quotations about liberty
Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
letter to James Madison, Mar. 2, 1788
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
Reflections on the Revolution in France
If to break loose from the bounds of reason, and to want that restraint of examination and judgment which keeps us from choosing or doing the worst, be liberty, true liberty, madmen and fools are the only freemen: but yet, I think, nobody would choose to be mad for the sake of such liberty, but he that is mad already.
JOHN LOCKE
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
The want of liberty is witnessed in hushed voices and low whisperings; liberty bursts into unshackled eloquence.
LUCY BARTON
attributed, Day's Collacon
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 behavior.
MARY MCCARTHY
The Contagion of Ideas
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
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
letter to W.S. Smith, Nov. 13, 1787
We are right to take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties.
JAMES MADISON
attributed, Quote Junkie Presidents Edition
Take the word Liberty from human speech and all the other words become poor, withered, meaningless sounds -- but with that word realized -- with that word understood, the world becomes a paradise.
ROBERT G. INGERSOLL
speech at the trial of C. B. Reynolds for blasphemy, May 1887
There are two kinds of people I could anathematize with a better weapon than St. Peter's -- those who dare deprive others of their liberty, and those who suffer others to do it.
JOHN LEDYARD
Travels and Adventures of John Ledyard
The spontaneous action of the people themselves alone can create liberty.
MIKHAIL BAKUNIN
God and the State
The saddest epitaph which can be carved in memory of a vanished liberty is that it was lost because its possessors failed to stretch forth a saving hand while yet there was time.
GEORGE SUTHERLAND
Associated Press v. National Labor Relations Board, 1938
O Liberty, white Goddess! is it well to leave the gates unguarded? On thy breast fold Sorrow's children, soothe the hurts of Fate, lift the down-trodden, but with hand of steel stay those who to thy sacred portals come to waste the gifts of Freedom.
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
"Unguarded Gates"
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
U. S. Declaration of Independence, Jul. 4, 1776
An armed and trained militia is the firmest bulwark of republics ... without standing armies their liberty can never be in danger, nor with large ones safe.
JAMES MADISON
First Inaugural Address, Mar. 4, 1809
For Liberty can be lost by the practical men whose hearts are too shrunken to contain it. Liberty can be bartered away by the greedy minds who cannot see beyond their own day. Liberty can be stolen away by the robber and the brute. But Liberty grows like grass in the hearts of the common people, from the blood of their martyrs. And the tyrants rage and are gone, but the dream and the deed endure.
STEPHEN VINCENT BENÉT
Toward the Century of the Common Man
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
speech at New York Press Club, Sep. 9, 1912
If liberty with law is fire on the hearth, liberty without law is fire on the floor.
G. S. HILLARD
attributed, Day's Collacon
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 favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS
address on West India Emancipation, Aug. 4, 1857
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
The History of Britain