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Quotes about liberty

136 quotes from 75 people

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Among a people generally corrupt liberty cannot long exist.
Edmund Burke1729–1797Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol (1777)
- Morality
God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to guard and defend it.
Daniel Webster1782–1852Speech (3 June 1834); reported in Edward Everett, ed., The Works of Daniel Webster (1851), volume iv, page 47
The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power.
Daniel Webster1782–1852Speech in the Senate (27 May 1834), on President Andrew Jackson’s protest, The Works of Daniel Webster, 10th edition (1857), Vol. 4, p. 133
- Government
A country cannot subsist well without liberty, nor liberty without virtue.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau1712–1778Often credited to Daniel Webster
- Virtue
If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.
Samuel Adams1722–1803Speech in Philadelphia (1776)
- Freedom
In an atmosphere of liberty, artists and patrons are free to think the unthinkable and create the audacious; they are free to make both horrendous mistakes and glorious celebrations.
Ronald Reagan1911–2004
As government expands, liberty contracts.
Ronald Reagan1911–2004Ronald Reagan’s Farewell Address (1989)
- Government
The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it.
Woodrow Wilson1856–1924Speech at New York Press Club (9 September 1912), in The papers of Woodrow Wilson, 25:124
- Government
Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of the government. The history of liberty is a history of resistance.
Woodrow Wilson1856–1924Speech at New York Press Club (9 September 1912), in The papers of Woodrow Wilson, 25:124
The people are their own liberators.
Nelson Mandela1918–2013
Liberty exists in proportion to wholesome restraint.
Daniel Webster1782–1852Speech at the Charleston Bar Dinner (May 10, 1847); reported in Edward Everett, ed., The Works of Daniel Webster (1851), Vol. II, p. 393
Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.
John Milton1608–1674
Liberty is never out of bounds or off limits; it spreads wherever it can capture the imagination of men.
E. B. White1899–1985
The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on Earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but only to have the law of nature for his rule.
Samuel Adams1722–1803The Rights of the Colonists (1772)
I would rather be exposed to the inconveniencies attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.
Thomas Jefferson1743–1826Letter to Archibald Stuart , Philadelphia (23 December 1791)