Wise Quotes about Liberty

Free will is not the liberty to do whatever one likes,
but the power of doing whatever one sees ought to be done,
even in the very face of otherwise overwhelming impulse.
There lies freedom, indeed.
- Anonymous

He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that.
- John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859)

Those who won our independence...
valued liberty as an end and as a means.
They believed liberty to be the secret of happiness
and courage to be the secret of liberty.
- Louis D. Brandeis

Educate and inform the whole mass of the people ...
They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.
- Thomas Jefferson

Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
- Edward Everett

Toleration and liberty are the foundations of a great republic.
- Frank Lloyd Wright

Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty.
The obedient must be slaves.
- Henry David Thoreau

The slavery of fear had made men afraid to think.
But such is the irresistible nature of truth,
that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing.
- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, 1791

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

Timid men prefer the calm of despotism
to the tempestuous sea of liberty.
- Thomas Jefferson

True justice is not a matter of courts and law books,
but of a commitment in each of us to liberty and mutual respect.
- Jimmy Carter

It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself,
to resist invasions of it in the case of others:
or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.
- Thomas Jefferson

The god who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time:
the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them.
- Thomas Jefferson

When the people fear their government, there is tyranny;
when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
- Thomas Jefferson

Fourscore and seven years ago
our fathers brought forth on this continent,
a new nation, conceived in Liberty,
and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
- Abraham Lincoln

We are not to expect to be translated from
despotism to liberty in a featherbed.
- Thomas Jefferson

In every country and every age,
the priest had been hostile to Liberty.
- Thomas Jefferson

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

The natural progress of things is for liberty
to yield and government to gain ground.
- Thomas Jefferson

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill,
that we shall pay any price, bear any burden,
meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe
to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
- John F. Kennedy

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.
- Thomas Jefferson

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.
- Jimmy Carter

To deprive a man of his natural liberty
and to deny to him the ordinary amenities of life
is worse then starving the body;
it is starvation of the soul, the dweller in the body.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will
within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others.
I do not add "within the limits of the law"
because law is often but the tyrant's will,
and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.
- Thomas Jefferson

Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit
which prizes liberty as a heritage of all men,
in all lands, everywhere.
Destroy this spirit and you have planted
the seeds of despotism around your own doors.
- Abraham Lincoln

Liberty is to the collective body,
what health is to every individual body.
Without health no pleasure can be tasted by man;
without liberty, no happiness can be enjoyed by society.
- Thomas Jefferson

What difference does it make to the dead,
the orphans, and the homeless,
whether the mad destruction is wrought
under the name of totalitarianism
or the holy name of liberty or democracy?
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

America and Israel share a special bond.
Our relationship is unique among all nations.
Like America, Israel is a strong democracy,
a symbol of freedom, and an oasis of liberty,
a home to the oppressed and persecuted.
- William J. Clinton

The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat,
for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as a liberator,
while the wolf denounces him for the same act
as the destroyer of liberty,
especially as the sheep was a black one.
Plainly the sheep and the wolf are not agreed
upon a definition of the word liberty;
and precisely the same difference
prevails today among us human creatures
- Abraham Lincoln

This [the Holocaust] must never happen again. ...
Be vigilant about your rights.
Care about the rights and human dignity of others.
When the rights of any group, no matter how small,
no matter how marginal, are violated,
your liberty, your freedom is put at risk.
Let there never be a day when we cast about in horror
and have to ask the question, "How did it ever come to this?"
- Thomas Childers, Ph.D., Professor of History,
University of Pennsylvania, in the closing remarks
of his six-hour Teaching Company audio lecture series

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
- inscribed on the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor

Don't interfere with anything in the Constitution.
That must be maintained, for it is
the only safeguard of our liberties.
- Abraham Lincoln

We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence,
whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.
The potential for the disastrous rise
of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination
endanger our liberties or democratic processes.
We should take nothing for granted.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower in his Farewell Address of January, 17 1961

I'm actually starting to like more and more people
who have convictions that are unpopular.
Now at what point does an unpopular conviction
interfere with your own human rights?
Forced female circumcision, for instance.
The Catholic Church's stance on contraception.
The list goes on. You know, God has some really weird kids,
and I find it hard to be in their company most of the time.
- Bono

By letting it go it all gets done.
The world is won by those who let it go.
But when you try and try.
The world is beyond the winning.
- Lao Tzu

In meditation practice, the best way to get somewhere
is to let go of trying to get anywhere at all.
- Jon Kabat-Zinn

Life is lived in the mists -
little is fully visible, less is certain.
Yet rejoice in the unknowing,
and let all of life be a wonderful adventure.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Never Let Anyone Get Your Goat,
Push Your Buttons,
Get You Riled Up,
or Annoy You.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Let parents bequeath to their children
not riches, but the spirit of reverence.
- Plato

Can you let go of words and ideas,
attitudes and expectations?
If so, then the Tao will loom into view.
- Lao Tzu

Let the refining and improving of your own life
keep you so busy that you have little time to criticize others.
- H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

Let light shine through the cracks
in the armor of your staunchest beliefs.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Love one another but make not a bond of love.
Let it rather be a moving sea
between the shores of your souls.
- Khalil Gibran

Let us not look back in anger
or forward in fear,
but around in awareness.
- James Thurber

No one can make you jealous, angry, vengeful, or greedy -
unless you let him.
- Napoleon Hill

Don't let anyone else take the measure
of your worth and capabilities.
Always stand proud in who you are.
- Margaret Spellings

We can let circumstances rule us,
or we can take charge and
rule our lives from within.
- Earl Nightingale

It had long since come to my attention
that people of accomplishment
rarely sat back and let things happen to them.
They went out and happened to things.
- Leonardo da Vinci

Laugh when you can,
apologize when you should,
and let go of what you can't change.
Life's too short to be anything... but happy.
- Anonymous

Miracles are the natural way of the Universe -
our only job is to move our doubting minds aside
and let the miracles flow.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

When you are eating, eat totally -
chew totally, taste totally, smell totally.
Touch your bread, feel the texture.
Smell the bread, smell the flavor.
Chew it, let it dissolve into your being,
and remain conscious - and you are meditating.
And then meditation is not separate from life.
- Osho

Could you risk believing that everything
will unfold just fine if you completely let go
of all concern about everything else,
and simply are here, now - if only for a moment?
- Dmitri Bilgere

The hardest part is what to leave behind, ... It's time to let go!
- A. A. Milne (Winnie-The-Pooh)

If there is anything that a man can do well,
I say let him do it. Give him a chance.
- Abraham Lincoln

Let your life lightly dance on the edges of Time
like dew on the tip of a leaf.
- Rabindranath Tagore

If a man loses 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.
- Henry David Thoreau

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Wisdom Quotes