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"Liberty lies in
the hearts of men and women; when it dies
there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it."
— Learned Hand
(1872–1961) United
States Judge
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"God
grants liberty
only to those who love it and are always ready to guard and defend it."
—
Daniel Webster (1782-1852) Author, Lawyer and Patriot
"Can
the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their
only
firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these
liberties are of
the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath?"
— Thomas
Jefferson (1743-1826) Third President of the United States
“The
religion which has introduced civil liberty is the religion
of Christ and his apostles, which enjoins humility, piety, and
benevolence;
which acknowledges in every person a brother, or a sister, and a
citizen with
equal rights. This is the genuine Christianity, and to this we owe our
free
Constitution of government.”
— Noah Webster (1758-1843) Father of the Dictionary
&
American Patriot
“To preserve liberty
it is essential that the whole
body of people always possess arms and be taught alike, especially when
young,
how to use them”
— Richard Henry Lee (1732–1794) Founding Father
"Statesmen, my
dear Sir, may plan and speculate for
liberty, but it is religion and morality alone, which can establish the
principles upon which freedom can securely stand. The
only foundation of a free constitution is
pure virtue; and if this cannot be inspired into our people in a
greater
measure than they have it now, they may change their rulers and the
forms of
government, but they will not obtain a lasting liberty. They will only
exchange
tyrants and tyrannies."
— John
Adams (1797-1801) Second President of the United States
and Patriot
"Under
the law of nature, all men are born free, every one comes into the
world with a
right to his own person, which includes the liberty of moving and using
it at
his own will. This is what is called personal liberty, and is given him
by the
Author of nature, because necessary for his own sustenance."
— Thomas
Jefferson (1743-1826) Third President of the United States
“Liberty
can no more exist without virtue and
independence than the body can live and move without a soul.”
"Public
virtue cannot exist in a nation without private, and public virtue is
the only
foundation of republics."
— John
Adams (1797-1801) Second President of the United States
and Patriot
“The first maxim of a
man who loves liberty, should
be never to grant to rulers an atom of power that is not most clearly
and
indispensably necessary for the safety and well being of
society.”
—
Richard Henry Lee (1732–1794) Founding Father
“A
Constitution of
Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty,
once lost, is lost forever.”
— John Adams (1797-1801)
Second President of the United States
and Patriot
"To
suppose
that any form of government
will secure liberty or happiness
without any virtue in the people,
is a chimerical (imaginary;
fanciful or vainly conceived) idea."
— James Madison (1751-1836)
Father of the Constitution, 4th President of the United States
“I
am now—the friend of the
equal rights of men, of representative democracy, of republicanism and
tho
Declaration of Independence, the great charter of our national rights;
and of
course the friend of the indissoluble union and Constitution of the
states. I
am the enemy of all foreign influence, for all foreign influence is the
influence of tyranny. This is the only chosen spot
of liberty—this is the only republic on earth.”
"Live Free Or Die; Death
Is Not The Worst Of Evils."
— General
John Stark
(1728-1822) Served at Bunker Hill & General in the Continental
Army
“Liberty
must, at all hazards, be supported. We
have a right to it, derived from our Maker. But if we had not, our
fathers have
earned and bought it for us, at the expense of their ease, their
estates, their
pleasure, and their blood. And liberty cannot be preserved without a
general
knowledge among the. people, who have a right, from the frame of their
nature,
to knowledge, as their great Creator, who does nothing in vain, has
given them
understandings and a desire to know. But,
besides this, they have a right, an indisputable
unalienable, indefeasible,
divine right, to
that most dreaded and envied kind
of knowledge, I mean of the characters and conduct of their rulers.
Rulers are
no more than attorneys, agents, and trustees for the people; and if the cause, the interest
and trust, is insidiously
betrayed, or wantonly trifled away, the people have a right to revoke the authority
that they themselves have deputed,
and to constitute abler and
better agents, attorneys, and trustees."
—
John Adams
(1797-1801)
Second President of the United States
and Patriot
“Upon
this
law*, depend the natural rights of mankind, the supreme being gave
existence to
man, together with the means of preserving and beatifying that
existence. He
endowed him with rational faculties, by the help of which, to discern
and
pursue such things, as were consistent with his duty and interest, and
invested
him with an inviolable right to personal liberty, and personal safety.
Hence, in a
state of nature, no man had any moral power to deprive another of his
life,
limbs, property or liberty; nor the least authority to command, or
exact
obedience from him; except that which arose from the ties of
consanguinity.
Hence also,
the origin of all civil government, justly established, must be a
voluntary
compact, between the rulers and the ruled; and must be liable to such
limitations, as are necessary for the security of the absolute rights
of the
latter; for what original title can any man or set of men have, to
govern
others, except their own consent? To usurp dominion over a people, in
their own
despite, or to grasp at a more extensive power than they are willing to
entrust, is to violate that law of nature, which gives every man a
right to his
personal liberty; and can, therefore, confer no obligation to
obedience."
— Alexander
Hamilton (1755-1804) Lawyer, Secretary of the Treasury &
Secretary of State
"This is
what is called the law of nature, "which, being coeval with mankind,
and
dictated by God himself, is, of course, superior in obligation to any
other. It
is binding over all the globe, in all countries, and at all times. No
human
laws are of any validity, if contrary to this; and such of them as are
valid,
derive all their authority, mediately, or immediately, from this
original."
— Sir William
Blackstone (1723-1780) English jurist & author of
Blackstone’s
Commentaries on the Laws of England.
”The
only
foundation of a free Constitution is pure virtue, and if this cannot be
inspired into our people in a greater measure than they have it now,
they may
change their Rulers and the forms of government, but they will not
obtain a
lasting liberty.”
—
John Adams (1797-1801) Second President of the United States
and Patriot
“A
nation
of well-informed men who have been taught to know and prize the rights
which
God has given them cannot be enslaved. It is in the religion
of ignorance
that tyranny begins.” “Any society that would give
up a little liberty to gain
a little security will deserve neither and lose both.”
— Benjamin
Franklin (1706-1790) Statesman, Scientist, Inventor, Printer and
Philosopher
"Nothing
is more
certain than that a general profligacy and corruption of manners make a
people
ripe for destruction. A good form of government may hold the rotten
materials
together for some time, but beyond a certain pitch, even the best
constitution
will be ineffectual, and slavery must ensue."
— John Witherspoon
(1722-1794) Educator, Economist, Minister, Writer & Founding
Father
“A
diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of liberty”
— James
Madison (1751-1836) Fourth President of the United States
“We
have the greatest cause
for thankfulness to Almighty God … [He] hath inspired the
people of America
with a noble
spirit of liberty, and remarkably united them in standing up for that
invaluable blessing.”
— Jonathan Mayew (1720-1766)
Preacher
in The First Great Spiritual Awakening
“The rights of
Englishmen
are derived from God, not from king or Parliament, and would be secured
by the
study of history, law, and tradition.”
—
John Adams
(1797-1801) Second President of the United States
and Patriot
"The issue
today is the same as it has been
throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself
or be
ruled by a small elite."
—
Thomas
Jefferson (1743-1826) Third President of the United States
“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 from evil-minded rulers. The
greatest
dangers to Liberty
lurk in the insidious encroachments by men of zeal, well meaning but
without
understanding.”
— Louis D.
Brandeis (1856–1941) Former Supreme Court Justice
“The
only
foundation for a useful education in a republic is to be laid in
Religion. Without
this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no
liberty, and
liberty is the object and life of all republican governments.”
—
Benjamin Rush
(1745-1813) Founding Father& signer of the Declaration of
Independence
“Government
big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take
everything you
have …The course of history shows that as a government
grows, liberty decreases.”
— Thomas
Jefferson (1743-1826) Third President of the United States
"A
standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be
safe companions
to liberty. The means of defense against foreign danger, have been
always the
instruments of tyranny at home."
— James
Madison (1751-1836) Father of the Constitution, 4th President of the United States
“A
large portion of our citizens, who will not believe, even on
the evidence of facts, that any public evils exist, or are impending.
They
deride the apprehensions of those who foresee, that licentiousness will
prove,
as it ever has proved, fatal to liberty.”
— Fisher
Ames (1758-1808) Founding Father and framer of the First Amendment to
the
Constitution
"Law
and liberty cannot rationally become the objects of our love, unless
they first
become the objects of our knowledge."
— James
Wilson (1742-1798) Founding Father, assisted in drafting the
Constitution,
Supreme Court Justice
"The
most perfect freedom
consists in obeying the dictates of right reason, and submitting to
natural law.
When a man goes beyond or contrary to the law of nature and reason, he
becomes
the slave of base passions and vile lusts; he introduces confusion and
disorder
into society, and brings misery and destruction upon himself. This,
therefore,
cannot be called a state of freedom, but a state of the vilest slavery
and the
most dreadful bondage. The servants of sin and corruption are subjected
to the
worst kind of tyranny in the universe. Hence we conclude that where
licentiousness begins, liberty ends."
—
Samuel West (1730-1807) Minister
in The First Great Spiritual Awakening
“He
is the best friend to
American liberty, who is most sincere and active in promoting true and
undefiled religion, and who set himself with the greatest firmness to
bear down
on profanity and immorality of every kind. Whoever is an avowed enemy
of God, I
scruple not to call him an enemy to his country.”
— John Witherspoon (1722-1794)
Educator, Economist, Minister, Writer & Founding Father
"Equal laws are
essential to liberty. Where
there is no law, there is no liberty; and nothing deserves the name of
law but
that which is certain and universal in its operation upon all the
members of
the community."
— Benjamin Rush
(1745-1813) Founding Father& signer of the Declaration of
Independence
"Those
who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo
the
fatigues of supporting it."
— Thomas
Paine (1736-1809) Patriot, Author & Pamphleteer
“Liberty
exists in proportion to wholesome restraint."
—
Daniel Webster (1782-1852) Author, Lawyer and Patriot
“Eternal
vigilance is the price of liberty.”
— Thomas
Jefferson (1743-1826) Third President of the United States
(quote attributed to)
"There are more
instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and
silent
encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden
usurpations.”
— James
Madison (1751-1836) Fourth President of the United States
“Freedom
is not a gift
bestowed upon us by other men, but a right that belongs to us by the
laws of
God and nature.”
— Benjamin Franklin
(1706-1790) Statesman, Scientist, Inventor, Printer and Philosopher
"Guard
with jealous
attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that
jewel.
Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever
you give
up that force, you are inevitably ruined."
— Patrick
Henry (1736-1799)
Patriot, Lawyer and Orator
"The
essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in
human hands,
will ever be liable to abuse."
— James Madison (1751-1836) Father of
the Constitution,
4th President of the United States
"The
God who gave us
life, gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy,
but
cannot disjoin them."
—
Thomas
Jefferson (1743-1826) Third President of the United States
"Your
love of liberty
-- your respect for the laws -- your habits of industry -- and your
practice of
the moral and religious obligations, are the strongest claims to
national and
individual happiness."
— George Washington
(1732-1799) Father of the Country, 1st President of the United States
“The
connexion between
different portions of the same people and between a people and their
government, is a connexion of duties as well as of rights. In the long
conflict
of twelve years which had preceded and led to the Declaration of
Independence,
our fathers had been not less faithful to their duties, than tenacious
of their
rights. Their resistance had not been rebellion. It was not a restive
and
ungovernable spirit of ambition, bursting from the bonds of colonial
subjection;
it was the deep and wounded sense of successive wrongs, upon which
complaint
had been only answered by aggravation, and petition repelled with
contumely,
which had driven them to their last stand upon the adamantine rock of
human
rights.”
— John Quincy Adams,
(1767-1848) 6th President of the United States
"Knowledge
will forever
govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must
arm themselves
with the power which knowledge gives."
— James
Madison (1751-1836) Fourth President of the United States
“The
world has never had a
good definition of the word liberty, and the American people, just now,
are
much in want of one. We all declare for liberty, but in using the same
word we
do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for
each
man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor;
while to
others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with
other men,
and the product of other men's labor. Here are two, not only different,
but
incompatible things, called by the same name, liberty. And it follows
that each
of these things is, by the respective parties, called by two different
and
incompatible names—liberty and tyranny.
The
shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, for which the sheep
thanks
the shepherd as a liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same
act, as
the destroyer of liberty, especially as the sheep was a black one.
Plainly, the
sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of the word
liberty, and
precisely the same difference prevails to-day among us human creatures,
even in
the North, and all professing to love liberty.”
—
Abraham
Lincoln (1809–1865) Sixteenth President of the United
States
"Liberty and Union, Now
and Forever, One and Inseparable."
— Daniel
Webster (1782-1852) Author, Lawyer and Patriot
“Four
score
and seven years ago our forefathers brought forth on this continent a
new
nation concieved in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all
men are
created equal..”
— Abraham
Lincoln (1809–1865) Sixteenth President of the United
States
“Liberty
has never come
from government. Liberty
has always come from the subjects of government. The history of liberty
is the
history of resistance.”
—
Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924) 28th President of the United States
"The object
and practice of liberty lies in the limitation of governmental power."
— Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964) Army General, involved in war
in the Philippines,
World War I, II & Korean War
"If
you want total security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed, given
medical
care and so on. The only thing lacking ... is freedom."
— Dwight
D. Eisenhower (1890-1969) Supreme Commander during WWII & 34th
President of U.S.
"Great
nations which
fail to meet their responsibilities [to God] are consigned to the dust
bin of
history. We grew from that small, weak republic which had as its assets
spirit,
optimism, faith in God and an unshakeable belief that free men and
women could
govern themselves wisely. We became the leader of the free world, an
example
for all those who cherish freedom. If we are to continue to be that
example—if we are to preserve our own
freedom—we must understand those who
would dominate
us and deal with them with determination."
— Ronald Reagan (1911-2004)
40th President of the United States
“What
do we mean when we say
that first of all we seek liberty? I often wonder whether we do not
rest our
hopes too much upon constitutions, upon laws, and upon courts. These
are false
hopes; believe me, these are false hopes. Liberty
lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no
constitution, no
law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even
do much
to help it. And what is this liberty which must lie in the hearts of
men and
women? It is not the ruthless, the unbridled will; it is not freedom to
do as
one likes. That is the denial of liberty, and leads straight to its
overthrow.
A society in which men recognize no check upon their freedom soon
becomes a
society where freedom is the possession of only a savage few; as we
have
learned to our sorrow.”
—
Learned
Hand (1872–1961) United
States Judge
“Freedom
prospers when
religion is vibrant and the rule of law under God is
acknowledged.”
— Ronald Reagan (1911-2004)
40th President of the United States
“But
he who
looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being
no hearer
that forgets but a doer that acts, he shall be blessed in his doing. So
speak
and so act as those who are to be judged under the law of
liberty.”
— James 1:25,
2:12 RSV
“Freedom
is never more than
one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our
children in the
bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them
to do the
same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children
and our
children’s children what it was once like in the United States
were men were free.”
— Ronald Reagan (1911-2004)
40th President of the United States
“And
you shall hallow
the
fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout the land to
all its
inhabitants; [proclaim liberty throughout all the
land unto all the
inhabitants thereof: KJV] it shall be a jubilee for you,
when each of you
shall return to his property [freedom from debt bondage] and each of
you shall
return to his family. A jubilee shall that fiftieth year be to you; in
it you
shall neither sow, nor reap what grows of itself, nor gather the grapes
from
the undressed vines. For it is a jubilee; it shall be holy to you; you
shall
eat what it yields out of the field. ‘In this year of jubilee
each of you shall
return to his property. ...You shall not wrong one another, but you
shall fear
your God; for I am the LORD your God. ‘Therefore you shall do
my statutes, and
keep my ordinances and perform them; so you will dwell in the land
securely.’”
— Leviticus 25:10-13, 17-18 RSV
"Thus
says the LORD,
the God of Israel: I made a covenant with your fathers when I brought
them out
of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage, saying, 'At the end
of six
years each of you must set free the fellow Hebrew (slave or
bond-servants) who has been sold to you and
has served you six years; you must set him free from your service.' But
your
fathers did not listen to me or incline their ears to me. You
recently
repented and did what was right in my eyes by proclaiming liberty, each
to his
neighbor, and you made a covenant before me in the house which is
called by my
name; but then you turned around and profaned my name when each of you
took
back his male and female slaves, whom you had set free according to
their desire,
and you brought them into subjection to be your slaves. Therefore, thus
says
the LORD: You have not obeyed me by proclaiming liberty, every one to
his
brother and to his neighbor; behold, I proclaim to you liberty to the
sword, to
pestilence, and to famine, says the LORD. I will make you a horror to
all the
kingdoms of the earth. And the men who transgressed my covenant and did
not
keep the terms of the covenant which they made before me, I will make
like the
calf which they cut in two and passed between its
parts—“
— Jeremiah 34:13-18 RSV
"Now the
Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is
freedom [liberty]"
—
2 Corinthians 3:17 RSV
