Famous Quotes & Sayings

James Anthony Froude

To deny the freedom of the will is to make morality impossible.

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.

Patricia Briggs

You can't cage an eagle for long without destroying it.

Pablo Casals

We are not free to walk on our neighbor's toes.

Plato

Of all the Gods, Love is the best friend of humankind, the helper and healer of all ills that stand in the way of human happiness.

Plato

Freedom in a democracy is the glory of the state, and, therefore, in a democracy only will the freeman of nature deign to dwell.

Philip Wylie

If liberty has any meaning it means freedom to improve.

Philip Larkin

No one can tear your thread out of himself. No one can tie you down or set you free.

Philip Larkin

... everyone young going down the long slide To happiness, endlessly.

Lech Walesa

Freedom may be the soul of humanity, but often you have to struggle to prove it.

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.