Famous Quotes & Sayings

Thomas Jefferson

[Oppose] with manly firmness [any] invasions on the rights of the people.

Thomas Jefferson

Take not from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.

Thomas Jefferson

It is the old practice of despots to use a part of the people to keep the rest in order.

Thomas Jefferson

My God! How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy!

Thomas Jefferson

Freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of person under protection of habeas corpus; and trial by juries impartially selected, these principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us, and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation.

Thomas Jefferson

The majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society.

Thomas Jefferson

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.

Thomas Jefferson

When the representative body have lost the confidence of their constituents, when they have notoriously made sale of their most valuable rights, when they have assumed to themselves powers which the people never put into their hands, then indeed their continuing in office becomes dangerous to the state

Thomas Jefferson

All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.

Thomas Jefferson

I will not believe our labors are lost. I shall not die without a hope that light and liberty are on a steady advance.

Thomas Jefferson

That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.

Thomas Jefferson

Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.

Thomas Jefferson

The only security of all is in a free press.

Thomas Jefferson

Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.

Thomas Jefferson

It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.

Thomas Jefferson

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

Thomas Jefferson

The constitutional freedom of religion is the most inalienable and sacred of all human rights

Thomas Jefferson

To consider judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions is a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy.

Taylor Caldwell

The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.

Tacitus

Such being the happiness of the times, that you may think as you wish, and speak as you think.

Rollo May

It requires greater courage to preserve inner freedom, to move on in one's inward journey into new realms, than to stand defiantly for outer freedom. It is often easier to play the martyr, as it is to be rash in battle.

Soren Kierkegaard

How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.

Soren Kierkegaard

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.

Thomas B. Macaulay

As freedom is the only safeguard of governments, so are order and moderation generally necessary to preserve freedom.

Thomas B. Macaulay

I have long been convinced that institutions purely democratic must, sooner or later, destroy liberty or civilization, or both.

Thomas B. Macaulay

Many politicians are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim.

Thomas Hobbes

Unnecessary laws are not good laws, but traps for money.

Tim Berners-Lee

Freedom of connection with any application to any party is the fundamental social basis of the internet. And now, is the basis of the society built on the internet.

Tim Berners-Lee

It's time to recognise the Internet as a basic human right, that means guaranteeing affordable access for all, ensuring Internet packets are delivered without commercial or political discrimination, and protecting the privacy and freedom of Web users regardless of where they live.

Thomas Jefferson

But the fact being once established, that the press is impotent when it abandons itself to falsehood, I leave to others to restore it to its strength, by recalling it within the pale of truth. Within that, it is a noble institution, equally the friend of science and of civil liberty.

William Wordsworth

We must be free or die, who speak the tongue That Shakespeare spake; the faith and morals hold Which Milton held.

William Shenstone

What some people term Freedom is nothing else than a liberty of saying and doing disagreeable things. It is but carrying the notion a little higher, and it would require us to break and have a head broken reciprocally without offense.

William J. Clinton

Sometimes I think the environment in which we operate is entirely too secular. The fact that we have freedom of religion doesn't mean we need to try to have freedom from religion