Famous Quotes & Sayings

John Stuart Mill

Over one's mind and over one's body the individual is sovereign.

John Stuart Mill

Every man who says frankly and fully what he thinks is so far doing a public service. We should be grateful to him for attacking most unsparingly our most cherished opinions.

John Stuart Mill

A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

John Stuart Mill

If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.

James K. Polk

No union exists between church and state, and perfect freedom of opinion is guaranteed to all sects and creeds.

James Russell Lowell

Freedom needs all her poets; it is they Who give her aspirations wings, And to the wiser law of music sway Her wild imaginings.

James Russell Lowell

Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.

James Russell Lowell

Slow are the steps of freedom, but her feet turn never backward.

James Russell Lowell

Freedom is the only law which genius knows.

Larry Flynt

Privacy is not explicitly spelled out in the Constitution as freedom of speech is in the First Amendment.

Larry Flynt

Freedom of speech doesn't protect speech you like; it protects speech you don't like.

Friedrich Durrenmatt

Humans need justice in the here and now and grace in the thereafter. Justice in the here and now is possible only without freedom,and grace in the thereafter only through the freedom of God.

Friedrich Engels

Freedom is the recognition of necessity.

Friedrich August von Hayek

Our submission to general principles is necessary because we cannot be guided in our practical action by full knowledge and evaluation of the consequences. So long as men are not omniscient, the only way in which freedom can be given to the individual is by such general rules to delimit the sphere in which the decision is his. There can be no freedom if the government is not limited to particular kinds of action but can use its powers in any ways which serve particular ends.

Friedrich August von Hayek

The importance of our being free to do a particular thing has nothing to do with the question of whether we or the majority are ever likely to make use of that particular possibility. To grant no more freedom than all can exercise would be to misconceive its function completely. The freedom that will be used by only one man in a million may be more important to society and more beneficial to the majority than any freedom that we all use.

Friedrich August von Hayek

A society that does not recognise that each individual has values of his own which he is entitled to follow can have no respect for the dignity of the individual and cannot really know freedom.

Friedrich August von Hayek

Perhaps the fact that we have seen millions voting themselves into complete dependence on a tyrant has made our generation understand that to choose one's government is not necessarily to secure freedom.

Friedrich August von Hayek

Our faith in freedom does not rest on the foreseeable results in particular circumstances, but on the belief that it will, on balance, release more forces for the good than for the bad ... Freedom granted only when it is known beforehand that its effects will be beneficial is not freedom.

Friedrich August von Hayek

It is because freedom means the renunciation of direct control of individual efforts that a free society can make use of so much more knowledge than the mind of the wisest ruler could comprehend.

Friedrich August von Hayek

Freedom can be preserved only if it is treated as a supreme principle which must not be sacrificed for particular advantages.

Friedrich August von Hayek

I am certain, however, that nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice.

Friedrich Schiller

Whatever is not forbidden is permitted.

Friedrich Schiller

Man is created free, and is free, even though born in chains.

Friedrich Schiller

The voice of the majority is no proof of justice.

Friedrich Schiller

Freedom exists only with power.

Henry A. Kissinger

Military men are just dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy.

Henry Campbell-Bannerman

Good government could never be a substitute for government by the people themselves.

Henry David Thoreau

The law will never make a man free; it is men who have got to make the law free.

Henry David Thoreau

That government is best which governs least.

Henry David Thoreau

Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.

Henry David Thoreau

I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad.

Henry David Thoreau

Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.

Malcolm X

After you get your freedom, your enemy will respect you.