This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Nothing is more disgusting than the crowing about liberty by slaves, as most men are, and the flippant mistaking for freedom of some paper preamble like a Declaration of Independence, of the statue right to vote, by those who never dared to think or to act.
As to the freedom of the will, a very different account must be given of it as it exists in God and as its exists for us... That idea of good impelled God to choose one thing rather than another... Thus that supreme indifference in God is the supreme proof of his omnipotence. But as to man, since he finds the nature of all goodness and truth already determined by God, and his will cannot bear upon anything else, it is evident that he embraces the true and the good the more willingly and hence the more freely in proportion as he sees the true and the good more clearly, and that he is never indifferent save when he does not know what is the more true or the better, or at least when he does not see clearly enough to prevent him from doubting about it. Thus the indifference which attaches to human liberty is very different from that which belongs to the divine.
Better | Enough | Freedom | God | Good | Indifference | Liberty | Man | Nature | Omnipotence | Truth | Will | God |
The pulpit is in more danger of selling its freedom through catering to the public than of losing its liberty through government pressure.
Danger | Freedom | Government | Liberty | Public | Government | Danger |
Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.
Better | Conformity | Conspiracy | Culture | Liberty | Self | Self-reliance | Society | Surrender | Virtue | Virtue | Society |
Robert Ingersoll, fully Robert Green "Bob" Ingersoll
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. Without liberty, the brain is a dungeon, where the chained thoughts die with their pinions pressed against the hingeless doors.
Ronald Reagan, fully Ronald Wilson Reagan
I hope we have once again reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There’s a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: as government expands, liberty contracts.
Cause | Government | Hope | Law | Liberty | Man | People | Government |
Robert Ingersoll, fully Robert Green "Bob" Ingersoll
The more liberty you give away the more you will have.
Saint Ambrose, born Aurelius Ambrosius NULL
The wise man is free, since one who does as he wishes is free. Because he does what he wishes, the free man is wise. One who acts with wisdom has nothing to fear, for fear lives in sin. Where there is no fear there is liberty; where there is liberty there is power of doing what one wishes. Therefore, only the wise man is free.
Fear | Liberty | Man | Nothing | Power | Sin | Wisdom | Wise | Wishes |
Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
Liberty never came from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of government. The history of liberty is the history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it.
Government | History | Liberty | Power |
W. E. B. Du Bois, fully William Edward Burghardt Du Bois
The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.
Whether in chains or in laurels, liberty knows nothing but victory.
Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
The history of liberty is the history of the limitations of governmental power, not the increase of it. When we resist the concentration of power we are resisting the powers of death. Concentration of power precedes the destruction of human liberties.
The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves.
Happiness must be achieved through liberty rather than in spite of liberty.
Liberty |
Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
The history of liberty is a history of limitation of government power, not the increase of it.
Government | History | Liberty | Power | Government |
I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.
Defense | Justice | Liberty | Moderation | Virtue | Virtue | Moderation |