Echoes

The cause of freedom is not the cause of a race or a sect or a party or a class — it is the cause of humankind, the very birthright of humanity.

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.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time.

Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.

Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.

The law will never make men free; it is men who have got to make the law free.

It is better and more satisfactory to acquit a thousand guilty persons than to put a single innocent one to death.

Nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people.

Liberty is never out of bounds or off limits; it spreads wherever it can capture the imagination of men.

I rebel — therefore we exist.

Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.

There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.

No man is free who is not master of himself.

No man is free who is not master of himself.

Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.

The needs of a human being are sacred. Their satisfaction cannot be subordinated either to reasons of state, or to any consideration of money, nationality, race, or colour, or to the moral or other value attributed to the human being in question, or to any consideration whatsoever. There is no legitimate limit to the satisfaction of the needs of a human being except as imposed by necessity and by the needs of other human beings. The limit is only legitimate if the needs of all human beings receive an equal degree of attention.

But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.

Do not mistake yourself by believing that your being has something in it more exalted than that of others.

Even despots accept the excellence of liberty. The simple truth is that they wish to keep it for themselves and promote the idea that no one else is at all worthy of it. Thus, our opinion of liberty does not reveal our differences but the relative value which we place on our fellow man. We can state with conviction, therefore, that a man's support for absolute government is in direct proportion to the contempt he feels for his country.

The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself.

…That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom.

The natural effort of every individual to better his own condition, when suffered to exert itself with freedom and security is so powerful a principle that it is alone, and without any assistance, not only capable of carrying on the society to wealth and prosperity, but of surmounting a hundred impertinent obstructions with which the folly of human laws too often incumbers its operations; though the effect of these obstructions is always more or less either to encroach upon its freedom, or to diminish its security.

He who is brave is free.

Do we call this the land of the free? What is it to be free from King George and continue the slaves of King Prejudice? What is it to be born free and not to live free? What is the value of any political freedom, but as a means to moral freedom? Is it a freedom to be slaves, or a freedom to be free, of which we boast? We are a nation of politicians, concerned about the outmost defences only of freedom. It is our children's children who may perchance be really free.