Freedom quotes

Words about liberty, self-government and the rights of people.

• Slavery is the great and foul stain upon the North American Union, and it is a contemplation worthy of the most exalted soul whether its total abolition is or is not practicable: if practicable, by what means it may be effected, and if a choice of means be within the scope of the object, what means would accomplish it at the smallest cost of human sufferance.

• ...let us not be unmindful that liberty is power; that the nation blessed with the largest portion of liberty must in proportion to its numbers be the most powerful nation upon earth, and that the tenure of power by man is, in the moral purposes of his Creator, upon condition that it shall be exercised to ends of beneficence, to improve the condition of himself and his fellow men.

• Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.

• We become not a melting pot but a beautiful mosaic. Different people, different beliefs, different yearnings, different hopes, different dreams.

• For this generation, ours, life is nuclear survival; liberty is human rights; the pursuit of happiness is a planet whose resources are devoted to the physical and spiritual nourishment of its inhabitants.

• America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense, it's the other way around. Human rights invented America.

• There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America.

• For history tells us that while these truths may be self-evident, they've never been self-executing; that while freedom is a gift from God, it must be secured by His people here on Earth.

• Every American citizen must have an equal right to vote.

• You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying: Now you are free to go where you want, and do as you desire, and choose the leaders you please.

• If you do this, then you will find, as others have found before you, that the vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men.

• Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

• We are a nation that has a government—not the other way around.

• In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.

• The anchor in our world today is freedom, holding us steady in times of change, a symbol of hope to all the world.

• Our Constitution works; our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men.

• We want no wars of conquest; we must avoid the temptation of territorial aggression.

• Isolation is no longer possible or desirable.

• My policy is trust, peace, and to put aside the bayonet.

• Universal suffrage should rest upon universal education.

• We owe it, therefore, to candor and to the amicable relations existing between the United States and those powers to declare that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety.

• ...that the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers.

• Let us by all wise and constitutional measures promote intelligence among the people as the best means of preserving our liberties.

• Only a peace between equals can last.

• The world must be made safe for democracy.

• I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.

• True liberalism seeks all legitimate freedom first in the confident belief that without such freedom the pursuit of other blessings is vain.

• Free speech does not live many hours after free industry and free commerce die.

• Rigid and expeditious justice is the first safeguard of freedom, the basis of all ordered liberty, the vital force of progress.

• The collection of any taxes which are not absolutely required, which do not beyond reasonable doubt contribute to the public welfare, is only a species of legalized larceny.

• There can be no permanent disfranchised peasantry in the United States.

• Freedom can never yield its fulness of blessings so long as the law or its administration places the smallest obstacle in the pathway of any virtuous citizen.

• Next in importance to freedom and justice is popular education, without which neither freedom nor justice can be permanently maintained.

• I would also call your attention to the importance of correcting an evil that, if permitted to continue, will probably lead to great trouble in our land before the close of the nineteenth century. It is the accumulation of vast amounts of untaxed church property.

• ...you must remember, my fellow-citizens, that eternal vigilance by the people is the price of liberty, and that you must pay the price if you wish to secure the blessing.

• The planter, the farmer, the mechanic, and the laborer all know that their success depends upon their own industry and economy, and that they must not expect to become suddenly rich by the fruits of their toil. Yet these classes of society form the great body of the people of the United States; they are the bone and sinew of the country--men who love liberty and desire nothing but equal rights and equal laws...

• It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes.

• Equality of talents, of education, or of wealth can not be produced by human institutions.

• There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses.

• The lessons of paternalism ought to be unlearned and the better lesson taught that while the people should patriotically and cheerfully support their Government its functions do not include the support of the people.

• ...though the people support the Government the Government should not support the people.

• ...the rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened.

• Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.

• 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.

• And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country.

• In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.

• As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.

• Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

• A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.

• A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing.

• I too am not a bit tamed . . . . I too am untranslatable, / I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

• Whoever degrades another degrades me . . . . and whatever is done or said returns at last to me, / And whatever I do or say I also return.

• I celebrate myself, / And what I assume you shall assume, / For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

• The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem.

• To throw obstacles in the way of a complete education is like putting out the eyes; to deny the rights of property is like cutting off the hands. To refuse political equality is to rob the ostracized of all self-respect, of credit in the market place, of recompense in the world of work, of a voice in choosing those who make and administer the law, a choice in the jury before whom they are tried, and in the judge who decides their punishment.

• The isolation of every human soul and the necessity of self-dependence must give each individual the right to choose his own surroundings.

• The point I wish plainly to bring before you on this occasion is the individuality of each human soul—our Protestant idea, the right of individual conscience and judgment—our republican idea, individual citizenship.

• Resolved, That woman is man’s equal—was intended to be so by the Creator, and the highest good of the race demands that she should be recognized as such.

• The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her.

• We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

• I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not. Across the color line I move arm in arm with Balzac and Dumas, where smiling men and welcoming women glide in gilded halls. From out the caves of evening that swing between the strong-limbed earth and the tracery of the stars, I summon Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul I will, and they come all graciously with no scorn nor condescension. So, wed with Truth, I dwell above the Veil.

• The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line,—the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea.

• He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face.

• There is no position which depends on clearer principles, than that every act of a delegated authority, contrary to the tenor of the commission under which it is exercised, is void.

• …the judiciary, from the nature of its functions, will always be the least dangerous to the political rights of the constitution; because it will be least in a capacity to annoy or injure them.

• It has been frequently remarked, that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not, of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend, for their political constitutions, on accident and force.

• Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices.

• O ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose, not only the tyranny, but the tyrant, stand forth! Every spot of the old world is over-run with oppression.

• Freedom hath been hunted round the globe. Asia, and Africa, have long expelled her.—Europe regards her like a stranger, and England hath given her warning to depart. O! receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an asylum for mankind.

• We have it in our power to begin the world over again.

• Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one.

• Our democratic-republican government is based on the idea of the natural right of every individual member thereof to a voice and a vote in making and executing the laws.

• It was we, the people, not we, the white male citizens, nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed this Union.

• May it please your honor, I shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty.

• Your denial of my citizen’s right to vote, is the denial of my right of consent as one of the governed, the denial of my right of representation as one of the taxed, the denial of my right to a trial by a jury of my peers as an offender against law, therefore, the denial of my sacred rights to life, liberty, property and—

• Posterity! You will never know, how much it cost the present Generation, to preserve your Freedom! I hope you will make a good Use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in Heaven, that I ever took half the Pains to preserve it.

• The Revolution was in the Minds of the People, and this was effected, from 1760 to 1775, in the course of fifteen Years before a drop of blood was drawn at Lexington.

• And liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right from the frame of their nature, to knowledge, as their great Creator who does nothing in vain, has given them understandings, and a desire to know—but besides this they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible divine right to that most dreaded, and envied kind of knowledge, I mean of the characters and conduct of their rulers.

• The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their Constitutions of Government.

• Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me fellow citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake; since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of Republican Government.

• Liberty is to faction, what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires.

• The accumulation of all powers legislative, executive and judiciary in the same hands, whether of one, a few or many, and whether hereditary, self appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.

• Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been, and ever will be pursued, until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit.

• At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

• I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel.

• …that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

• I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved—I do not expect the house to fall—but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other.

• This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember, or overthrow it.

• If there be one crevice through which a single drop can fall, it will certainly rust off the slave's chain.

• I hated slavery, always, and the desire for freedom only needed a favorable breeze, to fan it into a blaze, at any moment.

• To be shut up entirely to the past and present, is abhorrent to the human mind; it is to the soul—whose life and happiness is unceasing progress—what the prison is to the body; a blight and mildew, a hell of horrors.

• The thought of only being a creature of the present and the past, troubled me, and I longed to have a future—a future with hope in it.

• The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.

• The existence of slavery in this country brands your republicanism as a sham, your humanity as a base pretence, and your christianity as a lie.

• Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members.

• Probably the best test of true love of liberty in any country is the way in which minorities are treated in that country. Not only should there be complete liberty in matters of religion and opinion, but complete liberty for each man to lead his life as he desires, provided only that in so doing he does not wrong his neighbor.

• If there is no struggle there is no progress.

• Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.

• …it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.

• What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.

• I have found that, to make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one.

• You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man.

• From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom.

• The good citizen will demand liberty for himself, and as a matter of pride he will see to it that others receive the liberty which he thus claims as his own.

• But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed. The precedent must always greatly overbalance in permanent evil any partial or transient benefit which the use can at any time yield.

• Printers are educated in the Belief, that when Men differ in Opinion, both Sides ought equally to have the Advantage of being heard by the Publick; and that when Truth and Error have fair Play, the former is always an overmatch for the latter.

• Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them.

• If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.

• each generation is as independant of the one preceding, as that was of all which had gone before.

• Some men look at Constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, & deem them, like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched.

• The people are the only censors of their governors: and even their errors will tend to keep these to the true principles of their institution.

• The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.

• the functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty & property of their constituents. there is no safe deposit for these but with the people themselves; nor can they be safe with them without information. where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe.

• if a nation expects to be ignorant & free, in a state of civilisation, it expects what never was & never will be.

• …And since the preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the Republican model of Government, are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally staked, on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.

• For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.

• And by virtue of the power, and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States, and parts of States, are, and henceforward shall be free; and that the Executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.

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

• The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

• We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

• The people—the people—are the rightful masters of both congresses, and courts—not to overthrow the constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert it.

• Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it.