They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. – Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759
Everywhere the human soul stands between a hemisphere of light and another of darkness on the confines of two everlasting hostile empires, — Necessity and Free Will. – Thomas Carlyle, Essays, “The Opera”
No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck. – Frederick Douglass, speech, Civil Rights Mass Meeting, Washington, D.C., 1883
Who speaks of liberty while the human mind is in chains? – Francis Wright, 1828
Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth. – George Washington
Liberty doesn’t work as well in practice as it does in speeches. – Will Rogers
Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err. – Mahatma Gandhi
We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home. – Edward R. Murrow
Most men, after a little freedom, have preferred authority with the consoling assurances and the economy of effort which it brings. – Walter Lippmann, A Preface to Morals, 1929
The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power. – Daniel Webster
Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better…. – Albert Camus
Men fight for liberty and win it with hard knocks. Their children, brought up easy, let it slip away again, poor fools. – D.H. Lawrence
The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding. – Louis D. Brandeis
When the People contend for their liberty, they seldom get anything for their Victory but new Masters. – George Savile
He who is allowed to do as he likes will soon run his head into a brick wall out of sheer frustration. – Robert Musil, The Man without Qualities, 1930
Freedom is the will to be responsible to ourselves. – Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols
Liberty is maintained by responsible freedom. – Roger W Hancock, www.PoetPatriot.com
The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion. – Edmund Burke
We anarchists do not want to emancipate the people; we want the people to emancipate themselves. – Errico Malatesta, l’Agitazione, 1897 June 18th
We are free, truly free, when we don’t need to rent our arms to anybody in order to be able to lift a piece of bread to our mouths. – Ricardo Flores Magon, speech, 1914 May 31st
