Famous Quotes & Sayings

Many Americans don't have an understanding of the freedoms they regularly enjoy.

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.

Henry David Thoreau

America is said to be the arena on which the battle of freedom is to be fought; but surely it cannot be freedom in a merely political sense that is meant. Even if we grant that the American has freed himself from a political tyrant, he is still the slave of an economical and moral tyrant. Now that the republic--the res- publica--has been settled, it is time to look after the res- privata,--the private state,--to see, as the Roman Senate charged its consuls, "ne quid res-PRIVATA detrimenti caperet," that the private state receive no detriment.

Henry David Thoreau

It is hard to have a Southern overseer; it is worse to have a Northern one; but worst of all when you are yourself the slave-driver.

Ian Stewart

Chaos is lawless behavior governed entirely by law.

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.

H. L. Mencken

A professional politician is a professionally dishonorable man. In order to get anywhere near high office he has to make so many compromises and submit to so many humiliations that he becomes indistinguishable from a streetwalker.

H. L. Mencken

It is the fundamental theory of all the more recent American law...that the average citizen is half-witted, and hence not to be trusted to either his own devices or his own thoughts.

H. L. Mencken

Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable.

H. L. Mencken

the average man does not want to be free. he simply wants to be safe.

H. L. Mencken

The cosmos is a gigantic flywheel making 10,000 revolutions per minute. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it.

H. L. Mencken

Hanging one scoundrel, it appears, does not deter the next. Well, what of it? The first one is at least disposed of.

H. L. Mencken

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

J. Robert Oppenheimer

There must be no barriers to freedom of inquiry. There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors. ... Our political life is also predicated on openness. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it and that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. And we know that as long as men are free to ask what they must, free to say what they think, free to think what they will, freedom can never be lost, and science can never regress.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

What most clearly characterizes true freedom and its true employment is its misemployment.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Denn was ist Freiheit? Dasz man den Willen zur Selbstverantwortlichkeit hat.

Friedrich Nietzsche

How is freedom measured, in individuals as in nations? By the resistance which has to be overcome, by the effort it costs to stay aloft. One would have to seek the highest type of free man where the greatest resistance is constantly being overcome: five steps from tyranny, near the threshold of the danger of servitude.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Liberal institutions straightway cease being liberal the moment they are soundly established: Once this is attained, no more grievous and more thorough enemies of freedom exist than liberal institutions.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Democratic institutions form a system of quarantine for tyrannical desires.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Freedom is the will to be responsible for ourselves.

Louis Leterrier

I don't want to be Luc's henchman. I want to look for freedom.

Marc Warren

I don't like planning, because it robs me of freedom, so I'd like a 24 hours that was full of surprises.

Paul Mooney

I do celebrate anything with freedom in it, you know.

Moira Kelly

I do have the freedom to choose what I want to do and I'll continue to do that.

Peter Thiel

I believe, basically, that individual freedom is very important.

He's given me that freedom since I was a freshman to make those calls. We have a lot of trust in each other. It's neat we're on the same page like that.

William James

Old-fashioned determinism was what we may call hard determinism. It did not shrink from such words as fatality, bondage of the will, necessitation, and the like. Nowadays, we have a soft determinism which abhors harsh words, and, repudiating fatality, necessity, and even predetermination, says that its real name is freedom; for freedom is only necessity understood, and bondage to the highest is identical with true freedom.

William Ellery Channing

Knowledge is essential to freedom.

Roald Dahl

A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom.

Robinson Jeffers

And you, America, that passion made you. You were not born to prosperity, you were born to love freedom. You did not say "en masse," you said "independence." But we cannot have all the luxuries and freedom also.

Vladimir Lenin

False rhetoric and false boastfulness spell moral ruin and lead unfailingly to political extinction.

Vladimir Lenin

Freedom of speech and the press must be complete. But then freedom of association must be complete too.