This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Liberty will not descend to a people, a people must raise themselves to liberty; it is a blessing that must be earned before it can be enjoyed." - Charles Caleb Colton
"If the white man wants to live in peace with the Indian, he can live in peace. Treat all men alike. Give them all the same law. Give them all an even chance to live and grow. All men were made by the same Great Spirit Chief. They are all brothers. The earth is the mother of all people, and all people should have equal rights upon it. You might as well expect the rivers to run backward as that any man who was born a free man should be contented when penned up and denied liberty to go where he pleases." - Chief Joseph, born Hinmuuttu-yalatlat
"The earth is the mother of all people, and all people should have equal rights upon it. You might as well expect the rivers to run backward as that any man who was born a free man should be contented when penned up and denied liberty to go where he pleases." - Chief Joseph, born Hinmuuttu-yalatlat
"The human race is in the best condition when it has the greatest degree of liberty." - Dante, full name Durante degli Alighieri, aka Dante Alighieri NULL
"Liberty has restraints but no frontiers." - David Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor
"Liberty is not merely a privilege to be conferred; it is a habit to be acquired." - David Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor
"Nothing is so contagious as example; never was there any considerable good or ill done that does not produce its like. We imitate good actions through emulation, and bad ones though a malignity in our nature, which shame conceals, and example sets at liberty." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt
"Liberty, without wisdom, is license." - Edmund Burke
"The only liberty that is valuable is a liberty connected with order; that not only exists along with order and virtue, but which cannot exist at all without them. It inheres in good and steady government, as in its substance and vital principle." - Edmund Burke
"The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts." - Edmund Burke
"There is no true liberty for the individual except as he finds it in the liberty of all." - Edwin Markham
"The new religion will teach the dignity of human nature and its infinite possibilities for development. It will teach the solidarity of the race and that all must rise and fall as one. Its creed will be justice, liberty, equality for all the children of earth." - Elizabeth Cady Stanton
"The ultimate end of all revolutionary social change is to establish the sanctity of human life, the dignity of man, the right of every human being to liberty and well-being." - Emma Goldman
"It is a strange desire to seek power and lose liberty." - Francis Bacon
"It is a good thing to demand liberty for ourselves and for those who agree with us, but it is a better thing and a rarer thing to give liberty to others who do not agree." - Franklin D. Roosevelt, fully Franklin Delano Roosevelt, aka FDR
"Liberty requires opportunity to make a living - a living which give man not only enough to live by, but something to live for." - Franklin D. Roosevelt, fully Franklin Delano Roosevelt, aka FDR
"The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle... If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters." - Frederick Douglass, born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey
"It is not truth, justice, liberty, which men seek; they seek only themselves. And O that they knew how to seek themselves aright!" - Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi
"Only that will which obeys law is free; for it obeys itself - it is independent and so free. When the state or our country constitutes a community of existence; when the subjective will of man submits to laws - the contradiction between liberty and necessity vanishes." - Georg Hegel, fully Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
"Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it." - George Bernard Shaw
"The crying need of the nation is not for better morals, cheaper bread, temperance, liberty, culture, redemption of fallen sisters and brothers, nor the grace, love and fellowship of the Trinity, but simply for enough money." - George Bernard Shaw
"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." - George MacDonald
"A freeman contending for liberty on his own ground is superior to any slavish mercenary on earth." - George Washington
"Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness." - George Washington
"Both houses of Congress have, by their joint Committee, requested me “To recommend to the People of the United States, a Day of Public Thanksgiving and Prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful Hearts the many Signal Favours of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a Form of Government for their Safety and Happiness”... That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks for his kind Care and Protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation; for the signal and manifold Mercies, and the favourable Interpositions of his Providence in the Course & Conclusion of the late War; for the great Degree of Tranquillity, Union, and Plenty, which we have since enjoyed; for the peaceable and rational Manner in which we have been enabled to establish Constitutions of Government for our Safety and Happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted; for the civil and religious Liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general, for all the great and various Favours which he hath been pleased to confer upon us... to enable us all, whether in public or private Stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually... to promote the Knowledge and Practice of true Religion and Virtue, and the increase of Science among them and us; and generally to grant unto all mankind such a Degree of temporal Prosperity as He alone knows to be best." - George Washington
"Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth." - George Washington
"Liberty produces wealth and wealth destroys liberty." - Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
"True obedience is true liberty." - Henry Ward Beecher
"Vigilance is not only the price of liberty, but of success of any sort." - Henry Ward Beecher
"There is no liberty to men whose passions are stronger than their religious feelings; there is no liberty to men in whom ignorance predominates over knowledge; there is no liberty to men who know not how to govern themselves." - Henry Ward Beecher
"Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith." - Horace Greeley
"Here in the United States, we are brought up to believe that our nation is different from others, an exception in the world, uniquely moral; that we expand into other lands in order to bring civilization, liberty, democracy. But if you know some history you know that's not true." - Howard Zinn
"He who discovers his secrets to another sells him his liberty and becomes his slave." - James Howell
"Of all the evils to public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes. And armies, and debts, and taxes, are the known instruments for bringing the many under the dominion of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds are added to those of subduing the force of the people! No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare." - James Madison
"Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions. Where there is an excess of liberty, the effect is the same, though from an opposite cause. Government is instituted to protect property of every sort, as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government that alone is a just government which impartially secures to every man whatever is his own." - James Madison
"The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty." - James Madison
"Duty is the grandest of ideas, because it implies the idea of God, of the soul, of liberty, of responsibility, of immortality." - Jean Baptiste Lacordaire, fully Jean Baptiste Henri Lacordaire
"Man is condemned to be free. Condemned, because he did not create himself, yet is nevertheless at liberty, and from the moment that he is thrown into this world he is responsible for everything he does." - Jean-Paul Sartre
"Every law is contrary to liberty." - Jeremy Bentham
"If only we are faithful to our past, we shall not have to fear our future. The cause of peace, justice and liberty need not fail and must not fail." - John Foster Dulles
"The political problem of mankind is to combine three things: Economic Efficiency, Social Justice, and Individual Liberty." - John Maynard Keynes
"Give me the liberty to know, to think, to believe, and to utter freely, according to conscience, above all other liberties." - John Milton
"To make the people fittest to choose, and the chosen fittest to govern, will be to mend our corrupt and faulty education , to teach the people faith, not without virtue, temperance, modesty, sobriety, parsimony, justice; not to admire wealth or honor; to hate turbulence and ambition; to place every one his private welfare and happiness in the public peace, liberty and safety." - John Milton
"Virtue cannot be fully attained without liberty and the absence of liberty proves that virtue in its full protection is wanting. Therefore a man is free in proportion to the measure of his virtues, and the extent to which he is free determines what his virtues can accomplish." - John of Salisbury NULL
"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." - John Philpot Curran
"The condition upon which God has given liberty to man is eternal vigilance." - John Philpot Curran
"The love of power and the love of liberty are in eternal antagonism." - John Stuart Mill
"The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection... The only purpose of which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others." - John Stuart Mill