Quotes About Freedom

As our Town undergoes an epiphany, as we begin to understand that our freedom is being systematically stolen from us, step by step day by day, it occurred to me that we might find it instructive to read what others have said about liberty and freedom throughout history.

I may not like what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

-Voltaire

The First Amendment is often inconvenient. But that is besides the point. Inconvenience does not absolve the government of its obligation to tolerate speech.

-Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy

Here is my advice as we begin the century that will lead to 2081. First, guard the freedom of ideas at all costs. Be alert that dictators have always played on the natural human tendency to blame others and to oversimplify. And don't regard yourself as a guardian of freedom unless you respect and preserve the rights of people you disagree with to free, public, unhampered expression.

-Gerard K. O'Neill

Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.

-Abraham Lincoln

Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.

-Thomas Paine

Men fight for freedom, then they begin to accumulate laws to take it away from themselves.

-Author Unknown

Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it. The history of liberty is a history of resistance.

-Woodrow Wilson

The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.

-Louis D. Brandeis

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.

- William Pitt

The basis of a democratic state is liberty.

-Aristotle

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

-Thomas Jefferson

The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves.

-William Hazlitt

There are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by the gradual and silent encroachment of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpation.

-James Madison

A little rebellion now and then is a good thing.

-Thomas Jefferson

Censorship reflects society's lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime.

-Potter Stewart

The test of democracy is freedom of criticism.

-David Ben-Gurion

If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.

-John Stuart Mill

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.

-John F. Kennedy

If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.

-Noam Chomsky

The first condition of progress is the removal of censorship.

-George Bernard Shaw

“Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever.”

-Nadine Gordimer

“By placing discretion in the hands of an official to grant or deny a license, such a statute creates a threat of censorship that by its very existence chills free speech.”

-Harry A. Blackmun

Political tags - such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth - are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.

-Robert A. Heinlein

Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual).

-Ayn Rand

We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.

-Ayn Rand

A government is the most dangerous threat to man's rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims.

-Ayn Rand