Browse through our collection of quotes tagged with Liberty.
Political liberty is to be found only in moderate governments.
Charles Montesquieu
All persons shall have full and free liberty of religious opinion; nor shall any be compelled to frequent or maintain any religious institution.
Thomas Jefferson
The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave.
It is not true that democracy will always safeguard freedom of conscience better than autocracy. Witness the most famous of all trials. Pilate was, from the standpoint of the Jews, certainly the representative of autocracy. Yet he tried to protect freedom. And he yielded to a democracy.
Joseph Schumpeter
Liberty doesn't work as well in practice as it does in speeches.
Will Rogers
Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.
Henry David Thoreau
If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
George Orwell
Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice can not sleep forever: that considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation is among possible events: that it may become probable by supernatural interference!
No nation ancient or modern ever lost the liberty of freely speaking, writing, or publishing their sentiments, but forthwith lost their liberty in general and became slaves.
John P. Zenger
All men have equal rights to liberty, to their property, and to the protection of the laws
Voltaire
The risks of liberty we must let everyone take; but the risks of ignorance and self-helplessness are another matter.
George Bernard Shaw
Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty.
Plato
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
I would rather not be a king than to forfeit my liberty.
Phaedrus
Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.
Benjamin Franklin
We recall the joy and excitement of a nation that had found itself, the collective relief that we had stepped out of our restrictive past, and the expectant air of walking into a brighter future.(Recalling the atmosphere at what he called the ceremonial birth of South African democracy.)
Nelson Mandela, National Geograp
The liberty of the individual is no gift of civilization. It was greatest before there was any civilization.
Sigmund Freud
The right to be heard does not autmatically include the right to be taken seriously.
Hubert Humphrey
If liberty has any meaning it means freedom to improve.
Philip Wylie
It has long been a grave question whether any government, not too strong for the liberties of its people, can be strong enough to maintain its existence in great emergencies
Abraham Lincoln
