud

The liberty of the individual must be thus far limited; he must not make himself a nuisance to other people. - John Stuart Mill

The men of the future will yet fight their way to many a liberty that we do not even miss. - Max Stirner

The most culpable of the excesses of Liberty is the harm she does herself. - Madame Swetchine

The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number is self-protection … The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.- John Stuart Mill

The spirit of liberty must be cherished, if we would elevate, purify, and strengthen the fibre of the nation. - Arnaud de L’ariege

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

The true charter of liberty is independence, maintained by force. - Voltaire

The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favour freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without ploughing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. - Frederick Douglas

The word liberty has been falsely used by persons who, being degenerately profligate in private life, and mischievous in public, had no hope left but in fomenting discord. - Tacitus

There are multitudes of persons whose idea of liberty is the right to do what they please, instead of the right of doing that which is lawful and best. - Henry Ward Beecher

Through too much liberty all things run to ruin and confusion. Liberty in the mind is a sign of goodness; in the tongue, of foolishness; in the hand, of theft; in our life, of want of grace. - M. Parker

Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of Liberty. - Thomas Jefferson

Too little liberty brings stagnation, and too much brings chaos. - Bertrand Russell

True liberty consists in the privilege of enjoying our own rights, not in the destruction of the rights of others. - Pinchard

We are right to take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties. - James Madison

We have to talk about liberating minds as well as liberating society. - Angela Davis

What light is to the eyes – what air is to the lungs – what love is to the heart, liberty is to the soul of man. - Robert Green Ingersoll

When all men give to all others all the rights they claim for themselves, this world will be civilized. - Robert G. Ingersoll

When liberty comes with hands dabbled in blood it is hard to shake hands with her. - Oscar Wilde