Quotes About Liberty

“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
― Benjamin Franklin, Memoirs of the life & writings of Benjamin Franklin

“Better to die fighting for freedom then be a prisoner all the days of your life.”
― Bob Marley

“Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or in the holy name of liberty or democracy?”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“When the people fear the government there is tyranny, when the government fears the people there is liberty.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
― George Orwell

“For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.”
― Nelson Mandela

“I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“I was not designed to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest.”
― Henry David Thoreau, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience

“Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“Freedom is not something that anybody can be given. Freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be”
― James Baldwin

“A primary object should be the education of our youth in the science of government. In a republic, what species of knowledge can be equally important? And what duty more pressing than communicating it to those who are to be the future guardians of the liberties of the country?”
― George Washington

“I am an American; free born and free bred, where I acknowledge no man as my superior, except for his own worth, or as my inferior, except for his own demerit.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it.”
― Thomas Paine

“The end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end.”
― Leon Trotsky

“Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide.”
― Napoleon Bonaparte

“Give to every other human being every right that you claim for yourself - that is my doctrine.”
― Thomas Paine, The Age Of Reason

“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.”
― John Philpot Curran

“Government is not reason, it is not eloquence – it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and fearful master.”
― George Washington

“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!”
― Patrick Henry

“But words are things, and a small drop of ink,
Falling, like dew, upon a thought produces
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions think.”
― George Gordon Byron

“I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of Constitutional power.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.”
― George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman

“Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice can not sleep forever: that considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation is among possible events: that it may become probable by supernatural interference!”
― Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia

“Liberty," boomed Wednesday, as they walked to the car, "is a bitch who must be bedded on a mattress of corpses.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.”
― John Adams

“I hope we once again have reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There's a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts.”
― Ronald Reagan

“What are you thinking?" he asks.

I know Gage hates it when I cry - he is completely undone by the sight of tears - so I blink hard against the sting. "I'm thinking how thankful I am for everything," I say, "even the bad stuff. Every sleepless night, every second of being lonely, every time the car broke down, every wad of gum on my shoe, every late bill and losing lottery ticket and bruise and broken dish and piece of burnt toast."

His voice is soft. "Why, darlin'?"

"Because it all led me here to you.”
― Lisa Kleypas, Sugar Daddy

“A right delayed is a right denied.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.