Famous Quotes & Sayings

Friedrich August von Hayek

The importance of our being free to do a particular thing has nothing to do with the question of whether we or the majority are ever likely to make use of that particular possibility. To grant no more freedom than all can exercise would be to misconceive its function completely. The freedom that will be used by only one man in a million may be more important to society and more beneficial to the majority than any freedom that we all use.

Friedrich August von Hayek

A society that does not recognise that each individual has values of his own which he is entitled to follow can have no respect for the dignity of the individual and cannot really know freedom.

Friedrich August von Hayek

Perhaps the fact that we have seen millions voting themselves into complete dependence on a tyrant has made our generation understand that to choose one's government is not necessarily to secure freedom.

Friedrich August von Hayek

Our faith in freedom does not rest on the foreseeable results in particular circumstances, but on the belief that it will, on balance, release more forces for the good than for the bad ... Freedom granted only when it is known beforehand that its effects will be beneficial is not freedom.

Friedrich August von Hayek

It is because freedom means the renunciation of direct control of individual efforts that a free society can make use of so much more knowledge than the mind of the wisest ruler could comprehend.

Friedrich August von Hayek

Freedom can be preserved only if it is treated as a supreme principle which must not be sacrificed for particular advantages.

Friedrich August von Hayek

I am certain, however, that nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice.

Friedrich Schiller

Whatever is not forbidden is permitted.

Friedrich Schiller

Man is created free, and is free, even though born in chains.

Friedrich Schiller

The voice of the majority is no proof of justice.

Friedrich Schiller

Freedom exists only with power.

Friedrich Schiller

Where there is much freedom there is much error.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

We stand committed to the proposition that freedom is no half-and-half affair. If the average citizen is guaranteed equal opportunity in the polling place, he must have equal opportunity in the market place.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Freedom to learn is the first necessity of guaranteeing that man himself shall be self reliant enough to be free.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

If the fires of freedom and civil liberties burn low in other lands they must be made brighter in our own. If in other lands the press and books and literature of all kinds are censored we must redouble our efforts here to keep them free. If in other lands the eternal truths of the past are threatened by intolerance we must provide a safe place for their perpetuation.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

We, and all others who believe in freedom as deeply as we do, would rather die on our feet than live on our knees.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere. Our support goes to those who struggle to gain those rights or keep them.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Liberty requires opportunity to make a living--a living decent according to the standard of the time, a living which gives a man not only enough to live by, but something to live for.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

We look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. The first is freedom of speech and expression. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way. The third is freedom from want. The fourth is freedom from fear.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerated the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism: ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power.

Luis Bunuel

Fortunately, somewhere between chance and mystery lies imagination, the only thing that protects our freedom, despite the fact that people keep trying to reduce it or kill it off altogether.

Ludwig van Beethoven

To do good whenever one can, to love liberty above all else, never to deny the truth, even though it be before the throne.

Lucan

The remaining liberty of the world was to be destroyed in the place where it stood.

Lucan

All go free when multitudes offend.

Julian Schnabel

You know, painting has given me a lot of freedom, because for some reason, I've been able to paint things, organize things in a way that I see that don't have any buffers or compromises in them.

And should think freedom more to prize, than all the gold in world that is.

Eric Hoffer

Freedom released the energies of the masses not by exhilarating but by unbalancing, irritating, and goading.

Eric Hoffer

Unless a man has the talents to make something of himself, freedom is an irksome burden.

Eric Hoffer

The basic test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in what we are free not to do.

Eric Hoffer

We feel free when we escape - even if it be but from the frying pan to the fire.

James F. Cooper

It is a besetting vice of democracies to substitute public opinion for law. This is the usual form in which masses of men exhibit their tyranny.

James F. Cooper

The tendency of democracies is, in all things, to mediocrity, since the tastes, knowledge, and principles of the majority form the tribunal of appeal.

James F. Cooper

The disposition of all power is to abuses, nor does it at all mend the matter that its possessors are a majority.