Liberty Quotes

When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty.
Thomas Jefferson

Government, Fear, Tyranny

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Benjamin Franklin

Give, Deserve, Nor

Firearms are second only to the Constitution in importance; they are the peoples' liberty's teeth.
George Washington

Second, Importance, Teeth

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

Time, Blood, Tree

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

Success, Friend, Nation

Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty.
Ronald Reagan

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

Men, Nation, Equal

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

Whole, Sure, Mass

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

Law, Others, Around

The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty. Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of liberty.
Abraham Lincoln

Him, Same, While

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

Life, Happiness, Men

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

Men, Around, Spirit

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

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

Change, May, Others

The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time.
Thomas Jefferson

Life, Time, God

China has to go along with world trends. That's democracy, liberty, individual freedom. China sooner or later has to go that way. It cannot go backward.
Dalai Lama

Freedom, Democracy, Cannot

Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty.
Plato

Democracy, Tyranny, Slavery

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

Small, Rather, Degree

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

Government, Progress, Natural

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

Age, Country, Priest

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?
Mahatma Gandhi

Democracy, Mad, Dead

Our contest is not only whether we ourselves shall be free, but whether there shall be left to mankind an asylum on earth for civil and religious liberty.
Samuel Adams

Free, Earth, Whether

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

Expect, Despotism, Translated

The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave.
Thomas Jefferson

Sea, Wave, Boisterous

Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.
Alexis de Tocqueville

Equality, Nothing, Democracy

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.
Mahatma Gandhi

Life, Him, Soul

Quote

What light is to the eyes - what air is to the lungs - what love is to the heart, liberty is to the soul of man.
Robert Green Ingersoll

Love, Heart, Eyes

Over grown military establishments are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty.
George Washington

Government, Republican, Military

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

True, Foundation, Slaves

Where liberty is, there is my country.
Benjamin Franklin

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Daniel Webster

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