Freedom Quotes

These are simply quotes I like and wish to share. I can't be certain about their accuracy or correct attribution. I welcome corrections. They are not copyrighted by me.

Ronald Reagan:
Above all, we must realize that no arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today's world do not have.

Booker T. Washington, author and former slave:
I have long since ceased to cherish any spirit of bitterness against the Southern white people on account of the enslavement of my race. No one section of our country was wholly responsible for its introduction; Having once got its tentacles fastened on to the economic and social life of the Republic, it was no easy matter for the country to relieve itself of the institution. Then, when we rid ourselves of prejudice, or racial feeling, and look facts in the face, we must acknowledge that, notwithstanding the cruelty and moral wrong of slavery, the ten million Negroes inhabiting this country, who themselves or whose ancestors went through the school of American slavery, are in a stronger and more hopeful condition, materially, intellectually, morally, and religiously, than is true of an equal number of black people in any other portion of the globe. ...This I say, not to justify slavery; on the other hand, I condemn it as an institution, as we all know that in America it was established for selfish and financial reasons, and not from a missionary motive;but to call attention to a fact, and to show how Providence so often uses men and institutions to accomplish a purpose. When persons ask me in these days how, in the midst of what sometimes seem hopelessly discouraging conditions, I can have such faith in the future of my race in this country, I remind them of the wilderness through which and out of which, a good Providence has already led us.

George Washington, 1796:
Born sir, in a land of liberty, having early learned its value, having engaged in a perilous conflict to defend it, having, in a word, devoted the best years of my life to secure its permanent establishment in my own country, my anxious recollections, my sympathetic feelings, and my best wishes are irresistibly excited whensoever, in any country, I see an oppressed nation unfurl the banners of freedom.”

Abraham Lincoln:
We, the people, are the rightful masters of both congress and the courts - not to overthrow the constitution, but to overthrow men who pervert the constitution. [There are those who would charge, with sound basis, that Lincoln himself was one of them. AWM]

Oriana Fallaci:
I do not believe in vile acquittals, phony appeasements, easy forgiveness. Even less, in the exploitation or the blackmail of the word Peace. When peace stands for surrender, fear, loss of dignity and freedom, it is no longer peace. It is suicide.

Richard Rumbold (1622-1685. From the Speech on the Scaffold, just before a king executed him):
I may say this is a deluded generation, veiled with ignorance, that tho popery and slavery be riding in upon them, do not perceive it; tho I am sure there was no man born marked of God above another, for none comes into the world with a saddle on his back, neither any booted and spurred to ride him.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy:
The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender, or submission.

Cicero 106-43 BC:
The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.

 Samuel Adams:
“If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.”

Thomas Paine:
It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry.

Daniel Webster, Jun. 17, 1825:
God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to guard and defend it.

Alexandre Dumas:
I prefer the wicked rather than the foolish. The wicked sometimes rest.

Thomas Jefferson:
"The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers"

Peter Hitchens:
Their minds are fixed on the knives. We must have more searches, more bans, 'tougher' penalties (we all know what happens to those). They refuse to consider that this is a matter of the human heart. You need to be immoral to be able to stab another person. A person properly schooled in right and wrong is safe with any weapon. A person with no idea of good and evil is unsafe with a knitting needle, or the cap from a ballpoint pen. The prisons are full of home-made weapons constructed, with the aid of evil intent, from the most innocent things. Do they seriously propose to ban knives, to force us to eat with plastic cutlery at home? On this dim logic, it can't be long before kitchen shops are forbidden to sell knives without demanding background checks.

Herbert Spencer:
The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Marshall:
An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy; because there is a limit beyond which no institution and no property can bear taxation.

Teddy Roosevelt, The Man In The Arena Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, France, April 23, 1910:
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

Ayn Rand:
The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.

Jeb Bush:
Government is basically a parasite, and if the host doesn't grow, then government suffers.

French novelist Anatole François (1844 - 1924):
If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.

Mark Twain:
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear.

Lyndon Johnson:
You do not examine legislation in light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered.

Robert Heinlein:
Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms.

Robert Heinlein:
An armed society is a polite society.

Robert Heinlein:
"Reason is poor propaganda when opposed by the yammering, unceasing lies of shrewd and evil and self-serving men."

Judge Alex Kozinski, 9th Cir. Ct. of Appeals:

"The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed -- where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once."

Alex Kozinski, a federal appeals judge and an immigrant from Eastern Europe, warned in 2003, "the simple truth -- born of experience -- is that tyranny thrives best where government need not fear the wrath of an armed people."

James Earl Jones:
The world is filled with violence. Because criminals carry guns, we decent law-abiding citizens should also have guns. Otherwise they will win and the decent people will lose.

Mahatma Gandhi:
"Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest." (Autobiography, by M.K. Gandhi, p.446)

George Orwell, the author of Animal Farm and 1984, himself a socialist:
"That rifle on the wall of the labourer’s cottage or working class flat is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there."

George Orwell:
People sleep peacably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.

Senator Hubert H. Humphrey (D-MN):
"The right of citizens to bear arms is just one guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard against the tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible."

"No kingdom can be secured otherwise than by arming the people. The possession of arms is the distinction between a freeman and a slave. He, who has nothing, and who himself belongs to another, must be defended by him, whose property he is, and needs no arms. But he, who thinks he is his own master, and has what he can call his own, ought to have arms to defend himself, and what he possesses; else he lives precariously, and at discretion." James Burgh (Political Disquisitions: Or, an Enquiry into Public Errors, Defects, and Abuses) [London, 1774-1775]

Thomas Paine:
"The supposed quietude of a good man allures the ruffian; while on the other hand, arms, like laws, discourage and keep the invader and the plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property. The same balance would be preserved were all the world destitute of arms, for all would be alike; but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside...Horrid mischief would ensue were one half the world deprived of the use of them..."

Rep. Suzanna Gratia Hupp of Texas:
"How a politician stands on the Second Amendment tells you how he or she views you as an individual: as a trustworthy and productive citizen, or as part of an unruly crowd that needs to be lorded over, controlled, supervised, and taken care of."

Hubert H. Humphrey:
"There are not enough jails, not enough policemen, not enough courts to enforce a law not supported by the people."

Thomas Jefferson, Gerald Ford, or Ronald Reagan?
A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take everything you have.

the Koran:
Whatever good there is exists thanks to the sword and in the shadow of the sword!

Zell Miller:
"Never in the history of the world has any soldier sacrificed more for the freedom and liberty of total strangers than the American soldier. And, our soldiers don't just give freedom abroad, they preserve it for us here at home. For it has been said so truthfully that it is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us the freedom of the press. It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech. It is the soldier, not the agitator, who has given us the freedom to protest. It is the soldier who salutes the flag, serves beneath the flag, whose coffin is draped by the flag, who gives that protester the freedom to abuse and burn that flag. No one should dare to even think about being the Commander in Chief of this country if he doesn't believe with all his heart that our soldiers are liberators abroad and defenders of freedom at home."

Peggy Noonan:
"I do not think a lot of modern conservatives have taken on their philosophy because they were brought up in it, schooled in it, and swallowed it whole. And I don't think a lot of them became conservatives because they read a book by Hayek or Adam Smith and thought, 'Ah ha, this seems sound!' I think a lot of people in our time who have become conservatives did it because they had a certain and particular kind of mind. To choose just one facet, they have a natural respect and even sometimes love toward human beings, while at the same time having no illusions -- none -- about who we are. Man is not perfect and is not perfectible, at least by other men. We are what we are; God made us and gave us freedom; we use it to ill and good; man best operates through certain arrangements and traditions, and those arrangements and traditions are best animated by respect for the individual and love of liberty."

"Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est" ("A sword is never a killer, it's a tool in the killer's hands") Lucius Annaeus Seneca "the younger" ca. (4 BC - 65 AD)

ELEANOR ROOSEVELT:
The war for freedom will never really be won because the price of freedom is constant vigilance over ourselves and over our Government.

DOUGLAS JERROLD:
We love peace, but not peace at any price. There is a peace more destructive of the manhood of living man, than war is destructive of his body. Chains are worse than bayonets.

THOMAS JEFFERSON:
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable that I wish it always to be kept alive.

Eric Hoffer:
People whose lives are barren and insecure seem to show a greater willingness to obey than people who are self-sufficient and self-confident. To the frustrated, freedom from responsibility is more attractive than freedom from restraint.

SAMUEL BUTLER:
Self-preservation is the first law of nature.

FREDERIC BASTIAT:
Each of us has a natural right, from God, to defend his person, his liberty, and his property.

mohandes gandhi:
The society which is the most free is the one which is most heavily armed.

Massad Ayoob:
[Israel decided to deal with terrorist attacks on schools by allowing teachers and volunteer guards to carry concealed weapons, a decision that ended the deadly attacks.]
"Of course, the politically correct hand-wringers want nothing to do with this. Sadly, being helpless themselves, sheep tend to instinctively fear anything with canine teeth. Many of them cannot distinguish between the wolf and the sheepdog, and thus fear them both equally."

Jeff Cooper:
"One bleeding-heart type asked me in a recent interview if I did not agree that 'violence begets violence.' I told him that it is my earnest endeavor to see that it does. I would like very much to ensure- and in some cases I have- that any man who offers violence to his fellow citizen begets a whole lot more in return than he can enjoy."

FDR
"Those who have long enjoyed such privileges as we enjoy forget in time that men have died to win them".

Ted Nugent:
"To my mind it is wholly irresponsible to go into the world incapable of preventing volence, injury, crime, and death. How feeble is the mindset to accept defenselessness. How unnatural. How cheap. How cowardly. How pathetic."

John Stuart Mill:
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

Edmund Burke:
"All that is needed for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing"

"What is wrong does not become right because many people say it"
-- Salima Kazim, a 78 year old Iraqi grandmother, whos three sons had been murdered by Saddam Hussein because they had been dissidents in the Baath Party; and one of her grandsons had died in the war Saddam had launched against Kuwait in 1990, spoken at a London "peace" rally

Margaret Thatcher:
"Individualism has come in for an enormous amount of criticism over the years. It still does. It is widely assumed to be synonymous with selfishness...But the main reason why so many people in power have always disliked individualism is because it is individualists who are ever keenest to prevent the abuse of authority."

Margaret Thatcher:
"Yet the basic fact remains: every regulation represents a restriction of liberty, every regulation has a cost. That is why, like marriage (in the Prayer Book's words),regulation should not 'be enterprised, nor taken in hand, unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly'."

Margaret Thatcher:
"To be free is better than to be unfree - always. Any politician who suggests the opposite should be treated as suspect."

False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for one imaginary or trifling inconvenience; that would take fire from men because it burns, and water because one may drown in it; that it has no remedy for evils, except destruction. The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are of such a nature. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man. (Beccaria, ON CRIME AND PUNISHMENT 87-88, cited from Thomas Jefferson, COMMON PLACE BOOK 314)

Susan B. Anthony, July 1871:
"Women must not depend upon the protection of man, but must be taught to protect herself."

Niccolo Machiavelli:
"You must, therefore know that there are two means of fighting: one according to the laws, the other with force; the first way is proper to man, the second to beasts; but because the first, in many cases, is not sufficient, it becomes necessary to have recourse to the second."

Niccolo Machiavelli:
Before all else, be armed.

P.J. O'Rourke:
"Freedom is not empowerment. Empowerment is what the Serbs have in Bosnia. Anybody can grab a gun and be empowered. It's not entitlement. An entitlement is what people on welfare get, and how free are they? It's not an endlessly expanding list of rights - the "right" to education, the "right" to food and housing. That's not freedom, that's dependency. Those aren't rights, those are the rations of slavery - hay and a barn for human cattle. There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences."

Patrick Henry, 1775:
"It is in vain, Sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace! But there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the North will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that Gentlemen want? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"

James Otis, 1761:
"One of the most essential branches of English liberty is the freedom of one's house. A man's house is his castle."

Winston Churchill:
"One ought never to turn one's back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never!"

Winston Churchill:
"You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life."

Winston Churchill:
"If you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves."

Pericles (430 B.C.):
Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you.

Joseph Sobran (1995):
If you want government to intervene domestically, you're a liberal. If you want government to intervene overseas, you're a conservative. If you want government to intervene everywhere, you're a moderate. If you don't want government to intervene anywhere, you're an extremist.

Patrick Henry:
"Are we at last brought to such a humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our own defense?"

Thomas Jefferson:
"The strongest reason for people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government."

C.S. Lewis:
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

Adlai E. Stevenson, Jr.:
"Patriotism is not a short and frenzied outburst of emotion but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime."

"False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for one imaginary or trifling inconvenience; that would take fire from men because it burns, and water because one may drown in it; that has no remedy for evils except destruction. The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crime." - Cesare Beccaria, quoted by Thomas Jefferson

Patrick Henry:
"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined."

Benjamin Franklin, 1759 (James Bovard, 1994?):
"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote."

The congress of the United States possesses no power to regulate, or interfere with the domestic concerns, or police of any state: it belongs not to them to establish any rules respecting the rights of property; nor will the constitution permit any prohibition of arms to the people; or of peaceable assemblies by them, for any purposes whatsoever, and in any number, whenever they may see occasion.
- ST. GEORGE TUCKER'S BLACKSTONE

Tench Coxe, of Pennsylvania, The Pennsylvania Gazette, Feb. 20, 1788:
"Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birthright of an American. The unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state government, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people."

Laqueur:
"As force was the law of the universe, dynamite made all men equal and therefore free."

The Dalai Lama, (May 15, 2001, The Seattle Times):
"If someone has a gun and is trying to kill you, it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun."speaking at the "Educating Heart Summit" in Portland, Oregon, when asked by a girl how to react when a shooter takes aim at a classmate

Julius Caesar:
"Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar."

Benjamin Franklin, 1759:

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

William Pitt, British Member of Parliament, 1783:
'Necessity' is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.

Voltaire:
It's dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.

Bill O’Connor:
Good judgment comes from experience. Most experience comes from bad judgment.

From the other side:

Joseph Goebbels:
If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.

Soviet Leader Nikita Khrushchev, 1959:
We cannot expect the Americans to jump from capitalism to Communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving Americans small doses of socialism until they suddenly awake to find they have Communism.

Norman Thomas, U.S. Socialist Party, Presidential candidate 1940:
The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But, under the name of ‘liberalism,’ they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.

Sammy "The Bull" Gravano, Mafia hit man:
"Gun control? It’s the best thing you can do for crooks and gangsters. I want you to have nothing. If I’m a bad guy, I’m always gonna have a gun. Safety locks? You’ll pull the trigger with a lock on, and I’ll pull the trigger. We’ll see who wins."

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin:
A system of licensing and registration is the perfect device to deny gun ownership to the bourgeoisie.

Adolf Hitler:
"The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed the subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the supply of arms to the underdogs is a sine qua non for the overthrow of any sovereignty."
(H.R. Trevor-Roper, Hitler’s Table Talks 1941-1944)