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LIBERTy quotes
What is life? It is not to stalk about, and draw fresh air, or gaze upon the sun; it is to be free.
A day, an hour of virtuous liberty is worth a whole eternity of bondage.
There is no liberty to men whose passions are stronger than their religious feelings; there is no liberty to men in whom ignorance predominates over knowledge; there is no liberty to men who know not how to govern themselves.
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.
Personal liberty is the paramount essential to human dignity and human happiness.
The only liberty that is valuable, is a liberty connected with order; that not only exists with order and virtue, but which cannot exist at all without them. It inheres in good and steady government, as in its substance and vital principle.
Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put chains upon their own appetites; in proportion as their love of justice is above their rapacity; in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption; in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon the will and appetite is placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be of it without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate habits cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.
When I see the spirit of liberty in action, I see a strong principle at work and this, for a while, is all I can possibly know of it. The wild gas, the fixed air, is plainly broke loose: but we ought to suspend our judgment until the first effervescence is a little subsided, till the liquor is cleared, and until we see something deeper than the agitation of a troubled and frothy surface. I must be tolerably sure, before I venture publicly to congratulate men upon a blessing, that they have really received one.
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.
The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.
The true danger is, when liberty is nibbled away, for expedients, and by parts.
There is no liberty worth anything which is not a liberty under law.
The spirit of liberty is not, as multitudes imagine, a jealousy of our own particular rights, but a respect for the rights of others, and an unwillingness that any one, whether high or low, should be wronged or trampled under foot.
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.
Safe popular freedom consists of four things, the diffusion of liberty, of intelligence, of property, and of conscientiousness, and cannot be compounded of any three out of the four.
The liberty of a people consists in being governed by laws which they have made themselves, under whatsoever form it be of government; the liberty of a private man is being master of his own time and actions, as far as may consist with the laws of God, and of his country.
The liberty of a people consists in being governed by laws which they have made themselves, under whatsoever form it be of government; the liberty of a private man, in being master of his own time and actions, as far as may consist with the laws of God and of his country.
He is the freeman whom the truth makes free, and all are slaves beside.
The human race is in the best condition when it has the greatest degree of liberty.
Perfect conformity to the will of God is the sole sovereign and complete liberty.
Oh, give me liberty! for even were paradise my prison, still I should long to leap the crystal walls.
True liberty consists only in the power of doing what we ought to will, and in not being constrained to do what we ought not to will.
If we must accept fate, we are not less compelled to assert liberty, the significance of the individual, the grandeur of duty, the power of character.—We are sure, though we know not how, that necessity does comport with liberty, the individual with the world, my polarity with the spirit of the times.
Man's liberty ends, and it ought to end, when that liberty becomes the curse of his neighbors.
A Bible and a newspaper in every house, a good school in every district,—all studied and appreciated as they merit,—are the principal support of virtue, morality, and civil liberty.
It is impossible to enslave, mentally or socially, a Bible-reading people. The principles of the Bible are the groundwork of human freedom.
Men do things which their fathers would have deprecated, and then draw about themselves a flimsy cordon of sophistry, and talk about the advance of humanity and liberal thought, when it is nothing after all but a preference for individual license.
The greatest glory of a free-born people, is to transmit that freedom to their children.
Is life so dear, or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?—Forbid it, Almighty God!—I know not what course others may take, but, as for me, give me liberty or give me death.
Bad men cannot make good citizens. It is impossible that a nation of infidels or idolaters should be a nation of freemen. It is when a people forget God, that tyrants forge their chains. A vitiated state of morals, a corrupted public conscience, is incompatible with freedom. No free government, or the blessings of liberty can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue, and by a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.
If liberty with law is fire on the hearth, liberty without law is fire on the floor.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights; and that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
There are two freedoms, the false where one is free to do what he likes, and the true where he is free to do what he ought.
Free will is not the liberty to do whatever one likes, but the power of doing whatever one sees ought to be done, even in the very face of otherwise overwhelming impulse. There lies freedom, indeed.
Give me the liberty to know, to think to believe, and to utter freely, according to conscience, above all other liberties.
Where liberty dwells, there is my country.
Liberty is the right to do what the laws allow; and if a citizen could do what they forbid, it would be no longer liberty, because others would have the same powers.
A nation may lose its liberties in a day, and not miss them in a century.
Personal liberty is the right to act without interference within the limits of the law.
To do what we will, is natural liberty; to do what we may consistently with the interests of the community to which we belong, is civil liberty, the only liberty to be desired in a state of civil society.
True liberty consists in the privilege of enjoying our own rights, not in the destruction of the rights of others.
The principle of liberty and equality, if coupled with mere selfishness, will make men only devils, each trying to be independent that he may fight only for his own interest.—And here is the need of religion and its power, to bring in the principle of benevolence and love to men.
False notions of liberty are strangely common. People talk of it as if it meant the liberty of doing whatever one likes—whereas the only liberty that a man, worthy of the name of man, ought to ask for, is, to have all restrictions, inward and outward, removed that prevent his doing what he ought.
O liberty, how many crimes are committed in thy name!
A country cannot subsist well without liberty, nor liberty without virtue.
It is foolish to strive with what we cannot avoid; we are born subjects, and to obey God is perfect liberty; he that does this, shall be free, safe, and quiet; all his actions shall succeed to his wishes.
Reason and virtue alone can bestow liberty.
Liberty consists in the right which God has given us, of doing, getting, and enjoying all the good in our power, according to the laws of God, of the State, and of our conscience.—True liberty, therefore, can never interfere with the duties, rights, and interests of others.
The only rational liberty is that which is born of subjection, reared in the fear of God and love of man, and roads courageous in the defense of a trust, and the prosecution of a duty.
Easier were it to hurl the rooted mountain from its base, than force the yoke of slavery upon men determined to be free.
In the same proportion that ignorance and vice prevail in a republic, will the government partake of despotism.
The Protestant principle, that "God alone is Lord of the conscience," has done more to give the mind power, and to strike off its chains, than any principle of mere secular policy in the most perfect "Bill of Rights."
There is not a truth to be gathered from history more certain, or more momentous, than this: that civil liberty cannot long be separated from religious liberty without danger, and ultimately without destruction to both. Wherever religious liberty exists, it will, first or last, bring in and establish political liberty. Wherever it is suppressed, the church establishment will, first or last, become the engine of despotism, and overthrow, unless it be itself overthrown, every vestige of political right.
Christianity is the companion of liberty in all its conflicts, the cradle of its infancy, and the divine source of its claims.
Interwoven is the love of liberty with every ligament of the heart.
The love of religious liberty is a stronger sentiment, when fully excited, than an attachment to civil freedom. Conscience, in the cause of religion, prepares the mind to act and to suffer, beyond almost all other causes. It sometimes gives an impulse so irresistible, that no fetters of power or of opinion can withstand it. History instructs us, that this love of religious liberty, made up of the clearest sense of right and the highest conviction of duty, is able to look the sternest despotism in the face, and, with means apparently inadequate, to shake principalities and powers.
Liberty and union, one and inseparable, now and forever.
If the true spark of religious and civil liberty be kindled, it will burn. Human agency cannot extinguish it. Like the earth's central fire, it may be smothered for a time; the ocean may overwhelm it; mountains may press it down; but its inherent and unconquerable force will heave both the ocean and the land, and at some time or another, in some place or another, the volcano will break out and flame to heaven.
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