If Liberty Means Anything at All, It Means the Right to Tell People What They Do Not Want to Hear

QUOTES ON LIBERTY AND JUSTICE, TRUTH AND DUTY:

 

 

“I detest racialism, because I regard it as a barbaric thing, whether it comes from a black man or a white man.”

-Nelson Mandela

 

“There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.”

-Robert Heinlein

 

“The more corrupt the state, the more it legislates.”

– Tacitus

 

“I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”  Letter to Benjamin Rush, September 23, 1800

-Thomas Jefferson

 

“Those things which are precious are saved only by sacrifice.” Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest

-Stephen E. Ambrose

 

“War is not glorious as novelists would have us believe.  It is only when we are in the heat and flush of battle that it is fascinating and interesting.  It is only then that we enjoy it.  When we forget ourselves and revel in the destruction we are dealing around us. I am now ashamed of the feelings I had in those hours of danger. Ours is a just war, a holy cause.”

-John Pelham

 

“You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world. Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle hardened. He will fight savagely. But this is the year 1944! Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940-41. The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats, in open battle, man-to-man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground. Our Home Fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together to Victory!

I have full confidence in your courage and devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full Victory!

Good luck! And let us beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.”

-Dwight D. Eisenhower

 

“Every individual necessarily labors to render the annual revenue of society as great as he can. He generally neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. He intends only his own gain, and he is, in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was not part of his intention.” Wealth of Nations

-Adam Smith

 

“It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones.”

– Luke 17:2

 

“The general reading public that wants to learn about the whole of our nation’s past has had to turn to history books written by non-academics who have no Ph.D.s and are not involved in the incestuous conversations of the academic scholars. . . . These historians see themselves as moral critics obligated to denounce the values of the past in order to somehow reform our present.”

-Pulitzer Prize winning Professor Gordon S. Wood

 

“The determination to resist invasion is the first and most sacred duty of a free people.”

-Benjamin W. Jones

 

“Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people. Those who have known freedom and then lost it have never known it again.” “California and the Problem of Government Growth,” Speech as Governor of California, January 5, 1967

-Ronald Reagan

 

“Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.” Man and Superman

-George Bernard Shaw 

 

“A primary object should be the education of our youth in the science of government. In a republic, what species of knowledge can be equally important? And what duty more pressing than communicating it to those who are to be the future guardians of the liberties of the country?”

-George Washington

 

“Rebellion is the resistance of an inferior to the lawful authority of a superior. A child may rebel against a parent—a slave against his master—citizens against the government, and colonies against their mother-country—but a State cannot rebel; because one Sovereign cannot rebel against another, for all Sovereigns are equal. The Sovereignty of the little State of Delaware is equal to that of New York, or of Russia, though the physical power of those Sovereignties are vastly different. The supposition, therefore, that a Sovereign State can commit Rebellion, Treason, or any crime whatever, is utterly inadmissible in the science of politics. The idea of crime cannot exist where there is no conceivable or possible tribunal, before which the culprit could be arraigned and convicted. Still less can any State be supposed to incur the guilt of rebellion or treason, by resisting an unconstitutional law of the General Government. The General Government is the creature of the States—the offspring of their Sovereign Power. It the Creator to be governed by the lawless authority of the Creature?”

-Maria H. Pinckney 

 

“Poverty in Egypt, or anywhere else, is not very difficult to explain. There are three basic causes: People are poor because they cannot produce anything highly valued by others. They can produce things highly valued by others but are hampered or prevented from doing so. Or, they volunteer to be poor.”

-Walter Williams

 

“Oh History, History what a tissue of lies thou art!”

-Daniel H. Hill

 

“The trouble with this generation is that they are like Prince Ptolemy of Egypt when he wanted Euclid to show him an easy way to learn geometry. It is too much of a general rule now among the young to look for an easy way or a soft place.” Letter to a friend 1923

-Supreme Court Justice Robert Lee Williams of Oklahoma

 

“It is when people forget God that tyrants forge their chains.”

-Patrick Henry

 

“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

-Lord Acton

 

“The long-established faith of the Texas settlers in the sanctity of written constitutional guarantees reacted against Santa Anna’s arbitrary course, and dormant sympathy for those engaged in a war against tyranny developed into action.”

-William Hughes

 

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

-Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

 

“Hold on, my friends, to the Constitution and to the Republic for which it stands. Miracles do not cluster, and what has happened once in 6000 years, may not happen again. Hold on to the Constitution, for if the American Constitution should fail, there will be anarchy throughout the world.”

-Daniel Webster

 

“Bow down dear land, for thou hast found release

…What were our lives without thee?

What all our lives to save thee?

We reck not what we gave thee;

We will not dare to doubt thee,

but ask whatever else, and we will dare!”

 -James R. Lowell, 1865

 

“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”

-George Orwell

 

“I am an American; free born and free bred, where I acknowledge no man as my superior, except for his own worth, or as my inferior, except for his own demerit.”

-Theodore Roosevelt

 

“Liberty must be allowed to work out its natural results; and these will, ere long, astonish the world.”

-James Buchanan

 

“Successful … politicians are insecure and intimidated men. They advance politically only as they placate, appease, bribe, seduce, bamboozle or otherwise manage to manipulate the demanding and threatening elements in their constituencies.”

-Walter Lippmann

 

“Don’t interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties. And not to Democrats alone do I make this appeal, but to all who love these great and true principles.” Speech at Kalamazoo, Michigan, August 27, 1856

-Abraham Lincoln

 

 

 

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