c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
The disdain of profit is due to ignorance, and to an attitude that we may if we wish admire in the ascetic who has chosen to be content with a small share of the riches of this world, but which, when actualised in the form of restrictions on profits of others, is selfish to the extent that it imposes asceticism, and indeed deprivations of all sorts, on others.
— Friedrich A. Hayek
He who let's the world, or his own portion of it, choose his plan of life for him, has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation
— John Stuart Mill
Be it remembered, that liberty must at all hazards be supported. We have a right to it, derived from our Maker. But if we have not, our fathers have earned and bought it for us at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasure, and their blood.
— John  Adams
Don't oppress, don't accept to be oppressed and you will live free.
— Auliq Ice
Mai whispers, “Why did she have to leave? When she was there, I knew where I had her; she was safe.”“You of all people,” Nicholas says, “should know that freedom is more important than being safe.
— E.J. Squires, Savage Run
Burke's admonition--"The effect of liberty to individuals is, that they may do what they please: We ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations"--never seems to have occurred to Hayek. The Arnoldian ideal of the disinterested intellectual willing to criticize one side and then the other in order to create balance and counteract the one-sidedness that led toward fanaticism: That, too, was as alien to Hayek as it had been to Marcuse. If it was partisanship that led Hayek to push forward intellectually to new insights, it was also partisanship that kept him from a balanced and rounded philosophy.Perhaps a familiarity with "the best that has been thought and said" about the market will aid us in obtaining a more disinterested and informed perspective. Such a perspective might well begin with Hayek's insights. But it would by no means end with them. p. 387
— Jerry Z. Muller
Mai whispers, “Why did she have to leave? When she was there, I knew where I had her; she was safe.”When she was there? I winder. Who is ‘she’ and where is ‘where?’ I knew where I had her? Who are they talking about? Me? “You of all people,” Nicholas says, “should know that freedom is more important than being safe.
— E.J. Squires, Savage Run
Joy is a right and liberty of non other than me and you who struggled and fought for it and attained it at last.
— Auliq Ice
No state, no government exists. What does in fact exist is a man, or a few men, in power over many men.
— Rose Wilder Lane
Don't let people supervise your life, If you know who you are, you shouldn't be living in that prison of dominance, live by your orders, you are your own soldier.
— Michael Bassey Johnson
Have you ever noticed how statists are constantly “reforming” their own handiwork? Education reform. Health-care reform. Welfare reform. Tax reform. The very fact they’re always busy “reforming” is an implicit admission that they didn’t get it right the first 50 times.
— Lawrence  W. Reed
The internal effects of a mutable policy are still more calamitous. It poisons the blessing of liberty itself. It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed?
— James Madison, The Federalist Papers
Liberation for who does not have a shack and freedom for who does not know how to live is fatal.
— Alireza Salehi Nejad, The Third World: Country or People
Educate your children, educate yourself, in the love for the freedom of others, for only in this way will your own freedom not be a gratuitous gift from fate. You will be aware of its worth and will have the courage to defend it.
— Joaquim Nabuco
Individuals have rights and there are things no person or group may do to them (without violating their rights).
— Robert Nozick
The two things he most valued, which is to say liberty and equality, were not natural allies.
— Christopher Hitchens
They fancied themselves free, and no one will ever be free so long as there are pestilences.
— Albert Camus, The Plague
Since Shakespeare had a feel for revolutionary rhetoric, let’s all cry: “Peace, freedom and liberty!
— Carl William Brown, Aforismi geniali di William Shakespeare.
By offering the educated a semblance of freedom he made the denial of real freedom even more painful and humiliating. The intelligentsia sought to avenge their betrayed hopes; the Tsar strove to tame their restive spirit; and, so, semi-liberal reforms gave way to repression and repression bred rebellion.
— Isaac Deutscher, The Prophet Armed: Trotsky, 1879-1921
But then I grew up, experienced some life, and I understood that when you merely switch from being a prisoner to being a guard, no one is freed, not even yourself.
— Lisa Crystal Carver
If you kill, kidnap & rape your opponents claiming that you're fighting the terrorist that is not exist!Soon it'll be existing as you're sowing it!Miserable Egypt!
— Dr. Muhammad Abdul Mohsin
The champions of liberty have the medal for any necklace. (Les champions de la liberte - Ont la médaille pour tout collier)
— Charles de Leusse
Free and quality education is a fundamental liberty
— Anwar Ibrahim
He who is unfit to serve his fellow citizens wants to rule them.
— Ludwig von Mises, Bureaucracy
The goal of intellectual life should be to see and understand what is true, not merely to adhere to a prevailing orthodoxy.
— Jeffrey Tucker
Salvation lies not in the faithfulness to forms, but in the liberation from them.
— Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago
There is now the capacity to make tyranny total in America. Only law ensures that we never fall into that abyss—the abyss from which there is no return.
— James Bamford, The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America
There is no liberty, save wisdom and self-control. Liberty is within--not without. It is each man's own affair.
— H.G. Wells, When the Sleeper Wakes
There might, Gentlemen, be an impropriety in my taking notice, in this Address to you, of an anonymous production, but the manner in which that performance has been introduced to the army, the effect it was intended to have, together with some other circumstances, will amply justify my observations on the tendency of that Writing. With respect to the advice given by the Author, to suspect the Man, who shall recommend moderate measures and longer forbearance, I spurn it, as every Man, who regards liberty, and reveres that justice for which we contend, undoubtedly must; for if Men are to be precluded from offering their Sentiments on a matter, which may involve the most serious and alarming consequences, that can invite the consideration of Mankind, reason is of no use to us; the freedom of Speech may be taken away, and dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep, to the Slaughter.
— George Washington
In arguing against free enterprise capitalism, the collectivist always adopts the false assumption of a fixed number of jobs in that system. Conversely, in arguing for collectivism, he always assumes that there will be as many jobs as there are workers. The government will make the jobs.
— Isabel Paterson, God of the Machine
So what? Why should an a priori proof of the libertarian property theory make any difference? Why not engage in aggression anyway?” Why indeed?! But then, why should the proof that 1+1=2 make any difference? One certainly can still act on the belief that 1+1=3. The obvious answer is “because a propositional justification exists for doing one thing, but not for doing another.” But why should we be reasonable, is the next come-back. Again, the answer is obvious. For one, because it would be impossible to argue against it; and further, because the proponent raising this question would already affirm the use of reason in his act of questioning it. This still might not suffice and everyone knows that it would not, for even if the libertarian ethic and argumentative reasoning must be regarded as ultimately justified, this still does not preclude that people will act on the basis of unjustified beliefs either because they don’t know, they don’t care, or they prefer not to know. I fail to see why this should be surprising or make the proof somehow defective.
— Hans-Hermann Hoppe, The Economics and Ethics of Private Property: Studies in Political Economy and Philosophy
For the primary goal of the American Revolution which transferred American life and introduced a new era in human history, was not the overthrow or even the alteration of the existing social order but the preservation of political liberty threatened by the apparent corruption of the constitution, and the establishment in principle of the existing conditions of liberty.
— Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution
I don't want the technology of the 1950s, but I want the free market of the 1950s.
— Peter D. Schiff
The idea [passing the 17th amendment] benefited from a unique political and cultural atmosphere that consumed a nation during the late 19th and early 20th centuries-a progressive populism promoting simultaneously radical egalitarianism and centralized authoritarianism.
— Mark Levin
Too many of us view liberty as something that ‘just is,’ and too few see it as something that ‘is’ only because someone, somewhere was faced with the formidable reality that to keep liberty meant paying a stiff price.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
The greatest abuse that we perpetrate on liberty is our assumed right to it.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
Life, liberty and the pursuit of happy hour, the long weekend, the all-inclusive island resort, the sunny beach vacation. Happiness is somewhere else, someplace with boat drinks, some secret, distant state of bliss which if they were given would bore them in minutes.
— Geoffrey Wood
Thomas Jefferson. . . knew what schools were for--to ensure that citizens would know when and how to protect their liberty. . . It would not have come easily to the mind of such a man, as it does to political leaders today, that the young should be taught to read exclusively for the purpose of increasing their economic productivity.
— Neil Postman, The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School
It is in war that the State really comes into its own: swelling in power, in number, in pride, in absolute dominion over the economy and the society.
— Murray N. Rothbard
Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
— Benjamin Franklin
Living off others is a form of bondage—for if you take from a person his responsibility to care for himself, you also take from him the opportunity to be free.
— Cameron C. Taylor, 8 Attributes of Great Achievers
A person who says “every person has a right to a decent education” may not actually mean “people should be robbed to support bad schools” or “all children should be forced into a prison-like building for 12 years.
— Jeffrey Tucker
The safest way to make laws respected is to make them respectable.
— Frédéric Bastiat
Collectivists see the world the way Mr. Magoo did—as one big blur. They homogenize people in a communal blender, sacrificing the discrete features that make us who we are.
— Lawrence  W. Reed
I cannot possibly understand how fraternity can be legally enforced without liberty being legally destroyed...
— Frédéric Bastiat, The Law
The State obtains its revenue by coercion, by threatening dire penalties should the income not be forthcoming. That coercion is known as “taxation,” although in less regularized epochs it was often known as “tribute.” Taxation is theft, purely and simply even though it is theft on a grand and colossal scale which no acknowledged criminals could hope to match. It is a compulsory seizure of the property of the State’s inhabitants, or subjects.
— Murray N. Rothbard
As I explain in 'What It Means to be an Anarcho-Capitalist', to be an anarchist simply means you oppose aggression, and you realize the state necessarily commits aggression. If you are not an anarchist, it means you either condone aggression, or think the state does not necessarily commit aggression. As you say you are not an anarchist, can you please tell us which one describes you? Are you in favor of aggression (like socialists and criminals are)? Or, do you think the state does not commit aggression (like children brainwashed by government schools think)?
— N. Stephan Kinsella
A man goes to a foreign country and kills somebody who's not aggressing against him; in a Hawaiian shirt he's a criminal, in a green costume he's a hero who gets a parade and a pension. So that, as a culture, we remain in a state of moral insanity. To point out these contradictions to people in society is to be labeled insane. This is how insane society remains, that anybody who points out logical opposites in the most essential human topic of ethics, is considered to be insane.
— Stefan Molyneux
A government is a compulsory territorial monopolist of ultimate decision-making (jurisdiction) and, implied in this, a compulsory territorial monopolist of taxation. That is, a government is the ultimate arbiter, for the inhabitants of a given territory, regarding what is just and what is not, and it can determine unilaterally, i.e., without requiring the consent of those seeking justice or arbitration, the price that justice-seekers must pay to the government for providing this service.
— Hans-Hermann Hoppe
Trade and money, which go together in a stream of energy, inevitably wash away the enclosing walls of a society of status.
— Isabel Paterson
O Liberty! What crimes are committed in thy name!
— Madame Roland
Not only does the State do the work badly on a domain not its own, bunglingly, at greater cost, and with less fruit than spontaneous organizations, but, again, through the legal monopoly which it deems its prerogative, or through the overwhelming competition which it exercises, it kills or paralyzes these natural organizations or prevents their birth; and hence so many precious organs, which, absorbed, atropic or abortive, are lost to the great social body.
— Hippolyte Taine
Many rabble-rousers for libertarianism, liberty and freedom are unwitting pawns of controllers they have never even considered.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
The four L's: Love Light Life Liberty!!
— Lailah GiftyAkita
War isn't about making historywar is about breaking the present.
— christoforos darbinian
If taxation without consent is not robbery, then any band of robbers have only to declare themselves a government, and all their robberies are legalized.
— Lysander Spooner
I think that the Internet is going to be one of the major forces for reducing the role of government.
— Milton Friedman
Once one concedes that a single world government is not necessary, then where does one logically stop at the permissibility of separate states? If Canada and the United States can be separate nations without being denounced as in a state of impermissible ‘anarchy’, why may not the South secede from the United States? New York State from the Union? New York City from the state? Why may not Manhattan secede? Each neighbourhood? Each block? Each house? Each person?
— Murray N. Rothbard
Government” itself does no harm, because it is a fictional entity. But the belief in “government” – the notion that some people actually have the moral right to rule over others – has caused immeasurable pain and suffering, injustice and oppression, enslavement and death.
— - Larken Rose
Legislators and revolutionaries who promise equality and liberty at the same time, are either psychopaths or mountebanks.
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Maxims and Reflections
Can social progress be made without government?It's like saying 'can happiness be achieved without the initiation of violence? Can romance be achieved without rape? Can profitability be achieved without theft? Can economic growth be achieved without the mass indebted enslavement and counterfeiting of the federal reserve?'.
— Stefan Molyneux
The executive possesses means of distracting Parliament from its proper function; it seduces members by the offer of places and pensions, by retaining them to follow ministers and ministers' rivals, by persuading them to support measures —whereby the activities of administration grow beyond Parliament's control. These means of subversion are known are known collectively as corruption, and if ever Parliament or those who elect them—for corruption may occur at this point too—should be wholly corrupt, then there will be an end of independence and liberty.
— J.G.A. Pocock
The welfare of a people lies not in casting other peoples down but in peaceful collaboration.
— Ludwig von Mises
He who in given cases consents to obey his fellows with servility, and who submits his will, and even his thoughts, to their control, how can he pretend that he wishes to be free?
— Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
Some say it's wrong to profit from the misfortune of others. I ask my students whether they'd support a law against doing so. But I caution them with some examples. An orthopedist profits from your misfortune of having broken your leg skiing. When there's news of a pending ice storm, I doubt whether it saddens the hearts of those in the collision repair business. I also tell my students that I profit from their misfortune—their ignorance of economic theory.
— Walter E. Williams
If government half a century ago had provided us with all our dinners and breakfasts, it would be the practice of our orators today to assume the impossibility of our providing for ourselves.
— Auberon Herbert
The government is a giant logjam in the eternal river of human potential.
— Stefan Molyneux
Despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot.
— Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
There is no such mischievous nonsense in all the world as equality. That is what father says. What men ought to want is liberty.
— Anthony Trollope, The Duke's Children
The political superstition is still holding sway over the hearts and minds of the masses, but the true lovers of liberty will have no more to do with it. Instead, they believe with Stirner that man has as much liberty as he is willing to take. Anarchism therefore stands for direct action, the open defiance of, and resistance to, all laws and restrictions, economic, social, and moral. But defiance and resistance are illegal. Therein lies the salvation of man. Everything illegal necessitates integrity, self-reliance, and courage. In short, it calls for free, independent spirits, for "men who are men, and who have a bone in their backs which you cannot pass your hand through.
— Emma Goldman
As a corollary to the proposition that all institutions must be subordinated to the law of equal freedom, we cannot choose but admit the right of the citizen to adopt a condition of voluntary outlawry. If every man has freedom to do all that he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man, then he is free to drop connection with the state—to relinquish its protection, and to refuse paying towards its support. It is self-evident that in so behaving he in no way trenches upon the liberty of others; for his position is a passive one; and whilst passive he cannot become an aggressor. It is equally selfevident that he cannot be compelled to continue one of a political corporation, without a breach of the moral law, seeing that citizenship involves payment of taxes; and the taking away of a man’s property against his will, is an infringement of his rights.
— Herbert Spencer, The Right To Ignore The State
In Europe, charters of liberty have been granted by power. America has set the example and France has followed it, of charters of power granted by liberty. This revolution in the practice of the world may, with an honest praise, be pronounced the most triumphant epoch of its history and the most consoling presage of its happiness.
— James Madison
No, the state is anything but the result of a contract! No one with even just an ounce of common sense would agree to such a contract. I have a lot of contracts in my files, but nowhere is there one like this. The state is the result of aggressive force and subjugation. It has evolved without contractual foundation, just like a gang of protection racketeers. And concerning the struggle of all against all: that is a myth.
— Hans-Hermann Hoppe
Democracy is a suggestion box for slaves.
— Stefan Molyneux
The war is against children, and all the other wars are just a shadow of the war on children.
— Stefan Molyneux
Government is a gun that shoots money at your enemy and blows up in your face.
— Stefan Molyneux
A free society cherishes nonconformity. It knows that from the non-conformist, from the eccentric, have come many of the great ideas of freedom. A free society fertilizes the soil in which non-conformity and dissent and individualism can grow.
— Henry Steele Commager
Liberty! -- Electric word!
— Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin
You look back in time to when there was slavery and you think 'how did people even remotely believe that this was a good idea?'.It's incomprehensible for us to think of what the mindset was 100 or 200 years ago. I hope to make the present as incomprehensible to the future as the past is to us.
— Stefan Molyneux
It is also interesting to observe that communal ownership violates every instinct of human nature. It destroys initiative, nullifies free agency, suppresses inventive exploration, minimizes the dignity of the individual and makes a god out of an abstract thing called "The State"- to which is delegated complete, unrestricted control over life, liberty and property. . . Like so many other weak systems of government, it can survive only in an atmosphere of a slave state, ruled by a king or a dictator.
— W. Cleon Skousen, The First 2,000 Years:  From Adam To Abraham
We are not subjects of an autocratic King, but are citizens of the country contributing to the advancement of our people who pay taxes out of their hard earned income.
— Nilantha Ilangamuwa
We are citizens who love to fake life than dig deep into our reality to discover the truth and make amends and correct our own wrongdoings, because we are reluctant to learn from our past.
— Nilantha Ilangamuwa
The fact is that the government, like a highwayman, says to a man: Your money, or your life...The government does not, indeed, waylay a man in a lonely place, spring upon him from the road side and, holding a pistol to his head, proceed to rifle his pockets. But the robbery is none the less a robbery on that account; and it is far more dastardly and shameful. The highwayman takes solely upon himself the responsibility, danger, and crime of his own act. He does not pretend that he has any rightful claim to your money, or that he intends to use it for your own benefit. He does not pretend to be anything but a robber...Furthermore, having taken your money, he leaves you as you wish him to do. He does not persist in following you on the road, against your will; assuming to be your rightful 'sovereign,' on account of the 'protection' he affords you.
— Lysander Spooner
There are plenty of laws to protect guys' money even in war time but there's nothing on the books says a man's life's his own.
— Dalton Trumbo, Johnny Got His Gun
Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success.
— Mark Skousen
In regard to the so-called social contract, I have often had occasion to protest that I haven't even seen the contract, much less been asked to consent to it. A valid contract requires voluntary offer, acceptance, and consideration. I've never received an offer from my rulers, so I certainly have not accepted one; and rather than consideration, I have received nothing but contempt from the rulers, who, notwithstanding the absence of any agreement, have indubitably threatened me with grave harm in the event that I fail to comply with their edicts.
— Robert Higgs
Freedom is an expensive gift always worth fighting for. Even if it costs us!
— Marck E. Estemil
The search for liberty is simply part of the greater search for a world where respect for the rule of law and human rights is universal—a world free of dictators, terrorists, warmongers and fanatics, where men and women of all nationalities, races, traditions and creeds can coexist in the culture of freedom, where borders give way to bridges that people cross to reach their goals limited only by free will and respect for one another's rights. It is a search to which I've dedicated my writing, and so many have taken notice. But is it not a search to which we should all devote our very lives? The answer is clear when we see what is at stake
— Mario Vargas Llosa
There ought to be at least as much common sense about living and dying as there is about going to the grocery store and buying a loaf of bread.
— Dalton Trumbo, Johnny Got His Gun
We do not have to dig deep into history to understand the reality. The examples of Saddam Hussain, who was executed after a sham trial and the case of Muammar Gaddafi, who killed after surrendering in broad daylight, have given enough factual reality to understand the painful truth.
— Nilantha Ilangamuwa
The law-abiding citizen by his labor serves both himself and his fellow man and thereby integrates himself peacefully into the social order. The robber, on the other hand, is intent, not on honest toil, but on the forcible appropriation of the fruits of others' labor.
— Ludwig von Mises, Liberalism
There was something melancholic about that symbol of their nation's promise of freedom, a bell with a chipped mouth and cleft body.
— E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly
Promote the voluntary family; voluntarism is the only known cure for abuses of power - in politics, the economy or the family.
— Stefan Molyneux
What we can see in most societies is the gravity of suffering, tears of sorrow and nightmares of hopelessness.
— Nilantha Ilangamuwa, The Naked Power
The price of liberty is labor as well as vigilance.
— Carl Scovel, Never Far from Home: Stories from the Radio Pulpit
Mr. President; give me back my country. Allow people to have their humanity. If you do not do this, history will never absolve you!
— Nilantha Ilangamuwa, The Naked Power
Let us applaud the howls of the ignorant extremists as we stand on a knife-edge, not glad, but in acknowledgement of the bad, sad, mad gifts that the regime continue to offer us.
— Nilantha Ilangamuwa, The Conflation: Politics and Politrics Beyond the Ecstasy
Yet basically, libertarians are for freedom and liberty forindividuals, while recognizing that in order to be free we must also beprotected. Your freedom to swing your arms ends at my nose.
— Michael Shermer, Brain, Belief, and Politics
The limits of freedom of expression is tautological: it ends at the point where it begins to affect the freedom of expression of others.
— Rafael k Nunes
Sovereignty...as understood in the Declaration of Independence was originally, and by nature, the equal and unalienable possession of individual human beings. The original equality of all human beings was an equality of sovereignty; no man had more right to rule another than the other had to rule him.
— Harry V. Jaffa
I'm too sexy for a grocery store.
— John Carter Quinn Liberty At Last
The most urgent necessity is, not that the State should teach, but that it should allow education. All monopolies are detestable, but the worst of all is the monopoly of education.
— Frédéric Bastiat, What Is Money?
Liberty is freedom constrained only by our responsibility to respect the equal rights of others.
— Dave Champion
. . . for liberty is an acknowledgment of faith in God and His works.
— Frédéric Bastiat, The Law
Either ‘the group’ is superior or the individual is superior. Marxism, socialism, fascism, and pure democracy are all forms that give power to ‘the group’ and then use violence to force individuals to obey the dictates of ‘the group’. The concept of liberty is one in which the individual - in the exercise of his unalienable rights - is superior to every and all powers. That is what the Founders intended. That is what we are supposed to have under the ‘contracts’ of the Declaration of Independence and the state and federal constitutions. That is what I am entitled to as an American. That is what I insist upon. And that is what I will kill for.
— Dave Champion
Perhaps worse still is what liberal societies might do to themselves in the face of this new and different threat [of terrorism]. They begin, by small but dangerous increments, to cease to be as liberal as they once were. They begin to restrict their own hard-won rights and freedoms as a protection against the crminial minority who attempt (and as we thus see, by forcing liberty to commit suidcide, succed in doing) to terrorise society.
— A.C. Grayling, Toward the Light of Liberty: The Struggles for Freedom and Rights That Made the Modern Western World
Slaves are governed by the fear of man, and, whenever the fear of man replaces the fear of God in a society, slavery reappears and increases.
— Rousas John Rushdoony, Exodus: Commentaries on the Pentateuch
I am an aristocrat," Virginian John Randolph would explain decades after the American Revolution. "I love liberty; I hate equality.
— Colin Woodard, American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America
The entire Nazi war machine was only possible because of past, present and future violations of the non aggression principle (achievable only through government).
— Stefan Molyneux
In no instance have the churches been guardians of the liberties of the people.
— James Madison
Why must we cling to those who walk away instead of granting freedom? We must give the same liberty God gives to prodigals-an ability to let them go-or we'll be perennially bound to others for our happiness and effective service.
— Mary E. DeMuth, Everything: What You Give and What You Gain to Become Like Jesus
To refuse any bond of union between man and civil society, on the one hand, and God the Creator and consequently the supreme Law-giver, on the other, is plainly repugnant to the nature, not only of man, but of all created things; for, of necessity, all effects must in some proper way be connected with their cause; and it belongs to the perfection of every nature to contain itself within that sphere and grade which the order of nature has assigned to it, namely, that the lower should be subject and obedient to the higher.
— Pope Leo XIII, Libertas: On the Nature of Human Liberty
...the freedom to bear arms may be righteously rejected to encourage the preservation of all corporeal forms of life.
— Kevin Alan Lee, Ethical Motivations
...So we passed, handcuffed and in silence, through the streets of Washington, through the Captial of a nation, whose theory of government, we are told, rests on the foundation of man's inalienable right to life, LIBERTY, and the pursuit of happiness! Hail! Columbia, happy land, indeed!
— Solomon Northup, Twelve Years a Slave
Every man — in the development of his own personality — has the right to form his own beliefs and opinions. Hence, suppression of belief, opinion and expression is an affront to the dignity of man, a negation of man’s essential na
— Thomas I. Emerson, The System of Freedom of Expression
Some of us have to fight. There are great traditions of liberty to defend. I am no partisan man. Where I see the infamy I seek to erase it. Party names mean nothing. The tradition of liberty means all. The common people will let it go, oh yes. They will sell liberty for a quieter life. That is why they must be prodded, prodded-.
— Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
Congress may carry on the most wicked and pernicious of schemes under the dark veil of secrecy. The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them.
— Patrick Henry
It is passing strange that our philosophers of the Revolutionary period should have formed their conception of a free society by reference to societies where everyone was not free - where, in fact, the vast majority were not free. It is no less strange that they never stopped to ask whether perhaps the characters which they so much admired were not made possible by the existence of a class which was not free. Rousseau, in whose philosophy were many things, was fully conscious of this difficulty: "Must we say that liberty is possible only on a basis of slavery? Perhaps we must.
— Bertrand De Jouvenel, On Power
Even though we don't know which companies the NSA has compromised – or by what means – knowing that they could have compromised any of them is enough to make us mistrustful of all of them. This is going to make it hard for large companies like Google and Microsoft to get back the trust they lost. Even if they succeed in limiting government surveillance. Even if they succeed in improving their own internal security. The best they'll be able to say is: "We have secured ourselves from the NSA, except for the parts that we either don't know about or can't talk about.
— Bruce Schneier
Time means a lot to me, paperwork wastes it, and I have always been a firm believer in my right to do anything I cannot be stopped from doing. Which sometimes entails not getting caught at it. This is not quite so bad as it sounds, as I am a decent, civilized, likable guy. So, shading my eyes against the blue and fiery afternoon, I began searching for ways to convince the authorities of this. Lying, I decided, was probably best.
— Roger Zelazny, Doorways in the Sand
We must, indeed, all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.
— Benjamin Franklin
Exactly. We don't belong here. They're not staring out of disdain, Jordan; they're staring out of jealousy. We don't have to be a part of the horrible modelling industry. You don't have to watch what you eat and I don't have to worry about how many zits are on my face. We can be whoever the fuck we want, a type of liberty that a majority of people crave.
— Cameron How to be a Girl
For all the enlightened nations that profess a loyalty to liberty, democracy, economy and all the rest, there has long been a readiness to look for a chosen one; as Carlyle pointed out, even the French, those great anti-venerators, those relentless beheaders of Great Men, worshipped Voltaire.
— Chris  Anderson, The Numbers Game: Why Everything You Know About Soccer Is Wrong
[George Everett Macdonald was] a valiant soldier for human liberty.
— Clarence Darrow
Be wary of those propagating too much about liberty, ideology, and civility; they just might be oppressors in the making.
— Aniruddha Sastikar
We shall find that every effort to realize equality necessitates a sacrifice of liberty.
— William Graham Sumner, What Social Classes Owe to Each Other
Liberty is an affair of laws and institutions which bring rights and duties into equilibrium. It is not at all an affair of selecting the proper class to rule.
— William Graham Sumner, What Social Classes Owe to Each Other
I would rather belong to a poor nation that was free than to a rich nation that had ceased to be in love with liberty. But we shall not be poor if we love liberty, because the nation that loves liberty truly sets every man free to do his best and be his best.
— Woodrow Wilson
Bureaucrats complicate. It gives them more work to do. It gives them job security. It means promotions as ever more bureaucrats are added to the Ministry of Redundancy.
— Sieg Pedde
In this confusion we begin to see what lies behind John Paul II's startling warning about democracy "effectively mov[ing] towards a form of totalitarianism." It begins to happen at a practical level when we simultaneously hold that rights which arise from the dignity of the person are also a matter of "bargaining." New rights can be claimed or created, and whatever privileges can be negotiated around them are then secured by reference to human dignity, even when these new rights are directly contrary to the human dignity of some, for example, the unborn or the elderly sick. This confusion about the nature of rights debases their currency and undermines the first principles of democracy. Such freedom gradually becomes a tyrannical "freedom of the 'the strong' against the weak, who have no choice but to submit.
— George Cardinal Pell, God and Caesar: Selected Essays on Religion, Politics, and Society
If large numbers of people believe in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it. But if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them.
— George Orwell
The Founders believed, and the Conservative agrees, in the dignity of the individual; that we, as human beings, have a right to live, live freely, and pursue that which motivates us not because man or some government says so, but because these are God-given natural rights.
— Mark R. Levin, Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto
The free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.
— Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto
Kidnap me and take me away. Throw me across the back of your bike and show me what it feels like to have the wind in your face and the sun on your skin, day in and day out. If it's anything at all like this then it must be heaven on earth. 
— C.M. Stunich, Losing Me, Finding You
For if we are observed in all matters, we are constantly under threat of correction, judgment, criticism, even plagiarism of our own uniqueness. We become children, fettered under watchful eyes, constantly fearful that — either now or in the uncertain future — patterns we leave behind will be brought back to implicate us, by whatever authority has now become focused upon our once-private and innocent acts. We lose our individuality, because everything we do is observable and record
— Bruce Schneier
First Amendment freedoms are most in danger when the government seeks to control thought or to justify its laws for that impermissible end. The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must be protected from the government because speech is the beginning of tho
— Anthony M. Kennedy
Notwithstanding the fact that infidels in all ages have battled for the rights of man, and have at all times been the fearless advocates of liberty and justice, we are constantly charged by the church with tearing down without building again. The church should by this time know that it is utterly impossible to rob men of their opinions. The history of religious persecution fully establishes the fact that the mind necessarily resists and defies every attempt to control it by violence. The mind necessarily clings to old ideas until prepared for the new. The moment we comprehend the truth, all erroneous ideas are of necessity cast aside.A surgeon once called upon a poor cripple and kindly offered to render him any assistance in his power. The surgeon began to discourse very learnedly upon the nature and origin of disease; of the curative properties of certain medicines; of the advantages of exercise, air and light, and of the various ways in which health and strength could be restored. These remarks ware so full of good sense, and discovered so much profound thought and accurate knowledge, that the cripple, becoming thoroughly alarmed, cried out, 'Do not, I pray you, take away my crutches. They are my only support, and without them I should be miserable indeed!' 'I am not going,' said the surgeon, 'to take away your crutches. I am going to cure you, and then you will throw the crutches away yourself.'For the vagaries of the clouds the infidels propose to substitute the realities of earth; for superstition, the splendid demonstrations and achievements of science; and for theological tyranny, the chainless liberty of thought.
— Robert G. Ingersoll
[T]here is both an intrinsic and instrumental value to privacy. Intrinsically, privacy is precious to the extent that it is a component of a liberty. Part of citizenship in a free society is the expectation that one's personal affairs and physical person are inviolable so long as one remains within the law. A robust concept of freedom includes the freedom from constant and intrusive government surveillance of one's life. From this perspective, Fourth Amendment violations are objectionable for the simple fact that the government is doing something it has no licence to do–that is, invading the privacy of a law-abiding citizen by monitoring her daily activities and laying hands on her person without any evidence of wrongdoing.Privacy is also instrumental in nature. This aspect of the right highlights the pernicious effects, rather than the inherent illegitimacy, of intrusive, suspicionless surveillance. For example, encroachments on individual privacy undermine democratic institutions by chilling free speech. When citizens–especially those espousing unpopular viewpoints–are aware that the intimate details of their personal lives are pervasively monitored by government, or even that they could be singled out for discriminatory treatment by government officials as a result of their First Amendment expressive activities, they are less likely to freely express their dissident views.
— John W. Whitehead, A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State
This, then, is true liberty: the joy that comes in doing what is right. At the same time, it is also devoted service in obedience to righteous precept.
— Augustine of Hippo, The Enchiridion on Faith Hope and Love
You cannot have Liberty in this world without what you call Moral Virtue, and you cannot have Moral Virtue without the slavery of that half of the human race who hate what you call Moral Virtue.
— William Blake
Before Sept. 11, the idea that Americans would voluntarily agree to live their lives under the gaze of a network of biometric surveillance cameras, peering at them in government buildings, shopping malls, subways and stadiums, would have seemed unthinkable, a dystopian fantasy of a society that had surrendered privacy and anonymity.
— Jeffrey Rosen
The framers were realists
—  they recognized that the best constitution in the world could be distorted and destroyed by men determined to do so.
Now-a-days, men wear a fool's cap, and call it a liberty cap.
— Henry David Thoreau, Slavery in Massachusetts
Political writers argue in regard to the love of liberty with the same philosophy that philosophers do in regard to the state of nature; by the things they see they judge of things very different which they have never seen, and they attribute to men a natural inclination to slavery, on account of the patience with which the slaves within their notice carry the yoke; not reflecting that it is with liberty as with innocence and virtue, the value of which is not known but by those who possess them, though the relish for them is lost with the things themselves. I know the charms of your country, said Brasidas to a satrap who was comparing the life of the Spartans with that of the Persepolites; but you can not know the pleasures of mine.
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality
No nation has ever been able to transform by chance. Its always a deliberate and conscious process
— Fela Durotoye
Democracy, freedom and liberty do not make us more than what we are; it is our commitment that matters.
— M.F. Moonzajer
Even the soberest judged it requisite to sacrifice one part of their liberty to ensure the other, as a man, dangerously wounded in any of his limbs, readily parts with it to save the rest of his body.
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality
Labor in the white skin can never free itself as long as labor in the black skin is branded.
— Karl Marx, Das Kapital/Das kommunistische Manifest
Freedom requires effort if it is to be won and vigilance if it is to be maintained. People just don't value freedom until it is taken away.
— Terry Goodkind, Faith of the Fallen
Liberty is not an end, but a means. Whoever mistakes it for an end does not know what to do once he attains it.
— Nicolás Gómez Dávila, Notas
Because I care about human beings, I want them to be free to do what is right for them. Isn't that more important than mere peace on earth? Isn't freedom, even dangerous freedom, preferable to the safest slavery, to peace bought with ignorance, cowardice, and submission?
— CrimethInc., Days of War, Nights of Love: Crimethink for Beginners
I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air—that progress made under the shadow of the policeman’s club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. . . .In any dispute between a citizen and the government, it is my instinct to side with the citizen . . . I am against all efforts to make men virtuous by law.
— H.L. Mencken
Free society's organize around the "invisible hand" while Force society's organize around the State's "visible fist.
— Orrin Woodward
Liberty is like those solid and tasty foods or those full-bodied wines which are appropriate for nourishing and strengthening robust constitutions that are used to them, but which overpower, ruin and intoxicate the weak and delicate who are not suited for them.
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Sweetest of all is liberty. This we have chosen and this we pay for. We have embraced the laws of Lykurgus, and they are stern laws. They have schooled us to scorn the life of leisure, which this rich land of ours would bestow upon us if we wished, and instead to enroll ourselves in the academy of discipline and sacrifice. Guided by these laws, our fathers for twenty generations have breathed the blessed air of freedom and have paid the bill in full when it was presented. We, their sons, can do no less.
— Steven Pressfield, Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae
Everybody has asked the question. . ."What shall we do with the Negro?" I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are wormeaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall! I am not for tying or fastening them on the tree in any way, except by nature's plan, and if they will not stay there, let them fall. And if the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone!
— Frederick Douglass
Nothing will ruin the country if the people themselves will undertake its safety
—  and nothing can save it if they leave that safety in any hands but their own.
You do not know what will happen if you take down the walls; you cannot see through to the other side, don't know whether it will bring freedom or ruin, resolution or chaos. It might be paradise or destruction. Take down the walls. Otherwise you must live closely, in fear, building barricades against the unknown, saying prayers against the darkness, speaking verse of terror and tightness. Otherwise you may never know hell, but you will not find heaven, either.
— Lauren Oliver, Requiem
Liberty was paid for by past sacrifices and given to us as a present gift.
— Orrin Woodward