Famous Quotes & Sayings

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

William James

Only necessity understood, and bondage to the highest is identical with true freedom.

William James

Old-fashioned determinism was what we may call hard determinism. It did not shrink from such words as fatality, bondage of the will, necessitation, and the like. Nowadays, we have a soft determinism which abhors harsh words, and, repudiating fatality, necessity, and even predetermination, says that its real name is freedom; for freedom is only necessity understood, and bondage to the highest is identical with true freedom.

Will Durant

We are living in the excesses of freedom. Just take a look at 42nd Street and Broadway.

Sarah Addison Allen

I needed to stop being what everyone thought I was.

William Ellery Channing

The only freedom worth possessing is that which gives enlargement to a people's energy, intellect, and virtues.

William Ellery Channing

Progress, the growth of power, is the end and boon of liberty; and, without this, a people may have the name, but want the substance and spirit of freedom.

William Ellery Channing

Knowledge is essential to freedom.

William F. Buckley, Jr.

The best defense against usurpatory government is an assertive citizenry.

Ronald Reagan

Law and freedom must be indivisible partners. For without law, there can be no freedom, only choas and disorder; and without freedom, law is but a cynical veneer for injustice and oppression.

Ronald Reagan

. . . I hope that when you're my age, you'll be able to say as I have been able to say: We lived in freedom, we lived lives that were a statement, not an apology.

Ronald Reagan

We've been blessed with the opportunity to stand for something - for liberty and freedom and fairness. And these are things worth fighting for, worth devoting our lives to.

Ronald Reagan

Once people who have been deprived of basic freedom taste a little of it, they want all of it.

Ronald Reagan

If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth.

Ronald Reagan

But in the West today, we see a free world that has achieved a level of prosperity and well-being unprecedented in all human history. In the Communist world, we see failure, technological backwardness, declining standards of health, even want of the most basic kind - too little food. Even today, the Soviet Union still cannot feed itself. After these four decades, then, there stands before the entire world one great and inescapable conclusion: Freedom leads to prosperity. Freedom replaces the ancient hatreds among the nations with comity and peace. Freedom is the victor.

Ronald Reagan

Government is not a solution to our problem government is the problem.

Ronald Reagan

If there's one observation that rings true in today's changing world, it is that freedom and peace go hand in hand.

Ronald Reagan

Two Soviets . . . were talking to each other. And one of them asked, "What's the difference between the Soviet Constitution and the United States Constitution?" And the other one said, "That's easy. The Soviet Constitution guarantees freedom of speech and freedom of gathering. The American Constitution guarantees freedom after speech and freedom after gathering."