Quotes on Liberty
The Sacred Fire of Liberty
"Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it."
“The spirit of liberty is the spirit of him who, near two thousand years ago, taught mankind that lesson it has never learned … .”
— Learned Hand (1872–1961) United States District Court Judge
“The propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right [God’s Law] which Heaven itself has ordained; and since the preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of government are justly considered, perhaps, as deeply, as finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.”
— George Washington (1732-
“God grants liberty only to those who love it and are always ready to guard and defend it.”
— Daniel Webster (1782-
“God grants liberty only to those who love it and are always ready to guard and defend it.”
— Daniel Webster (1782-
“Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath?”
— Thomas Jefferson (1743-
“If we can but prevent the government from wasting the labours of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy.”
— Thomas Jefferson (1743-
“That no free government, nor the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people, but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue; by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles; and by the recognition by all citizens that they have duties as well as rights, and that such rights cannot be enjoyed save in a society where law is respected and due process is observed.” (Article I, Section 15, Constitution of Virginia)
— George Mason (1725-
“The religion which has introduced civil liberty is the religion of Christ and his apostles, which enjoins humility, piety, and benevolence; which acknowledges in every person a brother, or a sister, and a citizen with equal rights. This is the genuine Christianity, and to this we owe our free Constitution of government.”
— Noah Webster (1758-
“To preserve liberty it is essential that the whole body of people always possess arms and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them”
— Richard Henry Lee (1732–1794) Founding Father
“Statesmen, my dear Sir, may plan and speculate for liberty, but it is religion and morality alone, which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand. The only foundation of a free constitution is pure virtue; and if this cannot be inspired into our people in a greater measure than they have it now, they may change their rulers and the forms of government, but they will not obtain a lasting liberty. They will only exchange tyrants and tyrannies.”
— John Adams (1797-
“Under the law of nature, all men are born free, every one comes into the world with a right to his own person, which includes the liberty of moving and using it at his own will. This is what is called personal liberty, and is given him by the Author of nature, because necessary for his own sustenance.”
— Thomas Jefferson (1743-
“Liberty can no more exist without virtue and independence than the body can live and move without a soul.” “Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private, and public virtue is the only foundation of republics.”
— John Adams (1797-
“The origin of government has in all ages no less perplexed the heads of lawyers and politicians than the origin of evil has embarrassed divines and philosophers … To those who lay the foundation of government in force and mere brutal power it is objected that their system destroys all distinction between right and wrong; that it overturns all morality, and leaves it to every man to do what is right in his own eyes; that it leads directly to skepticism, and ends in atheism. When a man’s will and pleasure is his only rule and guide, what safety can there be either for him or against him, but in the point of a sword?
Has it [government] any solid foundation, any chief cornerstone but what accident, chance, or confusion may lay one moment and destroy the next? I think it has an everlasting foundation in the unchangeable will of GOD, the author of nature, whose laws never vary. … Government is therefore most evidently founded on the necessities of our nature. It is by no means an arbitrary
The end of government being the good of mankind points out its great duties: it is above all things to provide for the security, the quiet, and happy enjoyment of life, liberty, and property. …Government is founded immediately on the necessities of human nature and ultimately on the will of God, the author of nature … The sum of my argument is: that civil government is of God.”
— James Otis (1725-1783) Early American Patriot, and Lawyer
“A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.”
— John Adams (1797-
“A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.”
— John Adams (1797-
“It is not our duty to leave wealth to our children: but it is our duty, to leave liberty to them. No infamy, iniquity, or cruelty, can exceed our own, if we, born and educated in a country of freedom, entitled to its blessings, and knowing their value, pusillanimously deserting the post assigned to us by Divine Providence, surrender succeeding generations to a condition of wretchedness, from which no human efforts, in all probability, will be sufficient to extricate them.”
— John Dickinson (1732–1808) Patriot, Founding Father and Lawyer
“To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical (imaginary; fanciful or vainly conceived) idea.”
— James Madison (1751-
“The most perfect freedom consists in obeying the dictates of right reason, and submitting to natural law. When a man goes beyond or contrary to the law of nature and reason, he becomes the slave of base passions and vile lusts; he introduces confusion and disorder into society, and brings misery and destruction upon himself. This, therefore, cannot be called a state of freedom, but a state of the vilest slavery and the most dreadful bondage. The servants of sin and corruption are subjected to the worst kind of tyranny in the universe. Hence we conclude that where licentiousness begins, liberty ends.”
— Samuel West (1730-
“I am now—the friend of the equal rights of men, of representative democracy, of republicanism and the Declaration of Independence, the great charter of our national rights; and of course the friend of the indissoluble union and Constitution of the states. I am the enemy of all foreign influence, for all foreign influence is the influence of tyranny. This is the only chosen spot of liberty—this is the only republic on earth.” “Live Free Or Die; Death Is Not The Worst Of Evils.”
— General John Stark (1728-
“Shame on the men who can court exemption from present trouble and expense at the price of their own posterity’s liberty!”
— Samuel Adams (1722–1803) Father of the American Revolution, Patriot and Statesman
“The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.”
— Thomas Jefferson (1743-
“Every child in America should be acquainted with his own country. He should read books that furnish him with ideas that will be useful to him in life and practice. As soon as he opens his lips, he should rehearse the history of his own country; he should lisp the praise of liberty, and of those illustrious heroes and statesmen, who have wrought a revolution in her favor.”
— Noah Webster (1758-
“Liberty must, at all hazards, be supported. We have a right to it, derived from our Maker. But if we had not, our fathers have earned and bought it for us, at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasure, and their blood. And liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the. people, who have a right, from the frame of their nature, to knowledge, as their great Creator, who does nothing in vain, has given them understandings and a desire to know. But, besides this, they have a right, an indisputable unalienable, indefeasible, divine right, to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean of the characters and conduct of their rulers. Rulers are no more than attorneys, agents, and trustees for the people; and if the cause, the interest and trust, is insidiously betrayed, or wantonly trifled away, the people have a right to revoke the authority that they themselves have deputed, and to constitute abler and better agents, attorneys, and trustees.”
— John Adams (1797-
“When the government fears the people there is liberty; when the people fear the government there is tyranny.”
— Thomas Jefferson (1743-
“The instrument by which [governments] must act are either the authority of the laws or force. If the first be destroyed, the last must be substituted; and where this becomes the ordinary instrument of government there is an end to liberty!”
— Alexander Hamilton (1755-
“God who gave us life gave us liberty.”
— Thomas Jefferson (1743-
“Among the most inestimable of our blessings, also, is … of liberty to worship our Creator in the way we think most agreeable to his will; a liberty deemed in other counties incompatible with good government, and yet proved by our experience to be its best support.” Letter to Captain John Thomas, November 18, 1807
— Thomas Jefferson (1743-
“May our land be a land of liberty, the seat of virtue, the asylum of the oppressed, a name and a praise in the whole Earth, until the last shock of time shall bury the empires of the whole world in one common undistinguished ruin!”
— Joseph Warren (1741-
“Upon this law*, depend the natural rights of mankind, the supreme being gave existence to man, together with the means of preserving and beatifying that existence. He endowed him with rational faculties, by the help of which, to discern and pursue such things, as were consistent with his duty and interest, and invested him with an inviolable right to personal liberty, and personal safety.
Hence, in a state of nature, no man had any moral power to deprive another of his life, limbs, property or liberty; nor the least authority to command, or exact obedience from him; except that which arose from the ties of consanguinity.
Hence also, the origin of all civil government, justly established, must be a voluntary compact, between the rulers and the ruled; and must be liable to such limitations, as are necessary for the security of the absolute rights of the latter; for what original title can any man or set of men have, to govern others, except their own consent? To usurp dominion over a people, in their own despite, or to grasp at a more extensive power than they are willing to entrust, is to violate that law of nature, which gives every man a right to his personal liberty; and can, therefore, confer no obligation to obedience.”
— Alexander Hamilton (1755-
“Our country is in danger, but not to be despaired of. Our enemies are numerous and powerful; but we have many friends, determining to be free, and heaven and earth will aid the resolution. On you depend the fortunes of America. You are to decide the important question, on which rest the happiness and liberty of millions yet unborn. Act worthy of yourselves.”
— Joseph Warren (1741-
”The only foundation of a free Constitution is pure virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our people in a greater measure than they have it now, they may change their Rulers and the forms of government, but they will not obtain a lasting liberty.”
— John Adams (1797-
“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.”
— Fisher Ames (1758-
“I shall need the favor of that Being in whose hands we are, Who led our forefathers, as Israel of old, from their native land, and planted them in a country flowing with all the necessaries and comforts of life; Who has covered our infancy with His providence, and our riper years with His wisdom and power; and to whose goodness I ask you to join with me in supplications, that He will so enlighten the minds of your servants, guide their councils, and prosper their measures, that whatsoever they do shall result in your good, and shall secure to you the peace, friendship, and approbation of all nations.”
— Thomas Jefferson, Author of the Declaration of Independence, 3rd President of the U. S.
“A satisfactory plan for primary education is certainly a vital desideratum in our republics. A popular government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy; or, perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”
— James Madison (1751-
“A nation of well-
— Benjamin Franklin (1706-
“The error seems not sufficiently eradicated, that the operations of the mind, as well as the acts of the body, are subject to the coercion of the laws. But our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God. The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others.”
— Thomas Jefferson, Author of the Declaration of Independence, 3rd President of the U. S.
“Among the most inestimable of our blessings … of liberty to worship our Creator in the way we think most agreeable to his will—a liberty deemed in other countries incompatible with good government, and yet proved by our experience to be its best support.”
— Thomas Jefferson (1743-
“Stain not the glory of your worthy ancestors, but like them resolve never to part with your birthright; be wise in your deliberations, and determined in your exertions for the preservation of your liberties. Fllow not the dictates of passion, but enlist yourselves under the sacred banner of reason; use every method in your power to secure your rights.”
― Joseph Warren (1741–1775) Boston Patriot, Doctor and Soldier
“It is in the interest of tyrants to reduce the people to ignorance and vice. For they cannot live in any country where virtue and knowledge prevail. The religion and public liberty of a people are intimately connected; their interests are interwoven, they cannot subsist separately; and therefore they rise and fall together. For this reason, it is always observable, that those who are combin’d to destroy the people’s liberties, practice every art to poison their morals.”
— Samuel Adams (1722–1803) Father of the American Revolution, Patriot and Statesman
“Liberty is a word which, according as it is used, comprehends the most good and the most evil of any in the world. Justly understood it is sacred next to those which we appropriate in divine adoration; but in the mouths of some it means anything, which enervate a necessary government; excite a jealousy of the rulers who are our own choice, and keep society in confusion for want of a power sufficiently concentered to promote good.”
— Oliver Ellsworth (1745–1807) Lawyer, served on the committee at the Constitutional Convention which drafted the Constitution, served on the Supreme Court.
“Well aware that the opinions and belief of men depend not on their own will, but follow involuntarily the evidence proposed to their minds; that Almighty God hath created the mind free, and manifested his supreme will that free it shall remain by making it altogether insusceptible of restraint; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burdens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the Holy Author of our religion, who being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do, but to extend its influence on reason alone; that the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such, endeavoring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world, and through all time: that to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical; that even the forcing him to support this or that teacher (or public school) for his own religious persuasion, is depriving him of the comfortable liberty of giving his contributions to the particular pastor (or private school) whose morals he would make his pattern, and whose powers he feels most persuasive to righteousness, and in withdrawing from the ministry those temporary rewards.”
— Thomas Jefferson (1743-
“Let us not be unmindful that liberty is power; that the nation blessed with the largest portion of liberty must, in proportion to its numbers, be the most powerful nation upon earth; and that the tenure of power by man is, in the moral purposes of his Creator, upon condition that it shall be exercised to ends of beneficence, to improve the condition of himself and his fellow men.”
— John Quincy Adams, (1767-
“Liberty, rightly understood, is an inestimable blessing, but liberty without wisdom, and without justice, is no better than wild and savage licentiousness. The danger which we have hereafter to apprehend is not the want, but the abuse, of liberty.”
— James Kent (1763–1847) Jurist, Scholar and Author of Commentaries on American Law
“Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right, from the frame of their nature, to knowledge, as their great Creator, who does nothing in vain, has given them understandings, and a desire to know; but besides this, they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge; I mean, of the characters and conduct of their rulers.”
— John Adams (1797-
“Nothing is more certain than that a general profligacy and corruption of manners make a people ripe for destruction. A good form of government may hold the rotten materials together for some time, but beyond a certain pitch, even the best constitution will be ineffectual, and slavery must ensue.”
— John Witherspoon (1722-
“Government is frequently and aptly classed under two descriptions—a government of Force, and a government of LAWS; the first is the definition of despotism—the last, of liberty. But how can a government of laws exist when the laws are disrespected and disobeyed? Government supposes control. It is that Power by which individuals in society are kept from doing injury to each other, and are brought to co-
— Alexander Hamilton (1755-
“We have the greatest cause for thankfulness to Almighty God … [He] hath inspired the people of America with a noble spirit of liberty, and remarkably united them in standing up for that invaluable blessing.”
— Jonathan Mayew (1720-
“The rights of Englishmen are derived from God, not from king or Parliament, and would be secured by the study of history, law, and tradition.”
— John Adams (1797-
“The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite.”
— Thomas Jefferson (1743-
“Equal laws are essential to liberty. Where there is no law, there can be no liberty; and nothing deserves the name of law, but that which is certain and universal in its operations upon all the members of the community.”
— Benjamin Rush (1745-
“The best service that can be rendered to a Country, next to that of giving it liberty, is in diffusing the mental improvement equally essential to the preservation, and the enjoyment of the blessing.”
— James Madison (1751-
“In Europe, charters of liberty have been granted by power. America has set the example … of charters of power granted by liberty.”
— James Madison (1751-
“Governments having failed the people, the people are entirely justified in assuming for themselves and essential role in government. Where a government takes proper measures to protect the people under its care, such a proceeding might have been thought both unnecessary and unjustifiable: But here it is quite the Reverse.” (The First American by H.W. Brands)
— Benjamin Franklin (1706-
“A sacred respect for the constitutional law is the vital principle, the sustaining energy of a free government.
Government is frequently and aptly classed under two descriptions—a government of Force, and a government of Laws ; the first is the definition of despotism—the last, of liberty. But how can a government of laws exist when the laws are disrespected and disobeyed? Government supposes control. It is that Power by which individuals in society are kept from doing injury to each other, and are brought to co-
Those, therefore, who preach doctrines, or set examples which undermine or subvert the authority of the laws, lead us from freedom to slavery; they incapacitate us for a Government of Laws, and consequently prepare the way for one of Force, for mankind must have Government Of One Sort Or Another. There are, indeed, great and urgent cases where the bounds of the Constitution are manifestly transgressed, or its constitutional authorities so exercised as to produce unequivocal oppression on the community, and to render resistance justifiable. But such cases can give no color to the resistance by a comparatively inconsiderable part of a community, of constitutional laws distinguished by no extraordinary features of rigor or oppression, and acquiesced in by the body of the community.
Such a resistance is treason against society, against liberty, against every thing that ought to be dear to a free, enlightened, and prudent people. To tolerate it, were to abandon your most precious interests. Not to subdue it, were to tolerate it. Those who openly or covertly dissuade you from exertions adequate to the occasion, are your worst enemies. They treat you either as fools or cowards, too weak to perceive your interest or your duty, or too dastardly to pursue them. They, therefore, merit and will, no doubt, meet your contempt. To the plausible but hollow harangue of such conspirators you cannot fail to reply …”
— Alexander Hamilton (1755-
“In my view, the Christian religion is the most important and one of the first things in which all children, under a free government ought to be instructed. … No truth is more evident to my mind than that of the Christian religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people.”
“The Christian religion, in its purity, is the basis or rather the source of all genuine freedom in government… I am persuaded that no civil government of a republican form can exist and be durable, in which the principles of that religion have not a controlling influence.”
— Noah Webster (1758-
“Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty from evil-
— Louis D. Brandeis (1856–1941) Former Supreme Court Justice
“The only foundation for a useful education in a republic is to be laid in Religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments.”
— Benjamin Rush (1745-
“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.”
— Fisher Ames (1758-
“When a government is in its prime, the public good engages the attention of the whole; the strictest regard is paid to the qualifications of those who hold the offices of state; virtue prevails; everything is managed with justice, prudence, and frugality; the laws are founded on principles of equity rather than mere policy, and all the people are happy. But vice will increase with the riches and glory of an empire; and this generally tends to corrupt the Constitution and in time bring on its dissolution. This may be considered not only as the natural effect of vice, but a righteous judgment from Heaven, especially upon a nation which has been favored with the blessings of religion and liberty and is guilty of undervaluing them and eagerly going into the gratification of every lust.”
— Samuel Langdon (1723-
“Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have …The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases.”
— Thomas Jefferson (1743-
“I trust I have long since made my peace with the King of Kings. No personal consideration shall induce me to abandon the righteous cause of my country. Tell Governor Gage it is the advise of Samuel Adams to him no longer to insult the feelings of an exasperated people.” (British General Gage trying to buy off Samuel Adams-
— Samuel Adams (1722–1803) Father of the American Revolution, Patriot and Statesman
“A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defense against foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home.”
— James Madison (1751-
“A large portion of our citizens, who will not believe, even on the evidence of facts, that any public evils exist, or are impending. They deride the apprehensions of those who foresee, that licentiousness will prove, as it ever has proved, fatal to liberty.”
— Fisher Ames (1758-
“Law and liberty cannot rationally become the objects of our love, unless they first become the objects of our knowledge.”
— James Wilson (1742-
“Character enough of an opposite description … My opinion is …” that you could as soon scrub the blackamore white, as to change the principles of a profest Democrat; and that he will leave nothing unattempted to overturn the Government of this Country.”
— George Washington (1732-
“Without liberty, law loses its nature and its name, and becomes oppression. Without law, liberty also loses its nature and its name, and becomes licentiousness.”
— James Wilson (1742-
“The most perfect freedom consists in obeying the dictates of right reason, and submitting to natural law. When a man goes beyond or contrary to the law of nature and reason, he becomes the slave of base passions and vile lusts; he introduces confusion and disorder into society, and brings misery and destruction upon himself. This, therefore, cannot be called a state of freedom, but a state of the vilest slavery and the most dreadful bondage. The servants of sin and corruption are subjected to the worst kind of tyranny in the universe. Hence we conclude that where licentiousness begins, liberty ends.”
— Samuel West (1730-
“The opinion has been very general, that, in order to obtain the blessings of a good government, a sacrifice must be made of a part of our natural liberty. I am much inclined to believe, that, upon examination, this opinion will prove to be fallacious.”
— James Wilson (1742-
“He is the best friend to American liberty, who is most sincere and active in promoting true and undefiled religion, and who set himself with the greatest firmness to bear down on profanity and immorality of every kind. Whoever is an avowed enemy of God, I scruple not to call him an enemy to his country.”
— John Witherspoon (1722-
“Equal laws are essential to liberty. Where there is no law, there is no liberty; and nothing deserves the name of law but that which is certain and universal in its operation upon all the members of the community.”
— Benjamin Rush (1745-
“The contest, for ages, has been to rescue Liberty from the grasp of executive power. Whoever has engaged in her sacred cause, from the days of the downfall of those great aristocracies which had stood between the king and the people to the time of our own independence, has struggled for the accomplishment of that single object. On the long list of the champions of human freedom, there is not one name dimmed by the reproach of advocating the extension of executive authority; on the contrary, the uniform and steady purpose of all such champions has been to limit and restrain it. …
Through all this history of the contest for liberty, executive power has been regarded as a lion which must be caged. … it has been dreaded, uniformly, always dreaded, as the great source of its danger. And … who is he, from whose bosom all original infusion of American spirit has become so entirely evaporated and exhaled, that he shall put into the mouth of the President of the United States the doctrine that the defence of liberty naturally results to executive power, and is its peculiar duty? Who is he, that, generous and confiding towards power where it is most dangerous, and jealous only of those who can restrain it, — who is he, that, reversing the order of the state, and upheaving the base, would poise the pyramid of the political system upon its apex? Who is he, that, overlooking with contempt the guardianship of the representatives of the people, and with equal contempt the higher guardianship of the people themselves, — who is he that declares to us, through the President’s lips, that the security for freedom rests in executive authority? Who is he that belies the blood and libels the fame of his own ancestors, by declaring that they, with solemnity of form, and force of manner, have invoked the executive power to come to the protection of liberty? Who is he that thus charges them with the insanity, or the recklessness, of putting the lamb beneath the lion’s paw? No, Sir. No, Sir. Our security is in our watchfulness of executive power. It was the constitution of this department which was infinitely the most difficult part in the great work of creating our present government. To give to the executive department such power as should make it useful, and yet not such as should render it dangerous.”
— Daniel Webster (1782-
“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it.”
— Thomas Paine (1736-
“The value of liberty was thus enhanced in our estimation by the difficulty of its attainment, and the worth of characters appreciated by the trial of adversity.”
— George Washington (1732-
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“Individual liberty is individual power.”
— John Quincy Adams, (1767-
“There is a certain enthusiasm in liberty, that makes human nature rise above itself, in acts of bravery and heroism.”
— Alexander Hamilton (1755-
“The value of liberty was thus enhanced in our estimation by the difficulty of its attainment, and the worth of characters appreciated by the trial of adversity.”
— George Washington (1732-
“Liberty exists in proportion to wholesome restraint.”
— Daniel Webster (1782-
“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.”
— Thomas Jefferson (1743-
“There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.”
— James Madison (1751-
“Freedom is not a gift bestowed upon us by other men, but a right that belongs to us by the laws of God and nature.”
— Benjamin Franklin (1706-
“Without freedom of thought there can be no such thing as wisdom; and no such thing as public liberty, without freedom of speech.”
— Benjamin Franklin (1706-
“Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined.”
— Patrick Henry (1736-
“The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.”
— James Madison (1751-
“The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them.”
— Thomas Jefferson (1743-
“Your love of liberty –
— George Washington (1732-
“I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.”
— John Adams (1797-
“The connexion between different portions of the same people and between a people and their government, is a connexion of duties as well as of rights. In the long conflict of twelve years which had preceded and led to the Declaration of Independence, our fathers had been not less faithful to their duties, than tenacious of their rights. Their resistance had not been rebellion. It was not a restive and ungovernable spirit of ambition, bursting from the bonds of colonial subjection; it was the deep and wounded sense of successive wrongs, upon which complaint had been only answered by aggravation, and petition repelled with contumely, which had driven them to their last stand upon the adamantine rock of human rights.”
— John Quincy Adams, (1767-
“Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”
— James Madison (1751-
“Honor, justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us. We cannot endure the infamy and guilt of resigning succeeding generations to that wretchedness which inevitably awaits them if we basely entail hereditary bondage on them.”
— Thomas Jefferson (1743-
“Liberty, when it degrades into licentiousness, begets confusion, and frequently ends in tyranny or some woeful confusion.”
— George Washington (1732-
“We have counted the cost of this contest, and find nothing so dreadful as voluntary slavery.—Honor, justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us. We cannot endure the infamy and guilt of resigning succeeding generations to that wretchedness which inevitably awaits them, if we basely entail hereditary bondage upon them.”
— Thomas Jefferson (1743-
“God grant that not only the love of liberty, but a thorough knowledge of the rights of man, may pervade all the nations of the Earth.”
— Benjamin Franklin (1706-
“The good of the governed is the end, and rewards and punishments are the means, of all government. The government of the supreme and all-
In times of simplicity and innocence, ability and integrity will be the principal recommendations to the public service, and the sole title to those honors and emoluments which are in the power of the public to bestow. But when elegance, luxury, and effeminacy begin to be established, these rewards will begin to be distributed to vanity and folly; but when a government becomes totally corrupted, the system of God Almighty in the government of the world, and the rules of all good government upon earth, will be reversed, and virtue, integrity, and ability, will become the objects of the malice, hatred, and revenge of the men in power, and folly, vice, and villany will be cherished and supported. In such times you will see a Governor of a Province, for unwearied industry in his endeavors to ruin and destroy the people, whose welfare he was under every moral obligation to study and promote, knighted and ennobled.”
— John Adams (1797-
“Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.”
— Thomas Paine (1736-
“The dons, the bashaws, the grandees, the patricians, the sachems, the nabobs, call them by what names you please, sigh and groan and fret, and sometimes stamp and foam and curse, but all in vain. The decree is gone forth, and it cannot be recalled, that a more equal liberty than has prevailed in other parts of the earth must be established in America.”
— John Adams (1797-
“Illustrious examples are displayed to our view, that we may imitate as well as admire. Before we can be distinguished by the same honors, we must be distinguished by the same virtues. What are those virtues? They are chiefly the same virtues, which we have already seen to be descriptive of the American character –
— James Wilson (1742-
“Without freedom of thought there can be no such thing as wisdom; and no such thing as public liberty, without freedom of speech.”
— Benjamin Franklin (1706-
“In a free government the security for civil rights must be the same as that for religious rights. …under the republican forms [of government], for the rights of every class of citizens, will be diminished: and consequently the stability and independence of some member of the government, the only other security, must be proportionately increased. Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit.”
— James Madison (1751-
“Americans are no idiots, and they appear determined not to be slaves. Oppression will make wise men mad, but oppressors in the end frequently find that they were not wise men.”
— John Joachim Zubly (1724-
“The fundamental source of all your errors, sophisms and false reasoning is a total ignorance of the natural rights of mankind. Were you once to become acquainted with these, you could never entertain a thought, that all men are not, by nature, entitled to a parity of privileges. You would be convinced, that natural liberty is a gift of the beneficent Creator to the whole human race, and that civil liberty is founded in that; and cannot be wrested from any people, without the most manifest violation of justice.
Civil liberty is only natural liberty, modified and secured by the sanctions of civil society. It is not a thing, in its own nature, precarious and dependent on human will and caprice; but it is conformable to the constitution of man, as well as necessary to the well-
Upon this principle, colonists, as well as other men, have a right to civil liberty. For, if it be conducive to the happiness of society (and reason and experience testify that it is), it is evident, that every society, of whatsoever kind, has an absolute and perfect right to it, which can never be withheld without cruelty and injustice. …
The right of colonists, therefore, to exercise a legislative power, is an inherent right. It is founded upon the rights of all men to freedom and happiness. For civil liberty cannot possibly have any existence, where the society, for whom laws are made, have no share in making them; and where the interest of their legislators is not inseparably interwoven with theirs.”
— Alexander Hamilton (1755-
“The Minister of State or the Governor would promote my interest, would advance me to places of honor and profit, would raise me to titles and dignities that will be perpetuated in my family; in a word, would make the fortune of me and my posterity forever, if I would but comply with his desires, and become his instrument to promote his measures. But still I dread the consequences. He requires of me such compliances, such horrid crimes, such a sacrifice of my honor, my conscience, my friends, my country, my God, as the Scriptures inform us must be punished with nothing less than hell-
— John Adams (1797-
“The Minister of State or the Governor would promote my interest, would advance me to places of honor and profit, would raise me to titles and dignities that will be perpetuated in my family; in a word, would make the fortune of me and my posterity forever, if I would but comply with his desires, and become his instrument to promote his measures. But still I dread the consequences. He requires of me such compliances, such horrid crimes, such a sacrifice of my honor, my conscience, my friends, my country, my God, as the Scriptures inform us must be punished with nothing less than hell-
— John Adams (1797-
“The gospel is called a law of liberty.”
— John Joachim Zubly (1724-
“Liberty is a word which, according as it is used, comprehends the most good and the most evil of any in the world. Justly understood it is sacred next to those which we appropriate in divine adoration; but in the mouths of some it means anything, which enervate a necessary government; excite a jealousy of the rulers who are our own choice, and keep society in confusion for want of a power sufficiently concentered to promote good.”
— Oliver Ellsworth, A Landholder, Number 3, November 19, 1787
“Religion and liberty are the meat and the drink of the body politic. Withdraw one of them, and it languishes, consumes, and dies. If indifference to either at any time becomes the prevailing character of a people, one half of their motives to vigorous defense is lost, and the hopes of their enemies are proportionally increased. Here, eminently, they are inseparable. Without religion we may possibly retain the freedom of savages, bears, and wolves; but not the freedom of New-
— Timothy Dwight –
“Government prohibitions do always more mischief than had been calculated; and it is not without much hesitation that a statesman should hazard to regulate the concerns of individuals, as if he could do it better than themselves.”
— Albert Gallatin (1761-
“Human nature itself is evermore an advocate for liberty. There is also in human nature a resentment of injury, and indignation against wrong. A love of truth and a veneration of virtue. These amiable passions, are the ‘latent spark.’ … If the people are capable of understanding, seeing and feeling the differences between true and false, right and wrong, virtue and vice, to what better principle can the friends of mankind apply than to the sense of this difference?”
— John Adams (1797-
“Our liberty depends on our education, our laws and habits, to which even prejudices yield; on the dispersion of our people on farms, and on the almost equal diffusion of property; it is founded on morals and religion [Bible] , whose authority reigns in the heart; and on the influence all these produce on public opinion, before that opinion governs rulers. Here liberty is restraint; there it is violence; here it is mild and cheering, like the morning sun of our summer, brightening the hills and making the valleys green; there it is like the sun, when his rays dart pestilence on the sands of Africa. American liberty calms and restrains the licentious passions, like an angel, that says to the winds and troubled seas.”
— Fisher Ames (1758-
“But whether as a day [July 4th] of festivity and joy, or of humiliation and mourning,—that, fellow-
These are the glories of a generation past away,—what are the duties, which they devolve upon us? … [To] bear true allegiance to that Sovereign [God], upon the principles set forth in that paper [Declaration of Independence]. The lives, the fortunes, and the honour, of every free human being forming a part of those Colonies, were pledged, in the face of God and man, to the principles therein promulgated.”
— John Quincy Adams, (1767-
“if there be a general corruption of manners, there can be nothing but consusion. “So true is this, that civil liberty cannot be long preserved without virtue.”
— John Witherspoon (1722-
“Government is only to be supported by pure religion or austere morals. Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private, and public virtue is the only foundation of republics. There must be a positive passion for the public good, the public interest, honor, power and glory, established in the minds of the people, or there can be no republican government, nor any real liberty: and this public passion must be superior to all private passions. Men must be ready, they must pride themselves and be happy to sacrifice their private pleasures, passions and interests, nay, their private friendships and dearest connections, when they stand in competition with the rights of society.”
— John Adams (1797-
“There is not a single instance in history in which civil liberty was lost, and religious liberty preserved entire. If therefore we yield up our temporal property, we at the same time deliver the conscience into bondage.”
— John Witherspoon (1722-
“Our civil and religious liberties, and consequently, in a great measure, the temporal and eternal happiness of us and our posterity, depended on the issue. The knowledge of God and his truths have, from the beginning of the world, been chiefly, if not entirely, confined to those parts of the earth where some degree of liberty and political justice were to be seen, and great were the difficulties with which they had to struggle, from the imperfection of human society, and the unjust decisions of usurped authority. There is not a single instance in history, in which civil liberty was lost, and religious liberty preserved entire. If, therefore, we yield up our temporal property, we, at the same time, deliver the conscience into bondage.”
— John Witherspoon (1722-
“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. …
We look back, already, with astonishment, at the daring outrages committed by despotism, on the reason and rights of man; we look forward with joy, to the period, when it shall be despoiled of all its usurpations, and bound forever in the chains, with which it had loaded its miserable victims.
In proportion to the value of this revolution; in proportion to the importance of instruments, every word of which decides a question between power and liberty; in proportion to the solemnity of acts, proclaiming the will authenticated by the seal of the people, the only earthly source of authority, ought to be the vigilance with which they are guarded by every citizen in private life, and the circumspection with which they are executed by every citizen in public trust.
As compacts, charters of government are superior in obligation to all others, because they give effect to all others. As truths, none can be more sacred, because they are bound, on the conscience by the religious sanctions of an oath. As metes and bounds of government, they transcend all other land-
The citizens of the United States have peculiar motives to support the energy of their constitutional charters.”
— James Madison (1751-
“The known propensity of a democracy is to licentiousness which the ambitious call, and ignorant believe to be liberty.”
— Fisher Ames (1758-
“But a republic once equally poised, must either preserve its virtue or lose its liberty, and by some tumultuous revolution, either return to its first principles, or assume a more unhappy form.”
— John Witherspoon (1722-
“Be not intimidated … nor suffer yourselves to be wheedled out of your liberties by any pretense of politeness, delicacy, or decency. These, as they are often used, are but three different names for hypocrisy, chicanery and cowardice.”
— John Adams (1797-
“There never has been a period of history, in which the Common Law did not recognize Christianity as lying at its foundation.”
— Joseph Story (1779-
“If justice, good faith, honor, gratitude and all the other qualities which ennoble the character of a nation and fulfill the ends of government be the fruits of our establishments, the cause of liberty will acquire a dignity and lustre, which it has never yet enjoyed, and an example will be set, which cannot but have the most favourable influence on the rights on mankind. If on the other side, our governments should be unfortunately blotted with the reverse of these cardinal and essential virtues, the great cause which we have engaged to vindicate, will be dishonored and betrayed; the last and fairest experiment in favor of the rights of human nature will be turned against them; and their patrons and friends exposed to be insulted and silenced by the votaries of tyranny and usurpation.”
— James Madison (1751-
“MORAL LAW, Evidence of.— Man has been subjected by his Creator to the moral law, of which his feelings, or conscience as it is sometimes called, are the evidence with which his Creator has furnished him. … The moral duties which exist between individual and individual in a state of nature, accompany them into a state of society … their Maker not having released them from those duties on their forming themselves into a nation.”
— Thomas Jefferson, Author of the Declaration of Independence, 3rd President of the U. S. (Opinion on French Treaties, 1793)
“I am commonly opposed to those who modestly assume the rank of champions of liberty, and make a very patriotic noise about the people. It is the stale artifice which has duped the world a thousand times, and yet, though detected, it is still successful.”
— Fisher Ames (1758-
“In short, it is the greatest absurdity to suppose it in the power of one, or any number of men, at the entering into society, to renounce their essential natural rights, or the means of preserving those rights; when the grand end of civil government, from the very nature of its institution, is for the support, protection, and defence of those very rights; the principal of which, as is before observed, are Life, Liberty, and Property. If men, through fear, fraud, or mistake, should in terms renounce or give up any essential natural right, the eternal law of reason and the grand end of society would absolutely vacate such renunciation. The right to freedom being the gift of God Almighty, it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift and voluntarily become a slave. These may be best understood by reading and carefully studying the institutes of the great Law Giver and Head of the Christian Church, which are to be found clearly written and promulgated in the New Testament.”
— Samuel Adams (1722–1803) Father of the American Revolution, Patriot and Statesman
“But I thank God that America abounds in men who are superior to all temptation, whom nothing can divert from a steady pursuit of the interest of their country, who are at once its ornament and safe-
— John Hancock, (1737-
“I often note with equal pleasure that God gave this one connected country to one united people –
— John Jay (1745-
“The safety of a republic depends essentially on the energy of a common national sentiment; on a uniformity of principles and habits; on the exemption of the citizens from foreign bias and prejudice; and on that love of country which will almost invariably be found to be closely connected with birth, education, and family. The opinion advanced in the Notes on Virginia is undoubtedly correct, that foreigners will generally be apt to bring with them attachments to the persons they have left behind; to the country of their nativity; and to its particular customs and manners. They will also entertain opinions on government congenial with those under which they have lived; or if they should be led hither from a preference to ours, how extremely unlikely is it that they will bring with them that temperate love of liberty, so essential to real republicanism?”
— Alexander Hamilton (1755-
“It is a truth which the experience of all ages has attested, that the people are always most in danger when the means of injuring their rights [liberty of the people] are in the possession of those of whom they entertain the least suspicion.”
— Alexander Hamilton (1755-
“The infant periods of most nations are buried in silence, or veiled in fable; and perhaps the world may have lost but little which it need regret. The origin and outset of the American Republic contain lessons of which posterity ought not to be deprived; and, happily, there never was a case in which a knowledge of every interesting incident could be so accurately preserved. You have lights, I am persuaded, which ought not to be forever under a bushel.”
— James Madison (1751-
“Among the features peculiar to the political system of the United States is the perfect equality of rights which it secures to every religious sect. And it is particularly pleasing to observe in the citizenship of such as have been most distrusted and oppressed elsewhere, a happy illustration of the safety and success of this experiment of a just and benignant policy. Equal laws, protecting equal rights, are found, as they ought to be presumed, the best guarantee of loyalty and love of country; as well as best calculated to cherish the mutual respect and good-
— James Madison (1751-
“If there is a form of government, then, whose principle and foundation is virtue, will not every sober man acknowledge it better calculated to promote the general happiness than any other form?”
— John Adams (1797-
“Just and true liberty, equal and impartial liberty, in matters spiritual and temporal is a thing that all men are clearly entitled to by the eternal and immutable laws of God and nature, as well as by the laws of nations and all well-
— Samuel Adams (1722–1803) Father of the American Revolution, Patriot and Statesman
“It is our duty to endeavor always to promote the general good; to do to all as we would be willing to be done by were we in their circumstances; to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly before God. These are some of the laws of nature which every man in the world is bound to observe, and which whoever violates exposes himself to the resentment of mankind, the lashes of his own conscience, and the judgment of Heaven. This plainly shows that the highest state of liberty subjects us to the law of nature and the government of God.”
— Samuel West (1730-
“So true is this, that civil liberty cannot be long preserved without virtue. A monarchy may subsist for ages, and be better or worse under a good or bad prince; but a republic once equally poised, must either preserve its virtue or lose its liberty, and by some tumultuous revolution, either return to its first principles, or assume a more unhappy form.”
— John Witherspoon (1722-
“Religion and liberty are the meat and the drink of the body politic. Withdraw one of them and in languishes, consumes, and dies.
If indifference …becomes the prevailing character of a people …their motives to vigorous defense is lost, and the hopes of their enemies are proportionally increased. …
Without religion we may possibly retain the freedom of savages, bears, and wolves, but not the freedom of New England.
If our religion were gone, our state of society would perish with it and nothing would be left which would be worth defending. Our children us course, if not ourselves, would be prepared, as the ox for the slaughter, to become the victims of conquest, tyranny, and atheism.”
— Timothy Dwight –
“The contest, for ages, has been to rescue Liberty from the grasp of executive power. Whoever has engaged in her sacred cause, from the days of the downfall of those great aristocracies which had stood between the king and the people to the time of our own independence, has struggled for the accomplishment of that single object. On the long list of the champions of human freedom, there is not one name dimmed by the reproach of advocating the extension of executive authority; on the contrary, the uniform and steady purpose of all such champions has been to limit and restrain it. …
Through all this history of the contest for liberty, executive power has been regarded as a lion which must be caged. … it has been dreaded, uniformly, always dreaded, as the great source of its danger. And … who is he, from whose bosom all original infusion of American spirit has become so entirely evaporated and exhaled, that he shall put into the mouth of the President of the United States the doctrine that the defence of liberty naturally results to executive power, and is its peculiar duty? Who is he, that, generous and confiding towards power where it is most dangerous, and jealous only of those who can restrain it, — who is he, that, reversing the order of the state, and upheaving the base, would poise the pyramid of the political system upon its apex? Who is he, that, overlooking with contempt the guardianship of the representatives of the people, and with equal contempt the higher guardianship of the people themselves, — who is he that declares to us, through the President’s lips, that the security for freedom rests in executive authority? Who is he that belies the blood and libels the fame of his own ancestors, by declaring that they, with solemnity of form, and force of manner, have invoked the executive power to come to the protection of liberty? Who is he that thus charges them with the insanity, or the recklessness, of putting the lamb beneath the lion’s paw? No, Sir. No, Sir. Our security is in our watchfulness of executive power. It was the constitution of this department which was infinitely the most difficult part in the great work of creating our present government. To give to the executive department such power as should make it useful, and yet not such as should render it dangerous.”
— Daniel Webster (1782-
“I would die to preserve the law upon a solid foundation; but take away liberty, and the foundation is destroyed.”
— Alexander Hamilton (1755-
“There is a certain enthusiasm in liberty, that makes human nature rise above itself, in acts of bravery and heroism.”
— Alexander Hamilton (1755-
“What constitutes the bulwark of our liberty and independence? It is not our frowning battlements, our bristling sea-
— Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) Sixteenth President of the United States
“The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty, but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while to others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name, liberty. And it follows that each of these things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names—liberty and tyranny.
The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as a liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act, as the destroyer of liberty, especially as the sheep was a black one. Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of the word liberty, and precisely the same difference prevails to-
— Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) Sixteenth President of the United States
“Liberty and Union, Now and Forever, One and Inseparable.”
— Daniel Webster (1782-
“Four score and seven years ago our forefathers brought forth on this continent a new nation concieved in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal..”
— Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) Sixteenth President of the United States
“Liberty has never come from government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of government. The history of liberty is the history of resistance.”
— Woodrow Wilson (1856-
“The object and practice of liberty lies in the limitation of governmental power.”
— Douglas MacArthur (1880-
“The Founding Father expressed in words for all to read the ideal of Government based upon the dignity of the individual. That ideal previously had existed only in the hearts and minds of men. They produced the timeless documents upon which the Nation is rounded and has grown great. They, recognizing God as the author of individual fights, declared that the purpose of Government is to secure those rights. … Without God, there could be no American form of Government, nor an American way of life. Recognition of the Supreme Being is the first—the most basic—expression of Americanism. Thus the Founding Fathers saw it, and thus, with God’s help, it will continue to be. … the really decisive battleground of American freedom is in the hearts and minds of our own people.”
— Dwight D. Eisenhower 34th President of U.S
“If you want total security, go to prison. There you’re fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking … is freedom.”
— Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-
“Great nations which fail to meet their responsibilities [to God] are consigned to the dust bin of history. We grew from that small, weak republic which had as its assets spirit, optimism, faith in God and an unshakeable belief that free men and women could govern themselves wisely. We became the leader of the free world, an example for all those who cherish freedom. If we are to continue to be that example—if we are to preserve our own freedom—we must understand those who would dominate us and deal with them with determination.”
— Ronald Reagan (1911-
“What do we mean when we say that first of all we seek liberty? I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon laws and upon courts. These are false hopes; believe me, these are false hopes. Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. While it lies there it needs no constitution, no law, not court to save it.
And what is this liberty that must lie in the hearts of men and women? It is not the ruthless, the unbridled will; it is not the freedom to do as one likes. That is the denial of liberty and leads straight to its overthrow. A society in which men recognize no check on their freedom soon becomes a society where freedom is the possession of only a savage few — as we have learned to our sorrow.
What, then is the spirit of liberty? I cannot define it; I can only tell you my own faith. The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the minds of other men and women; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which weighs their interests alongside its own without bias; the spirit of liberty remembers that not even a sparrow falls to earth unheeded; the spirit of liberty is the spirit of Him who, near two thousand years ago, taught mankind that lesson it has never learned, but has never quite forgotten; that there may be a kingdom where the least shall be heard and considered side by side with the greatest.”
— Learned Hand (1872–1961) United States Judge
“I have seen the rise of fascism and communism. Both philosophies glorify the arbitrary power of the state… But both theories fail. Both deny those God-
— Ronald Reagan (1911-
“Independent of its connection with human destiny hereafter, the fate of republican government is indissolubly bound up with the fate of the Christian religion, and a people who reject its holy faith will find themselves the slaves of their own evil passions and of arbitrary power.”
— Lewis Cass (1782–1866) 22nd United States Secretary of State
“Almost all the calamities of man, except the physical evils which are inherent in his nature, are in a great measure to be imputed to erroneous views of religion or bad systems of government; and these cannot be co-
— DeWitt Clinton (1769 – 1828) State Senator, Governor of New York, and naturalist
“A traitor is good fruit to hang from the boughs of the tree of liberty.”
— Henry Ward Beecher (1813–1887) Minister, educator and anti-
“No method of procedure has ever been devised by which liberty could be divorced from local self-
— Calvin Coolidge (1872-
[Regarding the Constitution] “THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES HAVE RETAINED THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION AS THE FOUNDATION OF THEIR CIVIL, LEGAL AND POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS; WHILE THEY HAVE REFUSED TO CONTINUE A LEGAL PREFERENCE TO ANY ONE OF ITS FORMS OVER ANY OTHER. In the same spirit of practical wisdom, moreover, they have consented to tolerate all other religions. …We must be a Christian nation, if we wish to continue a free nation.”
— Jasper Adams (1793-
“One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation.”
— Thomas B. Reed (1839-
“Freedom prospers when religion is vibrant and the rule of law under God is acknowledged.”
— Ronald Reagan (1911-
“Christianity is the companion of liberty in all its conflicts –
— Alexis de Toqueville (1805-
“But he who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer that forgets but a doer that acts, he shall be blessed in his doing. So speak and so act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty.”
— James 1:25, 2:12 RSV
“Every man must give account of himself to God, and therefore every man ought to be at liberty to serve God in a way that he can best reconcile to his conscience.
If government can answer for individuals at the day of judgment, let men be controlled by it in religious matters; otherwise, let men be free.
Second, it would be sinful for a man to surrender that to man, which is to be kept sacred for God. A man’s mind should be always open to conviction, and an honest man will receive that doctrine which appears the best demonstrated: and what is more common than for the best of men to change their minds? Such are the prejudices of the mind, and such the force of tradition, that a man who never alters his mind, is either very weak or very stubborn. How painful then must it be to an honest heart, to be bound to observe the principles of his former belief, after he is convinced of their imbecility? And this ever has, and ever will be the case, while the rights of conscience are considered alienable.
Third. But supposing it was right for a man to bind his own conscience, yet surely it is very iniquitous to bind the consciences of his children—to make fetters for them before they are born, is very cruel. And yet such has been the conduct of men in almost all ages, that their children have been bound to believe and worship as their fathers did, or suffer shame, loss, and sometimes life, and at best to be called dissenters, because they dissent from that which they never joined voluntarily. Such conduct in parents, is worse than that of the father of Hannibal who imposed an oath upon his son, while a child, never to be at peace with the Romans.-
Fourth. Finally, religion is a matter between God and individuals: the religious opinions of men not being the objects of civil government, nor in any way under its control.
It has often been observed by the friends of religion established by human laws, that no state can long continue without it; that religion will perish, and nothing but infidelity and atheism prevail.
Are these things facts? Did not the Christian religion prevail during the first three centuries, in a more glorious manner than ever it has since, not only without the aid of law, but in opposition to all the laws of haughty monarchs? And did not religion receive a deadly wound by being fostered in the arms of civil power and regulated by law? These things are so.
From that day to this, we have but a few instances of religious liberty to judge by; for, in almost all states, civil rulers, by the investigation of covetous priests, have undertaken to steady the ark of religion by human laws; but yet we hare a few of them without leaving our own land. …
To say that “religion cannot stand without a state establishment,” is not only contrary to fact, (as has been proved already,) but is a contradiction in phrase. Religion must have stood a time before any law could have been made about it; and if it did stand almost three hundred years without law, it can still stand without it.
The evils of such an establishment, are many.”
— John Leland (1754–1841) Baptist Minister who Preached on Religious Liberty and Abolitionist from Massachusetts to Virginia
“Religion and morality … are the foundations of all governments. Without these restraints, no free government could long exist.
It is liberty run mad, to declaim against the punishment of these offences, or to assert that the punishment is hostile to the spirit and genius of our government. They are far from being the friends to liberty who support this doctrine; and the promulgation of such opinions, and general receipt of them among the people, would be the sure forerunner of anarchy, and finally of despotism.
No free government now exists in the world, unless where Christianity is acknowledged, and is the religion of the country. Christianity is part of the common law of this State. It is not proclaimed by the commanding voice of any human superior, but expressed in the calm and mild accents of customary law. Its foundations are broad, and strong, and deep; they are laid in the authority, the interest, the affections of the people.
Christianity is part of the common law of this State. It is not proclaimed by the commanding voice of any human superior, but expressed in the calm and mild accents of customary law. Its foundations are broad, and strong, and deep; they are laid in the authority, the interest, the affections of the people. Waiving all questions of hereafter, it is the purest system of morality, the firmest auxiliary, and only stable support of all human laws. …
While our own free Constitution secures liberty of conscience and freedom of religious worship to all, it is not necessary to maintain that any man should have the right publicly to vilify the religion of his neighbours and of the country. These two privileges are directly opposed.
— Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, 1824
“The only sure cure for many of the ills of the modern world which men are vainly trying to remove by means of social and economic antidotes is to be found in the faith in God and loyalty to the eternal verities of religion. The recognition of a personal God and of the individual accountability of men and women to him, for their conduct are the foundations of the highest patriotism and of those civic virtues which alone can make men and nations morally great. The human race has been getting away from its religious moorings. It needs a revival of the sincere conception of the personal relationship of God to man and man to God; a restoration of faith in the fundamentals of religion that are eternal. The world needs the assurance of faith in the Almighty, and the tranquility which comes alone of that faith. That faith in God which has made the ancient Hebrew nation great, is still needed to make nations great to-
— Warren G. Harding (1865-
“Our government rests upon religion. It is from that source that we derive our reverance for truth and justice, for equality and liberty, and for the rights of mankind. Unless the people believe in these principles they cannot believe in our government.”
— Calvin Coolidge (1872-
“Hold fast to the Bible as the sheet anchor of your liberties; write its precepts on your hearts and practice them in your lives. To the influence of this Book we are indebted for the progress made, and to this we must look as our guide in the future.”
— Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) 18th President of the United States and Commanding Genera in the Civil War
“History comes and history goes, but principles endure, and ensure future generations will defend liberty not as a gift from government but as a blessing from our Creator.”
— Ronald Reagan (1911-
“The Founding Father expressed in words for all to read the ideal of Government based upon the dignity of the individual. That ideal previously had existed only in the hearts and minds of men. They produced the timeless documents upon which the Nation is rounded and has grown great. They, recognizing God as the author of individual fights, declared that the purpose of Government is to secure those rights.
To you and to me this ideal of Government is a self-
And they can appreciate, through personal experience, that the really decisive battleground of American freedom is in the hearts and minds of our own people…. The path we travel is narrow and long, beset with many dangers. Each day we must ask that Almighty God will set and keep His protecting hand over us so that we may pass on to those who come after us the heritage of a free people, secure in their God-
— Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-
“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States were men were free.”
— Ronald Reagan (1911-
“We have four boxes with which to defend our freedom: the soap box, the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box.”
— Lawrence Patton McDonald (1935-
“There is no liberty to men whose passions are stronger than their religious feelings; there is no liberty to men in whom ignorance predominates over knowledge; there is no liberty to men who know not how to govern themselves.”
— Henry Ward Beecher (1813–1887) Minister, educator and anti-
“Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice, and moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”
— Barry M. Goldwater (1909-
“Our liberty springs from and depends upon an abiding faith in God.”
— Ronald Reagan (1911-
“Now I realize it’s fashionable in some circles to believe that no one in government should encourage others to read the Bible. That we’re told we’ll violate the constitutional separation of church and state established by the Founding Fathers and the First Amendment. The First Amendment was not written to protect people and their laws from religious values. It was written to protect those values from government tyranny.”
— Ronald Reagan (1911-
“Evil itself is not dangerous without the help of those who tolerate.”
— Ted Sampley (1946-
“I hope we once again have reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There’s a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts.”
— Ronald Reagan (1911-
“By liberty of conscience, we understand not only a mere liberty of the mind, in believing or disbelieving this or that principle or doctrine; but the exercise of ourselves in a visible way of worship, upon our believing it to be indispensably required at our hands, that if we neglect it for fear of favor of any mortal man, we sin and incur divine wrath.”
— William Penn (1644-
“I hope we once again have reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There’s a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts.”
— Ronald Reagan (1911-
“And you shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants; [proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: KJV] it shall be a jubilee for you, when each of you shall return to his property [freedom from debt bondage] and each of you shall return to his family. A jubilee shall that fiftieth year be to you; in it you shall neither sow, nor reap what grows of itself, nor gather the grapes from the undressed vines. For it is a jubilee; it shall be holy to you; you shall eat what it yields out of the field. ‘In this year of jubilee each of you shall return to his property. …You shall not wrong one another, but you shall fear your God; for I am the LORD your God. ‘Therefore you shall do my statutes, and keep my ordinances and perform them; so you will dwell in the land securely.’”
— Leviticus 25:10-
“Let no one deceive you with empty words, for it is because of these things that the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.”
— Ephesians 5:1-
“Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel: I made a covenant with your fathers when I brought them out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage, saying, ‘At the end of six years each of you must set free the fellow Hebrew (slave or bond-
— Jeremiah 34:13-
“See to it that no one makes a prey of you by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ.”
— Colossians 2:8 RSV
“Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom [liberty]”
— 2 Corinthians 3:17 RSV
“Liberty unregulated by law degenerates into anarchy, which soon becomes the most horrid of all despotisms. …
We owe these blessings, under Heaven, to the happy Constitution and Government which were bequeathed to us by our fathers, and which it is our sacred duty to transmit in all their integrity to our children.”
— Mallard Filmore (1800-
“In its main features the Declaration of Independence is a great spiritual document. It is a declaration not of material but of spiritual conceptions. Equality, liberty, popular sovereignty, the rights of man — these are not elements which we can see and touch. They are ideals. They have their source and their roots in the religious convictions. They belong to the unseen world. Unless the faith of the American people in these religious convictions is to endure, the principles of our Declaration will perish. We can not continue to enjoy the result if we neglect and abandon the cause.”
— Calvin Coolidge (1872-
“The right to freedom being the gift of God Almighty, the rights of the Colonists as Christians may best be understood by reading and carefully studying the institutions of The Great Law Giver and the Head of the Christian Church, which are to be found clearly written and promulgated in the New Testament. … his natural right to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience. And, by the charter of this Province, it is granted, ordained, and established (that is, declared as an original right that there shall be liberty of conscience allowed in the worship of God to all Christians.”
— Samuel Adams (1722–1803) Father of the American Revolution, Patriot and Statesman
“Neither the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt.”
— Samuel Adams (1722–1803) Father of the American Revolution, Patriot and Statesman
“What constitutes the bulwark of our own liberty and independence? … Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in us. Our defense is in the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men in all lands, everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seed of despotism at your own doors. Familiarize yourself with the chains of bondage and you prepare your own limbs to wear them. Accustomed to trample on the rights of others, you have lost the strength of your own independence and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises among you.”
— Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) Sixteenth President of the United States
“Trample on the rights of others, you have lost the genius of your own independence and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises among you.”
— Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) Sixteenth President of the United States
“… while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.”
— Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-
“Our liberty springs from and depends upon an abiding faith in God.”
— Ronald Reagan (1911-
“Liberty is the condition of duty, the guardian of conscience. It grows as conscience grows. The domains of both grow together. Liberty is safety from all hindrances, even sin. So that Liberty ends by being Free Will.”
— John Dalberg-
“This is what is called the law of nature, “which, being coeval with mankind, and dictated by God himself, is, of course, superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe, in all countries, and at all times. No human laws are of any validity, if contrary to this; and such of them as are valid, derive all their authority, mediately, or immediately, from this original.”
— Sir William Blackstone (1723-
“A country cannot subsist well without liberty, nor liberty without virtue.”
— Jean-
“Religion is the companion of liberty in all its battles and all its conflicts; the cradle of its infancy and the divine source of its claims.”
— Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-
“Because Roman civilization perished through barbarian invasions, we are perhaps too much inclined to think that that is the only way a civilization can die. If the lights that guide us ever go out, they will fade little by little, as if of their own accord…. We therefore should not console ourselves by thinking that the barbarians are still a long way off. Some peoples may let the torch be snatched from their hands, but others stamp it out themselves.”
— Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-
“But what is liberty without wisdom and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without restraint. Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites.”
— Edmund Burke (1729-
“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.”
— G.K. Chesterton (1874-
“Liberty is the highest blessing a nation can enjoy; that it must be first deserved before it can be enjoyed,” “Liberty will not descend to a people, a people must rise themselves to Liberty: it is a blessing that must be earned before it can be enjoyed.”
— Charles Caleb Colton (1780-
“Among a people generally corrupt liberty cannot long exist.”
— Edmund Burke (1729-
“It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once.”
— David Hume (1711-
“In every age liberty’s progress has been beset by its natural enemies: by ignorance and superstition, by lust of conquest and by love of ease, by the strong man’s craving for power, and the poor man’s craving for food.”
— Lord Acton (1834-
“The greater the power the more dangerous the abuse.”
— Edmund Burke (1729-
“For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.”
— Jonathan Swift (1667-
“Judges who judge contrary to Common Law** or Fundamental Rights are incapable of holding any office or trust, and should be proceeded against as traitors.”
— American Law Maxim
“The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful and virtuous.”
— Frederick Douglass (181-
“It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt.
— John Philpot Curran (1750–1817) Irish Statesman and Author
“Among a people generally corrupt, liberty cannot long exist”
— Edmund Burke (1729-
“Liberty is the prevention of control by others. This requires self-
— Lord Acton (1834-
“Without liberty, virtue cannot exist.”
— Edmund Burke (1729-
“Men are qualified for civil liberty, in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites; in proportion as their love to justice is above their rapacity; in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption; in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.”
— Edmund Burke (1729-
**Common Law – American system of jurisprudence and law based on Christian foundations, derived from centuries of work represented in our Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights.
“So goes America in terms of freedom, so goes the rest of the world. And so that document [Declaration of Independence] I would argue is the foundational document for freedom not just for America but for freedom around the world.”
— Randy J. Forbes (1952-
“A God who chastises our lack of faith, our vices, the little esteem in which we hold dignity and the civic virtues. We tolerate vice, we make ourselves its accomplices, at times we applaud it, and it is just, very just that we suffer the consequences, that our children suffer them. It is the God of liberty … who obliges us to love it, by making the yoke heavy for us — a God of mercy, of equity, who while He chastises us betters us and only grants prosperity to him who has merited it through his efforts. The school of suffering tempers, the arena of combat strengthens the soul.
I do not mean to say that our liberty will be secured at the sword’s point, for the sword plays but little part in modern affairs, but that we must secure it by making ourselves worthy of it, by exalting the intelligence and the dignity of the individual, by loving justice, right, and greatness, even to the extent of dying for them, — and when a people reaches that height God will provide a weapon, the idols will be shattered, the tyranny will crumble like a house of cards and liberty will shine out like the first dawn. Our ills we owe to ourselves alone, so let us blame no one.”
— José Rizal (1861–1896) Filipino patriot, physician and reformer
“’It is my firm belief that the God of Heaven raised up the founding fathers and inspired them to establish the Constitution of this land. This is part of my religious faith.’ To me this is not just another nation. It is a great and glorious nation with a divine mission to perform for liberty-
— Ezra Taft Benson (1899-
“We Americans are the peculiar, chosen people…the Israel of our time; we bear the ark of the liberties of the world.”
— Herman Melville (1819–1891), U.S. author.
“Liberty is from God; liberties, from the devil.”
— Berthold Auerbach (1812 –1882) German novelist and poet
“None are none more hopelessly enslaved, than those who falsely believe they are free.”
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-
“Liberty considers religion as the safeguard of morality, and morality as the best security of law and the surest pledge of the duration of freedom.”
— Alexis de Toqueville (1805-
“Man is born free but why everywhere he is in chains?”
— Jean-
“It is better to cherish virtue and humanity, by leaving much to free will, even with some loss of the object, than to attempt to make men mere machines and instruments of political benevolence. The world on the whole will gain by a liberty, without which virtue cannot exist.”
— Edmund Burke (1729-
“Religion [Christianity] is no less the companion of liberty in all its battles and its triumphs; the cradle of its infancy, and the divine source of its claims. The safeguard of morality is religion, and morality is the best security of law and the surest pledge of freedom.”
— Alexis de Toqueville (1805-
“The Christian religion is a stranger to mere despotic power. The mildness so frequently recommended in the Gospel is incompatible with the despotic rage.”
— Barron Charles de Montesquieu (1689-
“A day, an hour, of virtuous liberty Is worth a whole eternity in bondage.”
— Joseph Addison (1672-
“For those who believe in God, no explanation is necessary; for those who do not believe in God, no explanation is possible.”
— Saint Marie-
“Written laws are like spiders’ webs, and will, like them, only entangle and hold the poor and weak, while the rich and powerful will easily break through them.”
— Anacharsis – (~600B.C.) Scythian philosopher
“The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men”
— Plato (427BC-
“The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits.”
— Plutarch – (46-
“Independent of its connection with human destiny hereafter, the fate of republican government is indissolubly bound up with the fate of the Christian religion, and a people who reject its holy faith will find themselves the slaves of their own evil passions and of arbitrary power.”
— Lewis Cass (1782-
“You will notice that while the oppressors have carried out their plans, and had things their own way, there were other forces silently at work, which in time undermined their plans, as if a Divine hand were directing the counter-
Some men assert that the marvelous events of history are only a series of coincidences; but was it by chance that the great uprising in Germany once lay enfolded, as it were, in the beckoning hand of Ursula Cotta? How happened it that behind the passion of Henry VIII. for Anne Boleyn should be the separation of England from the Church of Rome, and all the mighty results to civilization and Christianity that came from that event? How came it to pass that, when the world was ready for it, and not before … Men act freely in laying and executing their plans; but behind the turmoil and conflict of human wills there is an unseen power that shapes destiny-
If while reading this ” Story” you are roused to indignation, or pained at the recital of wrong and outrage, remember that out of endurance and sacrifice has come all that you hold most dear; so will you comprehend what Liberty has cost, and what it is worth.”
— Charles Carleton Coffin (1823-
“All the forms of civil polity have been tried by mankind, except one: and that seems to have been reserved in Providence to be realized in America.”
— Ezra Stiles (1727-
One Nation Under God (This one painting by artist Jon McNaughton that captures the true basis of American Liberty)
“Political correctness is tyranny with manners.”
— Charlton Heston (1923-
“There is and has always been, this was my field of study in Graduate School, there has always been a totalitarian tendency on the left. We will tell you what eat, we will tell you what to drive, we will how to speak at college with speech code, we will tell you how to talk to a woman. There is a deep deep totalitarian temptation on the left in every case wherever the left is taken into power. …It is a battle of ideas. Americans are ignorant of what America stands for… Look at the coin in your pocket [under liberty] … that is it that is what we are we are fighting for. Under liberty exists smaller the government because the bigger the government the smaller the citizen. …As the government gets bigger, we get smaller. …You elect these dictators, but the greatness and exceptionalsim of America has been the greatness of the individual and liberties of the individual.”(Interview on Wallbuilders Live! 8-
— Dennis Prager (1948-
“Providence —The will of God acting together with human will. But he respects our will absolutely. He does not force. Love never forces. It only invites. … There is a war between good and—”
— Michael D. O’Brien (1948– ), Roman Catholic author from the book The Father’s Tale, p738.
“When injustice becomes law, rebellion becomes duty.”
— Unknown
“If you are afraid to speak against tyranny, then you are already a slave.”
— John “Birdman” Bryant (1943-
“Free will is the liberty to choose what is right (according to Gods law).
— Father Malachi Martin (1921-
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
— C.S. Lewis (1898 -1963) Irish Writer, Scholar, and Christian Apologists
“Liberty is colorblind.”
— The Patriot Post –
“There’s no dishonor in being forced by a superior power into slavery, but it is an eternal disgrace to voluntarily surrender one’s liberty for a filthy bowl of oatmeal and promise of security by liars.”
— Charlie Reese (1937—) Syndicated columnist
“America was conceived as a sea of liberty with islands of government power. We’re now a sea of government power with ever-
— Jeff Rowes – Lawyer with the Institute of Justice
“The welfare of humanity is always the alibi of tyrants.”
— Albert Camus (1913-
“Liberty is a religious value. It’s a Biblical value. … In the Bible one of the most important things is to rescue a person when they are in danger. It’s called self-
Liberalism is an assault on our liberty. And so under the context of self-
When the government takes care of everybody, it deprives most people of their liberty. It also removes individual responsibility from the person, which is very important. Because we grow through individual responsibility, we mature, we become strong. That is what God wants us to be.”
— Rabbi Aryeh Spero –
“For twenty-
Liberals are not about choice; they are about imposition. The way they live, the way they believe, must be imposed on people, otherwise they won’t do it on their own. It’s taken them 50, 60 years to get to this point of conditioning people, of taking hold of the education system, the university, academia system, the media. It’s taken a long time to condition people not to stand up for themselves, not to exercise freedom, not to speak outside the acceptable norms. What is political correctness but speech censorship, is all it is.”
— Rush Limbaugh ( ) The Rush Limbaugh show August 1, 2013
“But all too often, people do not choose life, they do not accept the “Gospel of Life” but let themselves be led by ideologies and ways of thinking that block life, that do not respect life, because they are dictated by selfishness, self-
Dear brothers and sisters, let us look to God as the God of Life, let us look to his law, to the Gospel message, as the way to freedom and life. The Living God sets us free! Let us say “Yes” to love and not selfishness. Let us say “Yes” to life and not death. Let us say “Yes” to freedom and not enslavement to the many idols of our time. In a word, let us say “Yes” to the God who is love, life and freedom, and who never disappoints.”
— Pope Francis (Jorge Mario Bergoglio) (1936-
“The Growing Threat of Socialism –
Socialism is a great threat to liberty and prosperity. It is unbiblical and demonic.
Socialism is a form of statism. Statism is the belief that the civil government (or man via civil government) is the ultimate authority in the earth and as such is the source of law and morality. The state defines what is right and wrong, what is lawful and unlawful, what is moral and immoral. …’the state takes the place of Jehovah.’”
— Stephen McDowell –
“It is important for America that the moral truths which make freedom possible should be passed on to each new generation. Every generation of Americans needs to know that freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought. … Christ asks us to guard the truth because, as he promised us: “You will know the truth and the truth will make you free.” Depositum custodi! We must guard the truth that is the condition of authentic freedom, the truth that allows freedoms to be fulfilled in goodness. We must guard the deposit of divine truth handed down to us.”
— Pope John Paul II (1920-
“Christianity produces liberty which is necessary for economic advancement.”
— Stephen McDowell –
“I have come to see the real clash of the ages, involve wars and various historical circumstances, as being a clash of satan’ s versus God’s plan for man to learn and experience true liberty, by first receiving forgiveness of sins through the work of Christ on the cross, and then walking in the ‘newness of life.
Life really is that simple. Satan tries to corrupt and destroy the joy God desires for His children. Satan has used ignorance to keep people from experiencing God’s love and plan of salvation. People have groped in the darkness, being led to forfeit their God-
Our Founding Fathers deliberately used the Bible as their guide. They tried to ensure that schools, likewise, use the Bible to teach Christian self-
— Richard “Little Bear” Wheeler – Author, Public Speaker and Storyteller, and Pastor (book God’s Mighty Hand, pg. 128, 129)
“When the Son sets you free you are free indeed. That freedom is truth, and the truth is God’s word. … that truth is Jesus Christ.”
— Father Mark
“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
— George Orwell [Eric Arthur Blair] (1903-
“It is only Christianity that enables a nation to be free. Because the Christianity faith brings the supernatural transformation of in heart. There it gives the ideas of liberty planted in the mind … lays the foundation for self-
— Stephen McDowell –
“Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and, if true, of infinite importance. The one thing it cannot be is moderately important.”
— C.S. Lewis (1898 -1963) Irish Writer, Scholar, and Christian Apologists
The soul’s attainment of liberty through the exercise of free will
Like Augustine who addresses the soul’s potential to recover “perfect liberty, Thomas affirms that the Holy Spirit’s grace to the soul, accompanied by the soul’s cooperation, admits it to liberty”. Here he recalls Saint Paul words: “Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty” (2 Corinthians 3:17). Because the “root of liberty is the will, as the subject thereof” reason is its cause, the soul attains liberty through charitable exercise of its will that is guided by reason and advances from beginning, middle and term—the term “belongs to the state of the perfect”.
Thomas describes the charity that disposes the soul to attain liberty, as the human will’s ability to conform itself with its intrinsically good nature: In the measure the human creature exercises charity, it “changes” itself under the Holy Spirit’s action of operating and cooperating grace and approaches the “procession” of God and liberty.
— Luisa Piccarreta (1865-1947) Italian Mystic (The Gift of Living in the Divine Will in the Writings of Luisa Piccarreta: An Inquiry into the Early Ecumenical Councils, and into Patristic, Scholastic and Contemporary Theology)
“Life Is a Gift from God. We hold from God the gift which includes all others. This gift is life — physical, intellectual, and moral life. But life cannot maintain itself alone. The Creator of life has entrusted us with the responsibility of preserving, developing, and perfecting it. In order that we may accomplish this, He has provided us with a collection of marvelous faculties. And He has put us in the midst of a variety of natural resources. By the application of our faculties to these natural resources we convert them into products, and use them. This process is necessary in order that life may run its appointed course. Life, faculties, production–in other words, individuality, liberty, property — this is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it. Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.”
– Frédéric Bastiat (1848-1850) French Economist, Politician, and Writer on Economics, Politics, and the Law.
“Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.”
– Frédéric Bastiat (1848-1850) French Economist, Politician, and Writer on Economics, Politics, and the Law.
“Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.”
– Frédéric Bastiat (1848-1850) French Economist, Politician, and Writer on Economics, Politics, and the Law.
“Each of us has a natural right, from God, to defend his person, his liberty, and his property.”
– Frédéric Bastiat (1848-1850) French Economist, Politician, and Writer on Economics, Politics, and the Law.
What Is Liberty?
“Actually, what is the political struggle that we witness? It is the instinctive struggle of all people toward liberty. And what is this liberty, whose very name makes the heart beat faster and shakes the world? Is it not the union of all liberties — liberty of conscience, of education, of association, of the press, of travel, of labor, of trade? In short, is not liberty the freedom of every person to make full use of his faculties, so long as he does not harm other persons while doing so? Is not liberty the destruction of all despotism — including, of course, legal despotism? Finally, is not liberty the restricting of the law only to its rational sphere of organizing the right of the individual to lawful self-defense; of punishing injustice?
It must be admitted that the tendency of the human race toward liberty is largely thwarted … “
– Frédéric Bastiat (1848-1850) French Economist, Politician, and Writer on Economics, Politics, and the Law.
“The idea of human dignity, that we are created in the image of God, forms the theological underpinning of the idea of human nature and human equality—core principles of liberty. The notion that all men are sinners is the theological equivalent of the commonsense observation that human beings are drawn to their passions and prone to be selfish, and it informs the political idea that no one is to be trusted with absolute power or tempted to misuse it for personal gain.”
– Matthew Spalding ( ) – VP of Washington operations Hillsdale College – book We Still Hold These Truths, Rediscovering Our Principles, Reclaiming our Future, Pg 15