Browse through our collection of quotes tagged with Liberty.
Without Thomas Jefferson and his Declaration of Independence, there would have been no American revolution that announced universal principles of liberty. Without his participation by the side of the unforgettable Marquis de Lafayette, there would have been no French proclamation of The Rights of Man. Without his brilliant negotiation of the Louisiana treaty, there would be no United States of America. Without Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, there would have been no Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom, and no basis for the most precious clause of our most prized element of our imperishable Bill of Rights - the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Christopher Hitchens
Under the law of nature, all men are born free, every one comes into the world with a right to his own person, which includes the liberty of moving and using it at his own will. This is what is called personal liberty, and is given him by the Author
Thomas Jefferson
The basis of a democratic state is liberty.
Aristotle
It is an axiom in my mind, that our liberty can never be safe but in the hands of the people themselves, and that too of the people with a certain degree of instruction. This it is the business of the State to effect, and on a general plan.
Irreverence is the champion of liberty and its one sure defense.
Mark Twain
We must remember that a right lost to one is lost to all.
William Reece Smith, Jr.
A nation which expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, expects that which never was and never will be.
Liberty is the only thing you cannot have unless you are willing to give it to others.
William Allen White
Liberty has no crueler enemy than license.
Proverb
Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers.The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.
Louis D. Brandeis, Olmstead vs.
Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?
Henry David Thoreau
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
Emma Lazarus, The New Colossus
Experience hath shown, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.
A well governed appetite is the greater part of liberty.
Seneca (Seneca the Elder)
The approach of liberty makes even an old man brave.
He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.
Thomas Paine
I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geograhy, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.
John Adams, Letter to Abigail Ad
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive.
One's liberty should end when it becomes the curse of his neighbor.
Frederick Farrar
There can be no liberty that isn't earned.
Robert R. Young
