Famous Quotes & Sayings

Herbert Spencer

A man's liberties are none the less aggressed upon because those who coerce him do so in the belief that he will be benefited.

Henry David Thoreau

We are a nation of politicians, concerned about the outmost defenses only of freedom. It is our children's children who may perchance be really free.

Henry David Thoreau

America is said to be the arena on which the battle of freedom is to be fought; but surely it cannot be freedom in a merely political sense that is meant. Even if we grant that the American has freed himself from a political tyrant, he is still the slave of an economical and moral tyrant. Now that the republic--the res- publica--has been settled, it is time to look after the res- privata,--the private state,--to see, as the Roman Senate charged its consuls, "ne quid res-PRIVATA detrimenti caperet," that the private state receive no detriment.

Henry David Thoreau

The boatmen appeared to lead an easy and contented life, and we thought that we should prefer their employment ourselves to many professions which are much more sought after. They suggested how few circumstances are necessary to the well-being and serenity of man, how indifferent all employments are, and that any may seem noble and poetic to the eyes of men, if pursued with sufficient buoyancy and freedom.

Henry David Thoreau

For a man to act himself, he must be perfectly free; otherwise he is in danger of losing all sense of responsibility or of self- respect.

Henry David Thoreau

Every sacred book, successively, has been accepted in the faith that it was to be the final resting-place of the sojourning soul;but after all, it was but a caravansary which supplied refreshment to the traveler, and directed him farther on his way to Isphahan or Bagdat. Thank God, no Hindoo tyranny prevailed at the framing of the world, but we are freemen of the universe, and not sentenced to any caste.

Henry David Thoreau

We have used up all our inherited freedom, like the young bird the albumen in the egg. It is not an era of repose. If we would save our lives, we must fight for them.

Henry David Thoreau

The question is whether you can bear freedom. At present the vast majority of men, whether white or black, require the discipline of labor which enslaves them for their own good.

Henry David Thoreau

What great interval is there between him who is caught in Africa and made a plantation slave of in the South, and him who is caught in New England and made a Unitarian minister of?

Henry David Thoreau

What we want is not mainly to colonize Nebraska with free men, but to colonize Massachusetts with free men-to be free ourselves. As the enterprise of a few individuals, that is brave and practical; but as the enterprise of the State, it is cowardice and imbecility. What odds where we squat, or bow much ground we cover? It is not the soil that we would make free, but men.

Henry David Thoreau

The mass of men are very easily imposed on. They have their runways in which they always travel, and are sure to fall into any pit or box-trap set therein.

Henry David Thoreau

Men talk of freedom! How many are free to think? Free from fear, from perturbation, from prejudice? Nine hundred and ninety-nine in a thousand are perfect slaves.

Henry David Thoreau

It is hard to have a Southern overseer; it is worse to have a Northern one; but worst of all when you are yourself the slave-driver.

Henry David Thoreau

The English did not come to America from a mere love of adventure, nor to truck with or convert the savages, nor to hold offices under the crown, as the French to a great extent did, but to live in earnest and with freedom.

H. L. Mencken

A politician is an animal which can sit on a fence and yet keep both ears to the ground.

H. L. Mencken

Most people want security in this world, not liberty.

H. L. Mencken

The kind of man who demands that government enforce his ideas is always the kind whose ideas are idiotic.

H. L. Mencken

Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses.

H. L. Mencken

A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.

H. L. Mencken

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

H. L. Mencken

Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule—and both commonly succeed, and are right.

H. L. Mencken

Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.

H. L. Mencken

A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.

H. L. Mencken

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The English think they are free. They are free only during the election of members of parliament.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Free people, remember this maxim: we may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is once lost.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery.

Erwin McManus

It's not your freedom to choose that makes you free. It's what you choose in that freedom that makes you free.

Fisher Ames

Liberty is not to be enjoyed, indeed it cannot exist, without the habits of just subordination; it consists, not so much in removing all restraint from the orderly, as in imposing it on the violent.

Henry Miller

The only law which is really lived up to wholeheartedly and with a vengeance is the law of conformity.

Helen Keller

Our democracy is but a name. We vote? What does that mean? It means that we choose between two bodies of real, though not avowed, autocrats. We choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

Harvey Milk

Freedom is too enormous to be slipped under a closet door.

James Boswell

If a man who is born to a fortune cannot make himself easier and freer than those who are not, he gains nothing.