Famous Quotes & Sayings

Isaiah Berlin

But to manipulate men, to propel them toward goals which you-the social reformers-see, but they may not, is to deny their human essence, to treat them as objects without wills of their own, and therefore to degrade them.

Igor Stravinsky

The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one

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.

Gloria Steinem

The point is less what we choose than that we have the power to make a choice.

Harry S Truman

The United Nations is designed to make possible lasting freedom and independence for all its members.

Harry S Truman

I never would have agreed to the formulation of the Central Intelligence Agency back in forty-seven, if I had known it would become the American Gestapo.

H. G. Wells

The greatest task of democracy, its ritual and feast - is choice.

H. L. Mencken

I believe in only one thing and that thing is human liberty. If ever a man is to achieve anything like dignity, it can happen only if superior men are given absolute freedom to think what they want to think and say what they want to say. I am against any man and any organization which seeks to limit or deny that freedom ... the superior man can be sure of freedom only if it is given to all men.

H. L. Mencken

Truth - Something somehow discreditable to someone.

H. L. Mencken

Firmness in decision is often merely a form of stupidity. It indicates an inability to think the same thing out twice.

H. L. Mencken

The argument that capital punishment degrades the state is moonshine, for if that were true then it would degrade the state to send men to war... The state, in truth, is degraded in its very nature: a few butcheries cannot do it any further damage.

H. L. Mencken

Remorse-Regret that one waited so long to do it.

H. L. Mencken

Liberals have many tails and chase them all.

H. L. Mencken

Of government, at least in democratic states, it may be said briefly that it is an agency engaged wholesale, and as a matter of solemn duty, in the performance of acts which all self-respecting individuals refrain from as a matter of common decency.

H. L. Mencken

I believe there is a limit beyond which free speech cannot go, but it's a limit that's very seldom mentioned. It's the point where free speech begins to collide with the right to privacy. I don't think there are any other conditions to free speech. I've got a right to say and believe anything I please, but I haven't got a right to press it on anybody else. .... Nobody's got a right to be a nuisance to his neighbors.

H. L. Mencken

For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.

H. L. Mencken

Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what sting is justice.

H. L. Mencken

Creator: A comedian whose audience is afraid to laugh.

H. L. Mencken

I am against slavery simply because I dislike slaves.

H. L. Mencken

Liberty is not for these slaves; I do not advocate inflicting it against their conscience. On the contrary, I am strongly in favor of letting them crawl and grovel all they please before whatever fraud or combination of frauds they choose to venerate...Our whole practical government is grounded in mob psychology and the Boobus Americanus will follow any command that promises to make him safer.

H. L. Mencken

I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave.

H. L. Mencken

The whole drift of our law is toward the absolute prohibition of all ideas that diverge in the slightest form from the accepted platitudes, and behind that drift of law there is a far more potent force of growing custom, and under that custom there is a natural philosophy which erects conformity into the noblest of virtues and the free functioning of personality into a capital crime against society.

H. L. Mencken

What I admire most in any man is a serene spirit, a steady freedom from moral indignation, and all-embracing tolerance--in brief,what is commonly called sportsmanship.

H. L. Mencken

We must be willing to pay a price for freedom.