Danger to Liberty

“The greatest danger to liberty today comes from the men who are most needed and most powerful in modern government, namely, the efficient expert administrators exclusively concerned with what they regard as the public good.”
--Friedrich August von Hayek

Right Side of History

“The people on the ‘right side of history’ are usually fighting for freedom and liberty, not censorship and reeducation.”
--Unknown

Make Your Liberty Secure

“He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from opposition; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.”
--Thomas Paine

Legislative Restraint

“The idea of restraining the legislative authority, in the means for providing for the national defense, is one of those refinements, which owe their origin to a zeal for liberty more ardent than enlightened.”
--Alexander Hamilton

Liberty Takes Root

“Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth. The checks he endeavors to give it, however warrantable by ancient usage, will, more than probably, kindle a flame which may not easily be extinguished.”
--George Washington

Die to Preserve

“I would die to preserve the law upon a solid foundation; but take away liberty, and the foundation is destroyed.”
--Alexander Hamilton

Liberty Lost

“Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.”
--John Adams

Fate of the Indolent

“It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance.”
--John Philpot Curran

Calls for Unity

“How hypocritical are the calls for a unity that is a mask for the suppression of all opposition, how fatally lying or wrong are all beliefs that liberty is the peculiar attribute of any single individual or group, prince or democrat, nobles or people or multitude.”
--James Burnham

Liberty's Duty

“Liberty is not the power of doing what we like, but the right of being able to do what we ought.“
--Lord Acton

Success of Liberty

“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

Want to Punish

“An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws.”
--Thomas Paine

Political Freedom

“There is no political freedom that is not indissolubly bound to the inner personal freedom of the individuals who make up that nation: no liberty of a nation of conformists, no free nation made up of robots.”
--Rollo May

Guardian of Liberty

“The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty.”
--James Madison

Too Much Liberty

“I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.”
--Thomas Jefferson

Protect Liberty

“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

Tumult of Liberty

“I prefer the tumult of liberty to the quiet of servitude.”
--Thomas Jefferson

Privilege of Thinking

“When men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon.”
--Thomas Paine

Separate Liberty and Justice

“Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.”
--Edmund Burke

Liberty Come From

“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. The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it.”
--Woodrow Wilson