Famous Quotes & Sayings

H. L. Mencken

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

H. L. Mencken

Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule—and both commonly succeed, and are right.

H. L. Mencken

Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.

H. L. Mencken

A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.

H. L. Mencken

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The English think they are free. They are free only during the election of members of parliament.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Free people, remember this maxim: we may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is once lost.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery.

James Boswell

If a man who is born to a fortune cannot make himself easier and freer than those who are not, he gains nothing.

James Frey

Even a second of freedom is worth more than a lifetime of bondage.

J. William Fulbright

In a democracy, dissent is an act of faith.

J. William Fulbright

In a democracy dissent is an act of faith. Like medicine, the test of its value is not in its taste, but in its effects.

Iyanla Vanzant

To me, freedom means having the power, the inherent right, the capacity and the ability to make choices that honour who I am.

Iyanla Vanzant

When you can look a thing dead in the eye, acknowledge that it exists, call it exactly what it is, and decide what role it will take in your life then, my Beloved, you have taken the first step toward your freedom.

Immanuel Kant

God, freedom, and immortality are untenable in the light of pure reason.

Immanuel Kant

Act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world.

Immanuel Kant

Freedom is independence of the compulsory will of another, and in so far as it tends to exist with the freedom of all according to a universal law, it is the one sole original inborn right belonging to every man in virtue of his humanity.

Immanuel Kant

Freedom is the alone unoriginated birthright of man, and belongs to him by force of his humanity; and is independence on the will and co-action of every other in so far as this consists with every other person's freedom.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

It is easier to rule others than to keep from being ruled oneself.

Herbert Marcuse

In conditions of private property ... "life-activity" stands in the service of property instead of property standing the service of free life-activity.

Herbert Hoover

A splendid storehouse of integrity and freedom has been bequeathed to us by our forefathers. In this day of confusion, of peril to liberty, our high duty is to see that this storehouse is not robbed of its contents.

Herbert Hoover

It is a paradox that every dictator has climbed to power on the ladder of free speech. Immediately on attaining power each dictator has suppressed all free speech except his own.

Erwin McManus

It's not your freedom to choose that makes you free. It's what you choose in that freedom that makes you free.

Fisher Ames

Liberty is not to be enjoyed, indeed it cannot exist, without the habits of just subordination; it consists, not so much in removing all restraint from the orderly, as in imposing it on the violent.

Henry Miller

The only law which is really lived up to wholeheartedly and with a vengeance is the law of conformity.

Fulton J. Sheen

Freedom does not mean that right to do whatever we please, but rather to do as we ought. The right to do whatever we please reduces freedom to a physical power and forgets that freedom is a moral power.

Frank Murphy

Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion all have a double aspect - freedom of thought and freedom of action.

Gary Paulsen

I tried to contain myself... but I escaped!

George Jean Nathan

Bad officials are the ones elected by good citizens who do not vote.

There is no tyrant like custom, and no freedom where its edicts are not resisted.

Chris Patten

In democracy everyone has the right to be represented, even the jerks.

Chris Patten

In a democracy everybody has a right to be represented, including the jerks.

George W. Bush

I love freedom of speech.