QUOTES ON LIBERTY AND JUSTICE, TRUTH AND DUTY:
“Distinctions by race are so evil, so arbitrary and invidious that a state bound to defend the equal protection of the laws must not invoke them in any public sphere” NAACP’s brief, written in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education desegregation case
-Thurgood Marshall
“The attributes of sovereignty are now enjoyed by every state in the Union”
-Alexander Hamilton
“America is great because she is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”
-Alexis de Tocqueville
“What the government gives, it must first take away.”
– John S. Coleman
“No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.”
– Stanislaw J. Lec
“The system of private property is the most important guaranty of freedom, not only for those who own property, but scarcely less for those who do not.” The Road to Serfdom
– Friedrich A. Hayek
“Breathe there the man with soul so dead, who never to himself has said, this is my own, my native land!”
-Sir Walter Scott
“The World War II generation did what was expected of them. But they never talked about it. It was part of the Code. There’s no more telling metaphor than a guy in a football game who does what’s expected of him-makes an open-field tackle-then gets up and dances around. When Jerry Kramer threw the block that won the Ice Bowl in ’67, he just got up and walked off the field.” The Greatest Generation
-Tom Brokaw
“You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you.”
― C.S. Lewis
“The question suggests itself: has all this long-continued and intense effort—all this sacrifice…—all this subjection to privation and peril–resulted in no good to the actors themselves? Are they absolutely without reward for their exalted patriotism and active devotion to principle? The answer is—that, so far as anything tangible and material is concerned, they are not only without recompense, but have received instead thereof stripes and punishment, having been ejected from the …enjoyment of…liberty…. But there is a reward of a higher character, which is theirs in an eminent degree—a reward inherent in and inseparable from all noble actions—”that peace above all earthly dignities, a calm and quiet conscience.”
-Llewellyn Shaver
“The man who says America is perfect, is blind to reality. The man who says that Americans must sacrifice their liberties to preserve America, does not love freedom. The man who says America must be destroyed to be saved, is mistaken. The ideals that are America, can be lost as easily by those who take this country for granted as by those who seek to destroy I, for one, reject the concept that America is not worth saving or changing. But the saving and the changing can only come with genuine desire, hard work, dedication, and a strong abiding faith in our fellowmen. If we are, indeed, entering a new era, it must be a time in which we are totally honest with ourselves. It must be a time in which we are totally honest with the young people for whom the mantle of leadership is waiting. The concept that all growth is automatic progress should be cast out.” Texas Governor’s Inaugural Address, 1971
-Preston Smith
“Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.”
– John Stuart Mill
“When Hitler declared war on the United States, he was betting that German soldiers, raised up in the Hitler Youth, would always out fight American soldiers, brought up in the Boy Scouts. He lost that bet. The Boy Scouts had been taught how to figure their way out of their own problems.”
-Stephen Ambrose
“Sirs, you have no reason to be ashamed of your dead; see to it they have no reason to be ashamed of you.”
-Robert Dabney
“As Texans and Americans, we start our quest with advantages undreamed by peoples of other lands. The heritage of freedom is a golden thread unbroken for 180 years of our national life. We were molded not by kings and conquerors, but by the courage and toil of pioneers who saw the wilderness as a challenge, never a barrier.” Texas Governor’s Inaugural Address 1965
-John Connally
“Take life into your own hands and what happens? A terrible thing. No one to blame.”
-Erica Jong
“At the beginning of a dynasty, taxation yields a large revenue from small assessments. At the end of the dynasty, taxation yields a small revenue from large assessments.”
-Ibn Khaldun
“Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.” The Crisis
-Thomas Paine
“The history of liberty is the history of limitations of governmental power, not the increase of it.”
-Woodrow Wilson
“Distinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry are by their very nature odious to a free people, and therefore are contrary to our traditions and hence constitutionally suspect.”
-US Supreme Court decision in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, June 24, 2013
“Personal honor is the one thing that is valued more than life itself by the majority of men.”
-S.L.A. Marshall
“We wish to be remembered. Willing to die, we are not willing to be forgotten.” 1884 Memorial Day Address
-Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, Union Army, a combatant at Little Round Top during the Battle of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania July 2, 1863
“Tyranny in democratic republics does not proceed in the same way, however. It ignores the body and goes straight for the soul. The master no longer says: You will think as I do or die. He says: You are free not to think as I do. You may keep your life, your property, and everything else. But from this day forth you shall be as a stranger among us. You will retain your civic privileges, but they will be of no use to you. For if you seek the votes of your fellow citizens, they will withhold them, and if you seek only their esteem, they will feign to refuse even that. You will remain among men, but you will forfeit your rights to humanity. When you approach your fellow creatures, they will shun you as one who is impure. And even those who believe in your innocence will abandon you, lest they, too, be shunned in turn. Go in peace, I will not take your life, but the life I leave you with is worse than death.”
-Alexis de Tocqueville
“Just last week, I received a letter from a French citizen. “Dear Mr. President, and the American people,” he wrote, “[we are] honored to welcome you… to thank you again for all the pain and efforts of [the] American people and others in our common struggle for freedom.” 2014 D-Day Commemoration Speech
-Barack H. Obama
“The worst fears of those who would challenge her are now a fact of life—a Federal government completely out of control.”
-Professor Jay Hoar
“The proudest human that walks the earth is a free American citizen.” Speech at the Commercial Club of Chicago, May 21, 1948
-Dwight Eisenhower
“We aren’t ever going to change. We aren’t doing anything wrong…You can throw me in the Colbert County jailhouse. You can throw me off the Wilson Dam. But there isn’t much difference in the man I want to be and the man I really am…”
-Patterson Hood
“The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all.” Letter to Abigail Adams 1787
-Thomas Jefferson
“Any society which suppresses the heritage of its conquered minorities, prevents their history or denies them their symbols, has sown the seeds of their own destruction.” 1281
-Sir William Wallace
“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 by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.”
-Justice Louis Brandeis
“Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.”
-Milton Friedman
“You have the right to free speech – except, of course, if you’re dumb enough to actually try it.”
-The Clash
“Enslave the liberty of but one human being and the liberties of the world are put in peril.”
-William Lloyd Garrison
“Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of citizens to keep and bear arms.”
-Hubert H. Humphrey
“The best way to enhance freedom in other lands is to demonstrate here that our democratic system is worthy of emulation.”
-Jimmy Carter
“There is no virtue in compulsory government charity, and there is no virtue in advocating it. A politician who portrays himself as “caring” and “sensitive” because he wants to expand the government’s charitable programs is merely saying that he’s willing to try to do good with other people’s money. Well, who isn’t? And a voter who takes pride in supporting such programs is telling us that he’ll do good with his own money – if a gun is held to his head.”
-P.J. O’Rourke
“Liberty is the only thing you cannot have unless you are willing to give it to others.”
-William Allen White
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