Liberty Quotes

I hope you find great value in these Quotes about Liberty from my large collection of inspirational quotes and motivational sayings.

Free will is not the liberty to do whatever one likes,
but the power of doing whatever one sees ought to be done,
even in the very face of otherwise overwhelming impulse.
There lies freedom, indeed.
- Anonymous

He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that.
- John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859)

Those who won our independence...
valued liberty as an end and as a means.
They believed liberty to be the secret of happiness
and courage to be the secret of liberty.
- Louis D. Brandeis

Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
- Edward Everett

In every country and every age,
the priest had been hostile to Liberty.
- Thomas Jefferson

Educate and inform the whole mass of the people ...
They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.
- Thomas Jefferson

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time
with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
- Thomas Jefferson

When the people fear their government, there is tyranny;
when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
- Thomas Jefferson

True justice is not a matter of courts and law books,
but of a commitment in each of us to liberty and mutual respect.
- Jimmy Carter

The slavery of fear had made men afraid to think.
But such is the irresistible nature of truth,
that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing.
- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, 1791

Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty.
The obedient must be slaves.
- Henry David Thoreau

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

We are not to expect to be translated from
despotism to liberty in a featherbed.
- Thomas Jefferson

Toleration and liberty are the foundations of a great republic.
- Frank Lloyd Wright

The natural progress of things is for liberty
to yield and government to gain ground.
- 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 god who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time:
the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them.
- Thomas Jefferson

Fourscore and seven years ago
our fathers brought forth on this continent,
a new nation, conceived in Liberty,
and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
- Abraham Lincoln

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

To deprive a man of his natural liberty
and to deny to him the ordinary amenities of life
is worse then starving the body;
it is starvation of the soul, the dweller in the body.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill,
that we shall pay any price, bear any burden,
meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe
to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
- John F. Kennedy

For this generation, ours, life is nuclear survival,
liberty is human rights, the pursuit of happiness
is a planet whose resources are devoted
to the physical and spiritual nourishment of its inhabitants.
- Jimmy Carter

We hold these truths to be self-evident:
that all men are created equal;
that they are endowed by their Creator
with certain unalienable rights;
that among these are life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness.
- Thomas Jefferson

America and Israel share a special bond.
Our relationship is unique among all nations.
Like America, Israel is a strong democracy,
a symbol of freedom, and an oasis of liberty,
a home to the oppressed and persecuted.
- William J. Clinton

Liberty is to the collective body,
what health is to every individual body.
Without health no pleasure can be tasted by man;
without liberty, no happiness can be enjoyed by society.
- Thomas Jefferson

What difference does it make to the dead,
the orphans, and the homeless,
whether the mad destruction is wrought
under the name of totalitarianism
or the holy name of liberty or democracy?
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will
within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others.
I do not add "within the limits of the law"
because law is often but the tyrant's will,
and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.
- Thomas Jefferson

Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit
which prizes liberty as a heritage of all men,
in all lands, everywhere.
Destroy this spirit and you have planted
the seeds of despotism around your own doors.
- Abraham Lincoln

The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat,
for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as a liberator,
while the wolf denounces him for the same act
as the destroyer of liberty,
especially as the sheep was a black one.
Plainly the sheep and the wolf are not agreed
upon a definition of the word liberty;
and precisely the same difference
prevails today among us human creatures
- Abraham Lincoln

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
- inscribed on the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor

This [the Holocaust] must never happen again. ...
Be vigilant about your rights.
Care about the rights and human dignity of others.
When the rights of any group, no matter how small,
no matter how marginal, are violated,
your liberty, your freedom is put at risk.
Let there never be a day when we cast about in horror
and have to ask the question, "How did it ever come to this?"
- Thomas Childers, Ph.D., Professor of History,
University of Pennsylvania, in the closing remarks
of his six-hour Teaching Company audio lecture series

Don't interfere with anything in the Constitution.
That must be maintained, for it is
the only safeguard of our liberties.
- Abraham Lincoln

We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence,
whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.
The potential for the disastrous rise
of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination
endanger our liberties or democratic processes.
We should take nothing for granted.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower in his Farewell Address of January, 17 1961

I'm actually starting to like more and more people
who have convictions that are unpopular.
Now at what point does an unpopular conviction
interfere with your own human rights?
Forced female circumcision, for instance.
The Catholic Church's stance on contraception.
The list goes on. You know, God has some really weird kids,
and I find it hard to be in their company most of the time.
- Bono

You will not be punished for your anger,
you will be punished by your anger.
- The Buddha

"Just living is not enough," said the butterfly,
"one must have sunshine, freedom and a little flower."
- Hans Christian Andersen

Lord, grant that I might not so much
seek to be loved as to love.
- St. Francis of Assisi

The beauty does not live out there;
the beauty's in my eyes.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Love one another but make not a bond of love.
Let it rather be a moving sea
between the shores of your souls.
- Khalil Gibran

To know yet to think that one does not know is best;
Not to know yet to think that one knows
will lead to difficulty.
- Lao Tzu

The world is perfect. It's a mess.
It has always been a mess.
We are not going to change it.
Our job is to straighten out our own lives.
- Joseph Campbell

The essence of life is not in
the great victories and grand failures,
but in the simple joys.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The true meaning of life is to plant trees,
under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
- Nelson Henderson

The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.
- Rabindranath Tagore

I am not afraid of storms
for I am learning how to sail my ship.
- Louisa May Alcott

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our Light, not our Darkness, that most frightens us.
- Marianne Williamson

Every child comes with the message
that God is not yet discouraged of man.
- Rabindranath Tagore

Self-respect is not a function of size, age, or wealth.
Breathe deep, sing loud and sweet,
"I am me, I am unique, I am magnificent."
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Treat those who are good with goodness,
and also treat those who are not good with goodness.
Thus goodness is attained.
Be honest to those who are honest,
and be also honest to those who are not honest.
Thus honesty is attained.
- Lao Tzu

The wise man in the storm prays God,
not for safety from danger,
but for deliverance from fear.
It is the storm within which endangers him,
not the storm without.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is not the easy or convenient life
for which I search,
but life lived to the edge
of all that I may be.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

Do not allow obligation or immediacy to
bind you to physical things or specific actions.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

The possession of knowledge does not
kill the sense of wonder and mystery.
There is always more mystery.
- Anais Nin

The wise man does not lay up his own treasures.
The more he gives to others, the more he has for his own.
- Lao Tzu

Imagine all the people living life in peace.
You may say I'm a dreamer,
but I'm not the only one.
I hope someday you'll join us,
and the world will be as one.
- John Lennon

One does not discover new lands without consenting
to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.
- Andre Gide

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May the world be kind to you,
and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

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