Famous Liberty Quotes That You’ll Want to Free up Some Time For

“Give me liberty or give me death!” – Patrick Henry, Speech to the Second Virginia Convention, March 23, 1775

“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” – George Orwell, Animal Farm (unused preface)

“Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.” – Benjamin Franklin, Silence Dogood, the Busy‑Body, and Early Writings

“This is my doctrine: Give every other human being every right you claim for yourself.” – Robert G. Ingersoll, The Liberty Of Man, Woman And Child

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

“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it.” – Thomas Paine, The Crisis, no. 4, September 11, 1777

“Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.” – George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman

“Without Freedom of Thought, there can be no such Thing as Wisdom; and no such Thing as publick Liberty, without Freedom of Speech; which is the Right of every Man, as far as by it, he does not hurt or controul the Right of another: And this is the only Check it ought to suffer, and the only Bounds it ought to know.” – Benjamin Franklin, The New-England Courant, July 9, 1722

“A state which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes–will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished.” – John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

“Every friend of freedom, and I know you are one, must be as revolted as I am by the prospect of turning the United States into an armed camp, by the vision of jails filled with casual drug users and of an army of enforcers empowered to invade the liberty of citizens on slight evidence.” – Milton Friedman, An Open Letter To Bill Bennett

“The ideal Government of all reflective men, from Aristotle onward, is one which lets the individual alone – one which barely escapes being no government at all.” – H. L. Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy

“Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.” – Edmund Burke, Letter to M. de Menonville, 1789

“The idea of restraining the legislative authority, in the means for providing for the national defence, is one of those refinements, which owe their origin to a zeal for liberty more ardent than enlightened.” – Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers

“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, Inaugural Address, January 20, 1961

“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.” – Samuel Adams

“Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of the government. The history of liberty is a history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it. – Woodrow Wilson, Address to the New York Press Club, September 9, 1912

“In the early ages of the world, according to the scripture chronology, there were no kings; the consequence of which was there were no wars; it is the pride of kings which throws mankind into confusion.” – Thomas Paine, Common Sense

“Even despotism does not produce its worst effects, so long as individuality exists under it; and whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called, and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men.” – John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

“Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.” – Louis D. Brandeis, Olmstead v. U.S., 277 U.S. 438 (1928) (dissenting)

“Doesn’t matter what the press says. Doesn’t matter what the politicians or the mobs say. Doesn’t matter if the whole country decides that something wrong is something right. This nation was founded on one principle above all else: The requirement that we stand up for what we believe, no matter the odds or the consequences. When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth, and tell the whole world – ‘No, YOU move.’” – Captain America, The Amazing Spider-Man: Civil War

“Every law that curbs my basic human freedom; every lie about the things I care for; every crime committed against me by their politics; that what’s makes me get up and hound these *******, and I’ll do that until the day I die … or until my brain dries up or something.” – Spider Jerusalem, Transmetropolitan

“Better to die fighting for freedom then be a prisoner all the days of your life.” – Bob Marley

And I keep on fighting for the things I want Though I know that when you’re dead you can’t I’d rather be a free man in my grave Than living as a puppet or a slave – Jimmy Cliff, “The Harder They Come”

There are many quotes on liberty, however liberty is often lost due to souls not being controlled from within, by God and conscience, and thus needing to be controlled from without. Liberty with its necessary limits also needs and presupposes a sure substantive and definitive standard for such, and in America that implicitly was the Bible.

Robert Winthrop (May 12, 1809 – November 16, 1894), and Speaker of the House from 1838 to 1840, and later president of the Massachusetts Bible Society, explained that, “Men, in a word, must necessarily be controlled, either by a power within them, or by a power without them; either by the Word of God, or by the strong arm of man; either by the Bible or the bayonet."

The commission of the born – again Church is to bring souls into submission to the Lord Jesus by spiritual means. In contrast, the commission of the State enables it to use the sword of men to constrain obedience on those who are not sufficiently controlled by the former means (Rm. 13:1-7). It thus follows that the weaker the church is, the more powerful the State must become. “For the transgression of a land many are the princes thereof” (Prv. 28:2a). And if the Government itself becomes less governed by Biblical precepts and principles, calling evil good, and good evil (Is. 5:20), and contrary to it's charter, punishes those who do good and praises them that do evil (contra. 1 Pet. 2:14), then “the wicked shall do wickedly,” and persecute those who would actually preserve the State by calling it to be instructed by Christ (Ps. 2)

During the colonial period the Bible was “the single most important cultural influence in the lives of Anglo-Americans." (Lawrence A. Cremin, American Education: The Colonial Experience, 1607-1789. (New York: Evanston and London: Harper and Row, 1970), p. 40) Schooling in early America, and for most of its history in primary education, combined education in general Christian morality with standard academic subjects. The Bible was the first book in the classroom, and was central to a child’s education, both for its content and for building skills. Students learned how to read using the Bible, passages were copied to learn penmanship, and a good part of the school day was devoted to memorizing and reciting passages from it. (PBS, ''The Story of American education: The Evolving Classroom') In addition to the Bible, other good books such as Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan and Isaac Watt’s Divine Songs were used. (Elizabeth McEachern Wells, Divine Songs by Isaac Watts (Fairfax, Va.: Thoburn Press, 1975), p. 11)

Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Washington, Volumes 1-2, reports that in the first report of a public school in Washington which they had on record, in 1813 a Mr. Henry Ould states, “55 have learned to read in the Old and New Testaments, and are all able to spell words of three, four, and five syllables; 26 are now learning to read Dr. Watts' Hymns and spell words of two syllables; 10 are learning words of four and five letters. Of 509 out of the whole number admitted that did not know a single letter, 20 can now read the Bible and spell words of three, four, and five syllables, 29 read Dr. Watts' Hymns and spell words of two syllables, and 10 words of four and five letters.” (Columbia Historical Society (Washington, D.C.), “Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Washington, Volumes 1-2”, “Progress in reading and Spelling, p. 9)

The overtly Christian “New England Primer” was used in primary education in New England, which is estimated to have sold upwards to 3,000,000 copies from 1700 to 1850. Introduced in 1690, this reader was used in what now would be the 1st grade, and taught multitudes of children how to read for 200 years, until 1900. The Alphabet was taught with Bible verses that began with each letter of the alphabet. Lessons had questions about the Bible and the Ten Commandments. An example of the Primer is, A = In Adam's fall, we sinned all. B = Heaven to find, the Bible mind." (The Honorable Judge Robert Ulrich Chief Justice, Missouri Court Of Appeals, Western District; http://www.shalomjerusalem.com/heritage/heritage19.html)

In addition, approximately half of all American children (beginning in 1836 to approx 1930) learned from the “McGuffey Reader,” of which 122 million copies were published (during a time when the population was much less than today, and books were passed on more). This was an advanced teaching system for it's time, written by a man who later became a Presbyterian minister, a work which earned him the title, “the Great Schoolmaster of the Nation.” He exalted the Lord Jesus Christ, and used the Bible more than any other source. It became a unifying force in American culture, instilling basic Christian-based morality, giving America a common value-laden body of literary reference and allusion, (Cranney, A. Garr, “Noah Webster and William Holmes McGuffey: The Men and Their Contributions to Reading”) and “a sense of common experience and of common possession”. (Historian Henry Steele Commager) McGuffey Readers were used widely in America until just after World War I.

Even the Unitarian (a religion that effectively denies Christ and the Divine authority of the Bible, but, unlike its immoral form today, at that time it at least overall upheld general Biblical morality) “Father of the Common School,” Horace Mann (May 4, 1796 — August 02, 1859), who became Massachusetts Secretary of Education in 1837, not only understood the impossibility of separating education from religious moral beliefs, but held that it was lawful to teach the truths of the general Christian faith, asserting that the “laws of Massachusetts required the teaching of the basic moral doctrines of Christianity.” Mann, who supported prohibition of alcohol and intemperance, slavery and lotteries, (http://www.famousamericans.net/horacemann) dreaded “intellectual eminence when separated from virtue”, that education, if taught without moral responsibilities, would produce more evil than it inherited. (William Jeynes, “American educational history: school, society, and the common good,” p. 149, 150)

More by the grace of God.

Alexis de Tocqueville (1805—1859. French political thinker and historian; best known for his two volume, “Democracy in America”) —

Upon my arrival in the United States, the religious aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my attention; and the longer I stayed there, the more did I perceive the great political consequences resulting from this state of things, to which I was unaccustomed. In France I had almost always seen the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom pursuing courses diametrically opposed to each other; but in America I found that they were intimately united, and that they reigned in common over the same country.

There are certain populations in Europe whose unbelief is only equaled by their ignorance and their debasement, while in America one of the freest and most enlightened nations in the world fulfills all the outward duties of religion with fervor.

The sects that exist in the United States are innumerable. They all differ in respect to the worship which is due to the Creator; but they all agree in respect to the duties which are due from man to man. Each sect adores the Deity in its own peculiar manner, but all sects preach the same moral law in the name of God...Moreover, all the sects of the United States are comprised within the great unity of Christianity, and Christian morality is everywhere the same...

In the United States the sovereign authority is religious, and consequently hypocrisy must be common; but there is no country in the whole world in which the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America, and there can be no greater proof of its utility, and of its conformity to human nature, than that its influence is most powerfully felt over the most enlightened and free nation of the earth...

The Americans combine the notions of Christianity and of liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other; and with them this conviction does not spring from that barren traditionary faith which seems to vegetate in the soul rather than to live...

Thus religious zeal is perpetually warmed in the United States by the fires of patriotism. These men do not act exclusively from a consideration of a future life; eternity is only one motive of their devotion to the cause. If you converse with these missionaries of Christian civilization, you will be surprised to hear them speak so often of the goods of this world, and to meet a politician where you expected to find a priest. (Democracy in America, [New York: A. S. Barnes & Co., 1851), pp. 331, 332, 335, 336-7, 337; https://www.gutenberg.org/files/815/815-h/815-h.htm)

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.