2,103 Quotes About Liberty

"What a triumph for the advocates of despotism to find that we are incapable of governing ourselves, and that systems founded on the basis of equal liberty are merely ideal and fallacious."

"I have often expressed my sentiments, that every man, conducting himself as a good citizen, and being accountable to God alone for his religious opinions, ought to be protected in worshipping the Deity according to the dictates of his own conscience."

"[V]irtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government."

"The essence of constitutionalism in a democracy is not merely to shape and condition the nature of majorities, but also to stipulate that certain things are impermissible, no matter how large and fervent a majority might want them."

"Today it would be progress if everyone would stop talking about values. Instead, let us talk, as the Founders did, about virtues."

"A liberty to that only which is good, just, and honest."

"Liberty is the sovereignty of the individual."

"A war, or any wild-goose chase, is, as the vulgar use the phrase, a lucky turn-up of patronage for the minister, whose chief merit is the art of keeping himself in place."

"Mankind may amuse themselves with theoretic systems of liberty... but we can only discern its true value by the practical and wretched effects of slavery."