An aphorism is nothing else but the slightest
QUOTES AND APHORISMS ON LIBERTY
Absolute liberty is absence of restraint; responsibility is restraint; therefore, the ideally free individual is responsible only to himself.
Henry Brooks Adams (1838-1918, American historian)
Liberty can not be preserved without a general knowledge among the people.
John Adams (1735-1826, American President (2nd))
Liberty, according to my metaphysics is a self-determining power in an intellectual agent. It implies thought and choice and power.
John Adams (1735-1826, American President (2nd))
The people never give up their liberties, but under some delusion.
Edmund Burke (1729-1797, British political writer, statesman)
The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts.
Edmund Burke (1729-1797, British political writer, statesman)
The ingrained idea that, because there is no king and they despise titles, the Americans are a free people is pathetically untrue. There is a perpetual interference with personal liberty over there that would not be tolerated in England for a week.
Margot Asquith (1864-1945, British socialite)
Liberty is being free from the things we don't like in order to be slaves of the things we do like.
Ernest Benn
You cannot have Liberty in this world without what you call Moral Virtue, and you cannot have Moral Virtue without the slavery of that half of the human race who hate what you call Moral Virtue.
William Blake (1757-1827, British poet, painter)
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.
Henry Bolingbroke (1678-1751, British politician)
The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal -- well-meaning but without understanding.
Louis D. Brandeis (1856-1941, American judge)
There is nothing with which it is so dangerous to take liberties as liberty itself.
Andre Breton (1989-1966, French surrealist)
Liberty must be limited in order to be possessed.
Edmund Burke (1729-1797, British political writer, statesman)
The effect of liberty to individuals is that they may do what they please: we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations.
Edmund Burke (1729-1797, British political writer, statesman)
The effect of liberty to individuals is that they may do what they please: we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations.
Edmund Burke (1729-1797, British political writer, statesman)
It is not one man nor a million, but the spirit of liberty that must be preserved. The waves which dash upon the shore are, one by one, broken, but the ocean conquers nevertheless. It overwhelms the Armada, it wears out the rock. In like manner, whatever the struggle of individuals, the great cause will gather strength.
Lord Byron (1788-1824, British poet)
Liberty is one of the most precious gifts which heaven has bestowed on man; with it we cannot compare the treasures which the earth contains or the sea conceals; for liberty, as for honor, we can and ought to risk our lives; and, on for the other hand, captivity is the greatest evil that can befall man.
Miguel De Cervantes (1547-1616, Spanish novelist, dramatist, poet)
Peace is liberty in tranquillity.
Marcus T. Cicero (c. 106-43 BC, Roman orator, politician)
Liberty will not descend to a people; a people must raise themselves to liberty; it is a blessing that must be earned before it can be enjoyed.
Charles Caleb Colton (1780-1832, British sportsman writer)
We have to talk about liberating minds as well as liberating society.
Angela Y. Davis (1944-, American political activist)
Liberty is slow fruit. It is never cheap; it is made difficult because freedom is the accomplishment and perfectness of man.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882, American poet, essayist)
Liberty is a different kind of pain from prison.
T. S. Eliot (1888-1965, American-born British poet, critic)
I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death.
Patrick Henry (1736-1799, American orator, patriot)
One's liberty should end when it becomes the curse of his neighbor.
Frederick Farrar (1831-1903, British clergyman, author)
Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have.
Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878-1969, American minister)
They who give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790, American scientist, publisher, diplomat)
Where liberty is, there is my country.
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790, American scientist, publisher, diplomat)
Liberty has restraints but no frontiers.
David Lloyd George (1863-1945, British Prime Minister)
Liberty is not merely a privilege to be conferred; it is a habit to be acquired.
David Lloyd George (1863-1945, British Prime Minister)
Corruption: the most infallible symptom of constitutional liberty.
Edward Gibbon (1737-1794, British historian)
I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue.
Barry Goldwater (1909-1998, American politician and writer)
It is easy to take liberty for granted when you have never had it taken from you.
M. Grundler
It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826, American President (3rd))
Abuse is the very hallmark of liberty.
Lord Quintin Hogg Hailsham (1907-2001, British statesman)
The slaves of power mind the cause they have to serve, because their own interest is concerned; but the friends of liberty always sacrifice their cause, which is only the cause of humanity, to their own spleen, vanity, and self-opinion.
William Hazlitt (1778-1830, British essayist)
When liberty is mentioned, we must always be careful to observe whether it is not really the assertion of private interests which is thereby designated.
Georg Hegel (1770-1831, German philosopher)
Liberty is not to be had or held without effort.
Herbert Clark Hoover (1874-1964, American President (31st))
It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once.
David Hume (1711-1776, Scottish philosopher, historian)
The more liberty you give away the more you will have.
Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899, American orator, lawyer)
The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826, American President (3rd))
The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826, American President (3rd))
Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826, American President (3rd))
The deadliest foe of democracy is not autocracy but liberty frenzied.
Otto Herman Kahn (1867-1934, American banker)
Then we are assured by Sartre that owing to the final disappearance of God our liberty is absolute! At this the entire audience waves its hat or claps its hands. But this natural enthusiasm is turned abruptly into something much less buoyant when it is learnt that this liberty weighs us down immediately with tremendous responsibilities. We now have to take all God's worries on our shoulders -- now that we are become "men like gods." It is at this point that the Anxiety and Despondency begin, ending in utter despair.
Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957, British author, painter)
Fourscore and seven years 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.
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865, American President (16th))
Liberty may be endangered by the abuse of liberty, but also by the abuse of power.
James Madison (1751-1836, American statesman, president)
We are right to take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties.
James Madison (1751-1836, American statesman, president)
I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.
H. L. Mencken (1880-1956, American editor, author, critic, humorist)
License they mean when they cry liberty.
John Milton (1608-1674, British poet)
Political liberty is to be found only in moderate governments.
Charles De Montesquieu (1689-1755, French jurist, political philosopher)
An educational method that shall have liberty as its basis must intervene to help the child to a conquest of liberty. That is to say, his training must be such as shall help him to diminish as much as possible the social bonds which limit his activity.
Maria Montessori (1870-1952, Italian educator)
Once we roared like lions for liberty; now we bleat like sheep for security! The solution for America's problem is not in terms of big government, but it is in big men over whom nobody stands in control but God.
Norman Vincent Peale (1898-1993, American Christian reformed pastor, speaker, author)
I would rather not be a king than to forfeit my liberty.
Phaedrus (c.1-?, Macedonian inventor and writer)
A free spirit takes liberties even with liberty itself.
Francis Picabia (1878-1953, French painter, poet)
Liberty has no crueler enemy than license.
French Proverb (Sayings of French origin)
Liberty is God's gift, liberties the devil s.
German Proverb (Sayings of German origin)
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 (1819-1900, British critic, social theorist)
What do we mean by setting a man free? You cannot free a man who dwells in a desert and is an unfeeling brute. There is no liberty except the liberty of some one making his way towards something. Such a man can be set free if you will teach him the meaning of thirst, and how to trace a path to a well. Only then will he embark upon a course of action that will not be without significance. You could not liberate a stone if there were no law of gravity -- for where will the stone go, once it is quarried?
Antoine De Saint-Exupery (1900-1944, French aviator, writer)
Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)
It is not true that democracy will always safeguard freedom of conscience better than autocracy. Witness the most famous of all trials. Pilate was, from the standpoint of the Jews, certainly the representative of autocracy. Yet he tried to protect freedom. And he yielded to a democracy.
Joseph A. Schumpeter (1883-1950, Austrian-American economist)
A well governed appetite is the greater part of liberty.
Marcus Annaeus Seneca (BC 3-65 AD, Roman philosopher, dramatist, statesman)
The approach of liberty makes even an old man brave.
Marcus Annaeus Seneca (BC 3-65 AD, Roman philosopher, dramatist, statesman)
Old England liberty -- to be robbed by the Ministry, and insulted by the populace without redress.
Captain J. G. Stedman (1744-1797, British soldier, author, artist)
Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862, American essayist, poet, naturalist)
They who are in the highest places, and have the most power, have the least liberty, because they are the most observed.
John Tillotson (1630-1694, British theologian, Archbishop of Canterbury)
What a pity we don't pursue the salvation of humans with the same verve we pursue the salvation of animals
Author Unknown
Liberty, then, about which so many volumes have been written is, when accurately defined, only the power of acting.
Francois-Marie Arouet de Voltaire (1694-1778, French historian, writer)
If liberty has any meaning it means freedom to improve.
Philip Wylie (1902-1971, American writer)
Liberty, not communism, is the most contagious force in the world.
Earl Warren (1891-1974, American politician, judge)
Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.
George Washington (1732-1799, American President (1st))
Over grown military establishments are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty.
George Washington (1732-1799, American President (1st))
Liberty exists in proportion to wholesome restraint.
Daniel Webster (1782-1852, American lawyer, statesman)
It would seem that man was born a slave, and that slavery is his natural condition. At the same time nothing on earth can stop man from feeling himself born for liberty. Never, whatever may happen, can he accept servitude; for he is a thinking creature.
Simone Weil (1910-1943, French philosopher, mystic)
One of the indispensable foods for the human soul is liberty.
Simone Weil (1910-1943, French philosopher, mystic)
The spirit of liberality is the spirit of heaven.
Ellen Gould White (1827-1915, American seventh-day Adventist leader)
Liberty is the only thing you cannot have unless you are willing to give it to others.
William Allen White (1868-1944, American editor, writer)
The shallow consider liberty a release from all law, from every constraint. The wise man sees in it, on the contrary, the potent Law of Laws.
Walt Whitman (1819-1892, American poet)
When liberty comes with hands dabbled in blood it is hard to shake hands with her.
Oscar Wilde (1856-1900, British author, wit)
I would rather belong to a poor nation that was free than to a rich nation that had ceased to be in love with liberty.
Woodrow T. Wilson (1856-1924, American President (28th))
Liberty has never come from government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it. The history of liberty is a history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of limitations of governmental power, not the increase of it.
Woodrow T. Wilson (1856-1924, American President (28th))
The history of liberty is the history of the limitations of governmental power, not the increase of it. When we resist the concentration of power we are resisting the powers of death. Concentration of power precedes the destruction of human liberties.
Woodrow T. Wilson (1856-1924, American President (28th))
There can be no liberty that isn't earned.
Robert R. Young
No nation ancient or modern ever lost the liberty of freely speaking, writing, or publishing their sentiments, but forthwith lost their liberty in general and became slaves.
John P. Zenger
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