"If you defend a behavior by arguing that people are programmed directly for it, then how do you continue to defend it if your speculation is wrong, for the behavior then becomes unnatural and worthy of condemnation. Better to stick resolutely to a philosophical position on human liberty: what free adults do with each other in their own private lives is their business alone. It need not be vindicated and must not be condemned by genetic speculation."
Liberty quotes
Liberty
2.6K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Topics related to Liberty
Browse quotes that often appear alongside liberty — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Liberty quotes (page 41 of 131)
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"Where there's liberty, art succeeds."
"None deserves liberty who is not ready to give liberty"
"We shouldn't be fearful of freedom, we shouldn't be fearful of individual liberty."
"Liberty never meant the license to do anything at will."
"The seeker is at liberty to extract from this treasure any meaning he likes, so as to enable him to enforce in his life the central teaching."
"I would not flinch from sacrificing even a million lives for India's liberty."
"Of all the superstitions that affect India, none is so great as that a knowledge of the English language is necessary for imbibing ideas of liberty and developing accuracy to thought."
"We dare not enter the kingdom of liberty with mere life-homage to truth and nonviolence."
"Individual liberty is allowed to man only to a certain extent. He cannot forget that he is a social being and his individual liberty has to be curtailed at every step."
"No power on earth can resist the lovers of liberty who are ready not to kill opponents, but be killed by them."
"Liberty is a dearly bought commodity and prisons are factories where it is manufactured."
"The one condition for fighting for peace and liberty is to acquire self-restraint."
"Freedom is like birth. Till we are fully free, we are slaves."
"If it's necessary to form a Black Nationalist army, we'll form a Black Nationalist army. It'll be ballot or the bullet. It'll be liberty or it'll be death."
"Liberty or death was what brought about the freedom of whites in this country from the English."
"I have always compared our traditions of liberty, like those of Abraham Lincoln and Ho Chi Minh."
"Liberty is the possibility of isolation."
"Progress in thought is the assertion of individualism against authority."
"Liberty is the chosen resort of the artistic shopper."