Freedom and Liberty Quotes
“For those who stubbornly seek freedom, there can be no more urgent task than to come to understand the mechanisms and practices of indoctrination. These are easy to perceive in the totalitarian societies, much less so in the system of ‘brainwashing under freedom’ to which we are subjected and in which all too often we serve as unwilling instruments.” Noam Chomsky
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“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.” Samuel Adams (1722-1803), was known as the “Father of the American Revolution”, 1776
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“So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.” Voltaire, François Marie Arouet (1694-1778)
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“Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” George Orwell, English novelist, essayist, and critic, 1903-1950
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“Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.” John Milton
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“The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to the point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism’s ownership of government by an individual, by a group or any controlling private power.” President Franklin D. Roosevelt
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“Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.” James Bovard
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“Elections are won by men and women chiefly because most people vote against somebody rather than for somebody.” Franklin P. Adams, US journalist (1881-1960)
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“Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost.” John Quincy Adams, Eldest son of President John Adams and sixth president of the US, 1767-1848
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“The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.” Thomas Jefferson, 3rd US president, principal author of the Declaration of Independence, 1743-1826
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“Freedom of expression is the well-spring of our civilization… The history of civilization is in considerable measure the displacement of error which once held sway as official truth by beliefs which in turn have yielded to other truths. Therefore the liberty of man to search for truth ought not to be fettered, no matter what orthodoxies he may challenge.” Felix Frankfurter (1882-1965), U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Concurring Opinion, Dennis et al. v. U.S. (1951)
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“Freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order.” Justice Robert H. Jackson (1892-1954), U. S. Supreme Court Justice, West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 1943
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“He therefore is the truest friend to the liberty of his country who tries most to promote its virtue, and who, so far as his power and influence extend, will not suffer a man to be chosen into any office of power and trust who is not a wise and virtuous man.” Samuel Adams
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“The voice of protest, of warning, of appeal is never more needed than when the clamor of fife and drum, echoed by the press and too often by the pulpit, is bidding all men fall in and keep step and obey in silence the tyrannous word of command. Then, more than ever, it is the duty of the good citizen not to be silent.” Charles Eliot Norton
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“Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good.” Thomas Paine
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“To change masters is not to be free.” Jose Marti y Perez
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“What country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.” Thomas Jefferson
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“When the rights of just one individual are denied, the rights of all are in jeopardy!” Jo Ann Roach
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“I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave.” H. L. Mencken, “Why Liberty?” January 30, 1927
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“I have seen you prostrate yourself and worship your own freedom, even as slaves humble themselves before a tyrant and praise him though he slays them.
Ay, in the grove of the temple and in the shadow of the citadel I have seen the freest among you wear their freedom as a yoke and a handcuff.
And my heart bled within me; for you can only be free when even the desire of seeking freedom becomes a harness to you, and when you cease to speak of freedom as a goal and a fulfillment. : On Freedom : The Prophet, by Kahlil Gibran