"The function of the true state is to impose the minimum restrictions and safeguard the maximum liberties of the people, and it never regards the person as a thing."
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Liberty quotes
Liberty
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Liberty quotes (page 21 of 131)
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"You have set up in New York Harbor a monstrous idol which you call Liberty. The only thing that remains to complete that monument is to put on its pedestal the inscription written by Dante on the gate of hell: All hope abandon ye who enter here."
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"I sometimes think that the price of liberty is not so much eternal vigilance as eternal dirt."
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"Let us therefore animate and encourage each other, and show the whole world that a Freeman, contending for liberty on his own ground, is superior to any slavish mercenary on earth."
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"Absolute liberty is absence of restraint; responsibility is restraint; therefore, the ideally free individual is responsible to himself."
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"Anyone in a free society where the laws are unjust has an obligation to break the law."
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"... the American Colonists under King George III had it pretty good compared to us. They would wonder why we haven't taken up arms and seceded yet."
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"Liberty is obedience to the law which one has laid down for oneself"
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"The money that we possess is the instrument of liberty, that which we lack and strive to obtain is the instrument of slavery."
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"We are now in a position to understand the anti-Semite. He is a man who is afraid. Not of the Jews, to be sure, but of himself, of his own consciousness, of his liberty, of his instincts, of his responsibilities, of solitariness, of change, of society, and of the world of everything except the Jews."
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"We protest solemnly in the face of mankind, that we desire peace at any sacrifice, save that of honor."
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"The only foundation of a free Constitution, is pure Virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our People, in a great Measure, than they have it now. They may change their Rulers, and the forms of Government, but they will not obtain a lasting Liberty."
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"I've flown out of character so many times. In that sense I've been lucky, because I've been given the liberty to do just about anything I've wanted to do in my lifetime."
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"Government should allow persons to engage in whatever conduct they want to, no matter how deviant or abnormal it may be, so long as (a) they know what they are doing, (b) they consent to it, and (c) no one - at least no one other than the participants - is harmed by it."
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"Photography has arrived at the point where it is capable of liberating painting from all literature, from the anecdote, and even from the subject. In any case, a certain aspect of the subject now belongs to the domain of photography. So shouldn't painters profit from their newly acquired liberty, and make use of it to do other things?"
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"It was not a religion that attacked us that September day. It was al-Qaeda. We will not sacrifice the liberties we cherish or hunker down behind walls of suspicion and mistrust."
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"Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in our bosoms."
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"This is true liberty, when free-born men, having to advise the public, may speak free."
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"Liberty cannot be guaranteed by law. Nor by any thing else except the resolution of free citizens to defend their liberties."
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"The distinguishing part of our constitution is its liberty. To preserve that liberty inviolate, is the peculiar duty and proper trust of a member of the house of commons. But the liberty, the only liberty I mean, is a liberty connected with order, and that not only exists with order and virtue, but cannot exist at all without them. It inheres in good and steady government, as in its substance and vital principle."
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