Speaking Freely
Quotes on Rights and Liberty #33
Chief Justice John Jay • 1745–1829
“It is much to be wished that slavery may be abolished. The honour of the States, as well as justice and humanity, in my opinion, loudly call upon them to emancipate these unhappy people. To contend for our own liberty, and to deny that blessing to others, involves an inconsistency not to be excused.”
Prof. Barry Adams • 1952 —
“Capitalism laid the groundwork for voluntary relationships based on personal preference, the precondition for ‘romantic love.’ Capitalism did not cause romantic love, it allowed it to flourish.”
Moorfield Storey • 1845–1929
“It is not success to fight on the winning side. It is success to fight bravely for a principle even if one does not live to see it triumph.”
Muriel Spark • 1918–2006
“Every communist has a fascist frown, every fascist a communist smile.”
Voltaire • 1694–1778
“So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.”
Thomas Szasz • 1920–2012
“Coercive measures aimed at reducing diversity of opinion or action, whether in the sexual or the intellectual sphere, are destined to constrict society and thus the human personality.”
Robert Ingersoll • 1833–1899
“Let each man enjoy his liberty to the utmost — enjoy all he can; but be sure it is not at the expense of another.”
Rudyard Kipling • 1865–1936
“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you’ll be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky • 1821–1881
“The more incompetent one feels, the more eager he is to fight.”
Robert Nisbet • 1913–1996
“Religious ideologies and their fanaticisms are dangerous enough, but when these or other ideologies become frenzied elements of the political area… they become potentially dangerous in their impact on a free society.”
𝐅𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐝𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐡 𝐯𝐨𝐧 𝐒𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐫 • 𝟏𝟕𝟓𝟗 — 𝟏𝟖𝟎𝟓
“The first law of decency is to preserve the liberty of others, the second is to demonstrate one’s own freedom.”
Anaïs Nin • 1903–1997
“There is not one big cosmic meaning for all; there is only the meaning we each give to our life, an individual meaning, an individual plot, like an individual novel, a book for each person.”
Isaiah Berlin • 1909–1997
“Those who have ever valued liberty for its own sake believed that to be free to choose, and not to be chosen for, is an unalienable ingredient in what makes human beings human.”
Martin Luther King, Jr. • 1929–1968
“He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetuate it.”
Hannah Arendt • 1906–1975
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction … and the distinction between true and false … no longer exist.”
Benjamin Franklin • 1706–1790
“When princes make war by prohibiting commerce, each may hurt himself as much as his enemy.”
Downton Abbey • Dr. Richard Clarkson
“Harsh reality is always better than false hope.”
Charles Bradlaugh • 1833–1891
“Without free speech no search for truth is possible… no discovery of truth is useful. Better a thousand fold abuse of free speech than denial of free speech. The abuse dies in a day, but the denial slays the life of the people.”
Václav Havel • 1936–2011
“Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually and indirectly, over time, gain in political significance.”
𝐀𝐥𝐞𝐱𝐢𝐬 𝐝𝐞 𝐓𝐨𝐜𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐞 • 𝟏𝟕𝟓𝟒 — 𝟏𝟖𝟑𝟔
“Men will not accept truth at the hands of their enemies, and truth is seldom offered to them by their friends.”
Mark Twain • 1835–1910
“Now what I contend is that my body is my own, at least I have always so regarded it. If I do harm through my experimenting with it, it is I who suffer, not the state.”
Henry Miller • 1891–1980
“It is the American vice, the democratic disease which expresses its tyranny by reducing everything unique to the level of the herd.”
Émile Zola • 1840–1902
“I shall tell the truth because I pledged myself to tell it if justice regularly empowered did not do so fully, unmitigated. My duty is to speak; I have no wish to be an accomplice.”
Wendell Phillips • 1811–1884
“Governments exist to protect the rights of minorities. The loved and the rich need no protection: they have many friends and few enemies.”
Isaac Asimov • 1920–1992
“So the universe is not quite as you thought it was. You’d better rearrange your beliefs, then. Because you certainly can’t rearrange the universe.”
Albert Einstein • 1879–1955
“Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices, but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence and fulfills the duty to express the results of his thought in clear form.”
Rev. John Leland • 1754–1841
“The work of the legislature is to make laws for the security of life, liberty and property, and leave religion to the consciences of individuals.”
Thomas Molnar • 1921–2010
“Utopians… consider individual freedom as the stumbling block on which the grandiose idea of mankind’s totalization may flounder.”
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