“Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.”
“Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people who have a right…and a desire to know; but besides this, they have a right, and indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean of the characters and conduct of their rulers.”
Adams, Samuel: “If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”
“Let us contemplate our forefathers, and posterity, and resolve to maintain the rights bequeathed to us from the former, for the sake of the latter. The necessity of the times, more than ever, calls for our utmost circumspection, deliberation, fortitude and perseverance. Let us remember that ‘if we suffer tamely a lawless attack upon our liberty, we encourage it, and involve others in our doom.’ It is a very serious consideration…that millions yet unborn may be the miserable sharers of the event.”
“This liberty will look easy by and by when nobody dies to get it.”
“If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost.”
“The basis of a democratic state is liberty.”
“The tree of liberty only grows when watered by the blood of tyrants.”
“The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”
“Among a people generally corrupt, liberty cannot long exist.”
“The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedients, and by parts.”
“Liberty is the capacity to do anything that does no harm to others.”
“Then join hand in hand, brave Americans all! / By uniting we stand, by dividing we fall.”
“The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. … If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.”
“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
“Where liberty is, there is my country.”
“Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it.”
“The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves.”
“The soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to think, feel, do just as one pleases.”
“Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God!—I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!”
“Liberty, the greatest of all earthly blessings—gives us that precious jewel, and you may take everything else! … Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined... The great object is that every man be armed. Everyone who is able might have a gun.”
“It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once.”
“What light is to the eyes—what air is to the lungs—what love is to the heart, liberty is to the soul of man.”
“And even should the cloud of barbarism and despotism again obscure the science and liberties of Europe, this country remains to preserve and restore light and liberty to them. In short, the flames kindled on the fourth of July, 1776, have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism; on the contrary, they will consume these engines and all who work them.”
“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.”
“I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.”
“The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave.”
“The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time.”
“Timid men… prefer the calm of despotism to the boisterous sea of liberty.”
“We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed.”
“What country before ever existed a century and a half without rebellion? … The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.”
“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”
“Don’t interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.”
“Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”
“The happy Union of these States is a wonder; their Constitution a miracle; their example the hope of Liberty throughout the world.”
“Ubi libertas ibi patria [Where liberty is, there is my country]. (his motto)
“He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.”
“Whether in chains or in laurels, Liberty knows nothing but victories.”
“I love the Americans because they love liberty, and I love them for the noble efforts they made in the last war.”
“If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I never would lay down my arms—never—never—never! You cannot conquer America.”
“We defend and we build a way of life, not for America alone, but for all mankind.”
“Free people, remember this maxim: We may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is once lost.”
“To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man.”
“Our liberty cannot be taken away unless the people are themselves accomplices.”
“The approach of liberty makes even an old man brave.”
“Liberty is the breath of life to nations; and liberty is the one thing that parents, schoolmasters, and rulers spend their lives in extirpating for the sake of an immediately quiet and finally disastrous life.”
“Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.”
“Where Slavery is, there Liberty cannot be; and where Liberty is, there Slavery cannot be.”
“Liberty of thought is the life of the soul.”
“Liberty not only means that the individual has both the opportunity and the burden of choice; it also means that he must bear the consequences of his actions… Liberty and responsibility are inseparable.”
“Liberty, not communism, is the most contagious force in the world.”
“Let us therefore animate and encourage each other, and show the whole world that a Freeman, contending for the liberty of his own ground, is superior to any slavish mercenary on earth.”
“Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.”
“The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the republican model of government, are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally staked, on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.”
“God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to guard and defend it.”
“Liberty exists in proportion to wholesome restraint.”
“I would rather belong to poor nation that was free than to a rich nation that had ceased to be in love with liberty.”
“Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of the government. The history of government is a history of resistance. The history of liberty is the history of the limitation of government, not the increase of it.”