"Your freedom when it loses its fetters becomes itself the fetter of a greater freedom."
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Liberty quotes
Liberty
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Liberty quotes (page 26 of 131)
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"Property must be secured, or liberty cannot exist."
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"If to break loose from the bounds of reason, and to want that restraint of examination and judgment which keeps us from choosing or doing the worst, be liberty, true liberty, madmen and fools are the only freemen: but yet, I think, nobody would choose to be mad for the sake of such liberty, but he that is mad already."
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"It rankles me when somebody tries to force somebody to do something."
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"I began taking liberties a long time ago; now it is standard practice for most directors to ignore the rules."
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"Liberty begets anarchy, anarchy leads to despotism, and despotism brings about liberty once again. Millions of human beings have perished without being able to make any of these systems triumph."
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"The sanctity of womanhood is incompatible with social liberty and social claims; and for a woman emancipation means corruption."
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"China has to go along with world trends. That's democracy, liberty, individual freedom. China sooner or later has to go that way. It cannot go backward."
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"Many free countries have lost their liberty, and ours may lose hers; but, if she shall, be it my proudest plume, not that I was the last to desert, but that I never deserted her."
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"Truth, in its struggles for recognition, passes through four distinct stages. First, we say it is damnable, dangerous, disorderly, and will surely disrupt society. Second, we declare it is heretical, infidelic and contrary to the Bible. Third, we say it is really a matter of no importance either one way or the other. Fourth, we aver that we have always upheld it and believed it."
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"Patriotism is a menace to liberty."
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"There is no greater fallacy than the belief that aims and purposes are one thing, while methods and tactics are another ... All human experience teaches that methods and means cannot be separated from the ultimate aim."
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"Liberty will not descend to a people, a people must raise themselves to liberty..."
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"Say what you like about my bloody murderous government,' I says, 'but don't insult me poor bleedin' country."
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"All forms of government are pernicious, including good government."
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"Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without."
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"Every individual necessarily labors to render the annual revenue of society as great as he can. He generally neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. He intends only his own gain, and he is, in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was not part of his intention."
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"We are but a day in this world, and in that day the fashion is changed a thousand times: all seek liberty, yet all deprive themselves of it."
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"Beauty and folly are old companions."
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"Those who would trade in their freedom for their protection deserve neither."
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