Famous Quotes & Sayings

Pope Francis

I think both freedom of religion and freedom of expression are both fundamental human rights, everyone has not only the freedom and the right but the obligation to say what Pope Francis thinks for the common good... we have the right to have this freedom openly without offending.

Ramana Maharshi

The very fact that we wish for liberation shows that freedom from all bondage is our real nature. It is not to be freshly acquired. All that is necessary is to get rid of the false notion that we are bound.

James Otis

There can be no prescription old enough to supersede the Law of Nature and the grant of God Almighty, who has given to all men a natural right to be free, and they have it ordinarily in their power to make themselves so, if they please.

James Otis

Can there be any liberty where property is taken away without consent?

James Mackintosh

It is not because we have been free, but because we have a right to be free, that we ought to demand freedom. Justice and liberty have neither birth nor race, youth nor age.

James Madison

In Europe, charters of liberty have been granted by power. America has set the example . . . of charters of power granted by liberty. This revolution in the practice of the world, may, with an honest praise, be pronounced the most triumphant epoch of its history, and the most consoling presage of its happiness.

James Madison

If this spirit shall ever be so far debased, as to tolerate a law not obligatory on the legislature, as well as on the people, the people will be prepared to tolerate any thing but liberty.

James Madison

No man will subject himself to the ridicule of pretending that any natural connection subsists between the sun or the seasons, and the period within which human virtue can bear the temptations of power. Happily for mankind, liberty is not, in this respect, confined to any single point of time, but lies within extremes, which afford sufficient latitude for all the variations which may be required by the various situations and circumstances of civil society.

James Madison

Popular liberty might then have escaped the indelible reproach of decreeing to the same citizens, the hemlock on one day, and statues on the next.

James Madison

In civilized communities, property as well as personal rights are the essential object of the laws, which encourage industry by securing the enjoyment of its fruits: that industry from which property results, and that enjoyment which consists not merely in its immediate use, but in its posthumous destination to objects of choice and of kindred affection. In a just and free government, therefore, the rights both of property and of persons ought to be effectually guarded.

James Madison

Democracies have been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their death.

James Madison

The ultimate authority ... resides in the people alone.

James Madison

I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.

James Madison

It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.

James Madison

Liberty is to faction, what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires. But it could not be a less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction, than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency.

James Madison

If we advert to the nature of republican government, we shall find that the censorial power is in the people over the government, and not in the government over the people.

James Madison

The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home.

James Madison

No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

Soren Kierkegaard

How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.

Soren Kierkegaard

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.

Thomas B. Macaulay

As freedom is the only safeguard of governments, so are order and moderation generally necessary to preserve freedom.

Thomas B. Macaulay

I have long been convinced that institutions purely democratic must, sooner or later, destroy liberty or civilization, or both.

Thomas B. Macaulay

Many politicians are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim.

Thomas Hobbes

Unnecessary laws are not good laws, but traps for money.

Tim Berners-Lee

Freedom of connection with any application to any party is the fundamental social basis of the internet. And now, is the basis of the society built on the internet.

Tim Berners-Lee

It's time to recognise the Internet as a basic human right, that means guaranteeing affordable access for all, ensuring Internet packets are delivered without commercial or political discrimination, and protecting the privacy and freedom of Web users regardless of where they live.

Thomas Jefferson

But the fact being once established, that the press is impotent when it abandons itself to falsehood, I leave to others to restore it to its strength, by recalling it within the pale of truth. Within that, it is a noble institution, equally the friend of science and of civil liberty.

Thomas Campion

Lost is our freedom When we submit to women so: Why do we need 'em When, in their best, they work our woe?

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

O Liberty...! is it well To leave the gates unguarded?

Rose Macaulay

There's one thing about freedom ... each generation of people begins by thinking they've got it for the first time in history, and ends by being sure the generation younger than themselves have too much of it. It can't really always have been increasing at the rate people suppose, or there would be more of it by now.

Rose Macaulay

A hot bath! How exquisite a vespertine pleasure, how luxurious, fervid and flagrant a consolation for the rigours, the austerities, the renunciations of the day.

Rick James

I had always been a free spirit, and always gotten what I wanted.

Reinhold Niebuhr

Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.