Our Liberties Quotes

#1. Promise me no promises,
So will I not promise you:
Keep we both our liberties,
Never false and never true:
Let us hold the die uncast,
Free to come as free to go:
For I cannot know your past,
And of mine what can you know?

Christina Rossetti

#2. Growing maturity is marked by the increasing liberties we take with our travelling ... we made the discovery (some people never make it) that real books can be taken on a journey and that hours of golden reading can so be added to its other delights.

C.S. Lewis

#3. It would indeed be ironic if, in the name of national defence, we would sanction the subversion of one of those liberties which make the defence of our nation worthwhile.

Earl Warren

#4. The cost in terms of liberties lost and the unnecessary exposure to terrorism are difficult to determine, but in time it will become apparent to all of us that foreign interventionism is of no benefit to American citizens, but is instead a threat to our liberties.

Ron Paul

#5. I say to you that the price of liberty is and always has been blood, human blood, and if our liberties are lost, we shall never regain them except at the price of blood. They must not be lost.

J. Reuben Clark

#6. As an immigrant, I appreciate, far more than the average American, the liberties we have in this country. Silence is a big enemy of morality. I don't want our blunders in history to get repeated.

Gloria Estefan

#7. I care about a lot of issues. I care about libraries, I care about healthcare, I care about homelessness and unemployment. I care about net neutrality and the steady erosion of our liberties both online and off. I care about the rich/poor divide and the rise of corporate business.

Sara Sheridan

#8. If we expose the Chinese to our freedoms, it may create a greater hunger for democracy, reform and liberties in China.

Gary Locke

#9. IF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE COULD LEARN WHAT I KNOW OF THE FIERCE HATRED OF THE PRIESTS OF ROME AGAINST OUR INSTITUTIONS, OUR SCHOOLS, OUR MOST SACRED RIGHTS, AND OUR SO DEARLY BOUGHT LIBERTIES, THEY WOULD DRIVE THEM OUT AS TRAITORS!

Abraham Lincoln

#10. Let it not be said that no one cared, that no one objected once it's realized that our liberties and wealth are in jeopardy.

Ron Paul

#11. Basic decisions of our society are made through the expressed will of the people. That is why when we see these liberties threatened, instead of falling apart, our nation becomes unified and our democracies come together... in spite of our varied backgrounds and many racial strains.

Eleanor Roosevelt

#12. Heroes did not make our liberties; they but reflected and illustrated them.

James A. Garfield

#13. As we have seen from Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's example, even one justice can profoundly alter the meaning of those words for our citizens. Even one justice can deeply affect the rights and liberties of the American people.

Edward Kennedy

#14. Hard to remember who is more dangerous: the people who are attacking our liberties overseas, or those who are suppressing them at home.

Sara Paretsky

#15. We must erase bin Laden's ugly legacy, not extend it: by ending the Patriot Act's erosion of our civil liberties, we can protect the freedoms that make America worth fighting for.

Aaron Swartz

#16. Far from a simple attempt to rid the nation of crime and drugs,
our policy against narcotics
like any public policy
comes with strings attached. And increasingly these strings
are constricting around the necks of Americans' lives and liberties.

Joel Miller

#17. Don't interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.

Abraham Lincoln

#18. If the expansion of a global legal regime for communication technologies gains traction, the effects to the global economy as well as our individual liberties will be severe.

Marsha Blackburn

#19. I, my own damn self, am not a Tea Party supporter. I disagree with them on social liberties, our overseas wars, Obama's birthplace, Sarah Palin, and the conspicuous absence of tea at their rallies.

Penn Jillette

#20. Since the writing of our Constitution, our religious liberties have been systematically threatened and whittled away by Supreme Court justices who interpret the First Amendment as a prohibition against religious activity on public property.

Tim LaHaye

#21. As the Sword was the last resort for the preservation of our liberties, so it ought to be the first thing laid aside when those liberties are firmly established

David McCullough

#22. And if novelties are to be shunned, believe me, the most alarming of all novelties, the most wild of all projects, the most rash of all attempts, is that of rending us in pieces, in order to preserve our liberties, and promote our happiness.

James Madison

#23. The legal system we have and the rule of law are far more responsible for our traditional liberties than any system of one man one vote. Any country or Government which wants to proceed towards tyranny starts to undermine legal rights and undermine the law.

Margaret Thatcher

#24. At the foundation of our civil liberties lies the principle that denies to government officials an exceptional position before the law and which subjects them to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen.

Louis D. Brandeis

#25. It only takes five people in black robes to determine such crucial issues for our country as abortion, pornography, same-sex 'marriage,' and religious liberties.

Richard Land

#26. This is a time when the protections of Americans' liberties are directly at risk, as are the checks and balances that have served to constrain abuses of power for more than 200 years. The Supreme Court is relied upon by all of to us protect our fundamental rights.

Patrick Leahy

#27. Trial by jury is the palladium of our liberties. I do not know what a palladium is, but I am sure it is a good thing!

Mark Twain

#28. The truth is our country, our people, our liberties, and our way of life are under attack by radical Islamic terrorists who kill and destroy in the name of religion.

Saxby Chambliss

#29. Our liberties, our values, all for which America stands is safe today because brave men and women have been ready to face the fire at freedom's front. And we thank God for them.

Ronald Reagan

#30. We have got to protect privacy rights. We have got to protect our God-given, constitutionally protected civil liberties, and we are not doing that in the federal government. The Department of Homeland Security, as well as the TSA, is a great culprit in being a Gestapo-type organization.

Paul Broun

#31. We see our liberties curtailed more and more and more.We see a tremendous attack on religious freedom.

Rafael Cruz

#32. It is the right of a democratically elected parliament to act in defence of our traditional liberties, and everything should be done to keep it that way.

Jeremy Corbyn

#33. Every time that we try to lift a problem from our own shoulders, and shift that problem to the hands of the government, to the same extent we are sacrificing the liberties of our people.

John F. Kennedy

#34. But 18 years after the passage of the Civil Liberties Act, there still remains unfinished work to completely rectify and close this regrettable chapter in our Nation's history.

Xavier Becerra

#35. Reading is the true foundation of our civil liberties.

Patricia O'Hara

#36. The priceless heritage of the free and independent interchange of thought is not to be kept without ceaseless vigilance. Only by guarding the truth itself can we guard the greatest of all our liberties-the right to proclaim the truth. On that liberty rests the destiny of millions.

Julius Elias, 1st Viscount Southwood

#37. If it's not accepted that big government, fiat money, ignoring liberty, central economic planning, welfarism, and warfarism caused our crisis, we can expect a continuous and dangerous march toward corporatism and even fascism with even more loss of our liberties,

Ron Paul

#38. 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

#39. And that is the beautiful thing about friendship: we can take liberties, we can show our frailer side, we can afford the vast luxury of giving way to our boredom when we are bored, our anger when we are angry, our peckishness when we feel downhearted.

Sydney J. Harris

#40. The Supreme Court must serve as an independent check on abuses by the executive branch and the protector of our liberties, not a cheerleader for an imperial presidency.

Edward Kennedy

#41. In the midst of these pleasing ideas we should be unfaithful to ourselves if we should ever lose sight of the danger to our liberties if anything partial or extraneous should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections.

Samuel Adams

#42. Those of us who lived under communism for most of our lives were looking toward the Western world because of its values, emphasis on democracy, individual liberties and freedom, and economic prosperity.

Vaclav Klaus

#43. We believe that government in Britain is there to protect people from terrorism and from the worst criminality, but never at the expense of our civil liberties and the basic tenets of our legal system.

Charles Kennedy

#44. This wholesale invasion of Americans' and foreign citizens' privacy does not contribute to our security; it puts in danger the very liberties we're trying to protect.

Daniel Ellsberg

#45. If there's anything I have learned since returning to Congress, it's that talk is still cheap, progress is still slow, and our liberties continue to erode every day.

Matt Salmon

#46. [H]owever weak our country may be, I hope we shall never sacrifice our liberties.

Alexander Hamilton

#47. Those who are troubled by our existing programs are not interested in a repeat of 9/11, and those who defend these programs are not dismissive of civil liberties. The challenge is getting the details right, and that's not simple.

Barack Obama

#48. Anything short of the discipline and honesty of a true gold coin standard will inevitably self-destruct, consuming our wealth and liberties, and nurturing the omnipotent state.

Lawrence Reed

#49. But I have a conscience and a religious faith, and I know that our liberties were not won without suffering, and may be lost again through our cowardice. I intend to do my duty to my
country.

Upton Sinclair

#50. We must support our rights or lose our character, and with it, perhaps, our liberties.

James Monroe

#51. It is possible to read the history of this country as one long struggle to extend the liberties established in our Constitution to everyone in America.

Molly Ivins

#52. In order to have greater visibility of the larger cyber threat landscape, we must remove the government bureaucratic stovepipes that inhibit our abilities to effectively defend America while ensuring citizens' privacy and civil liberties are also protected.

Michael McCaul

#53. America stands strongest in challenging terrorism when we do not give up an inch of our civil liberties.

Dennis Kucinich

#54. [I]f we care about our remaining liberties we must at some point draw a line in the sand and let politicians and bureaucrats know we will not tolerate further encroachment on our God-given rights to liberty.

Walter E. Williams

#55. When under siege, if we do not stand for our liberties and for the liberties of those who are unable to stand for themselves, then the great American experience will come to an end.

Tim Huelskamp

#56. Let us by wise and constitutional measures promote intelligence among the people as the best means of preserving our liberties.

James Monroe

#57. One of the functions of government is to act as a safeguard not just of property but of our liberties.

William Weld

#58. Judicial excellence means that a Supreme Court justice must have a sense of the values from which our core of our political- economic system goes. In other words, we should not approve any nominee whose extreme judicial philosophy would undermine rights and liberties relied upon by all Americans.

Herb Kohl

#59. Congress remains in total denial as our liberties are rapidly fading before our eyes. The process is propelled by unwarranted fear and ignorance as to the true meaning of liberty. It is driven by economic myths, fallacies and irrational good intentions.

Ron Paul

#60. All of our effort should be focused on protecting the religious liberties and freedom of conscience for those Americans that profoundly disagree with the decision.

Carly Fiorina

#61. Americans oppose Obamacare because they understand that it is inconsistent with our liberties and our idea of limited government and that it will destroy the best health care system in the world.

David Limbaugh

#62. If the prosecution of crime is to be conducted with so little regard for that protection which centuries of English law have given to the individual, we are indeed at the dawn of a new era; and much that we have deemed vital to our liberties, is a delusion.

Learned Hand

#63. If confirmed, Judge [Samuel] Alito could serve on the court for generation or more. And the decisions he will make as justice will have a direct impact on the lives and liberties of our children, our grandchildren, and even our great-grandchildren.

Edward Kennedy

#64. We will not let terrorists change our way of life; we will not live in fear; and we will not undermine the civil liberties that characterize our Democracy.

Adam Schiff

#65. When we fled from the oppressions of kings and parliaments in Europe, to found this great Republic in America, we brought with us the laws and the liberties, which formed a part of our heritage as Britons.

Caleb Cushing

#66. We must protect the very things that make America so special - most certainly including our civil liberties. But we cannot do so without strong national security and a thoughtful and informed discourse.

Mike Pompeo

#67. Opponents of civil liberties contend the NSA data collection has made our country more safe, but even the most vocal defenders of the program have failed to identify a single thwarted plot.

Rand Paul

#68. The Obama Administration's obsession with forcing mandates on the American people has now reached a new low by violating the conscience rights and religious liberties of our people.

Marco Rubio

#69. With the death of bin Laden, it's finally time for Congress to bring back the pre-9-11 legal norm, before we decided it was okay to toss out our civil liberties if the 'bad guys' were scary enough.

Aaron Swartz

#70. The Union next to our liberties the most dear. May we all remember that it can only be preserved by respecting the rights of the States, and distributing equally the benefits and burdens of the Union.

John C. Calhoun

#71. I now proceed to demonstrate that the Mexicans are wholly incapable of self-government, and that our liberties, our fortunes and our lives are insecure so long as we are connected with them.

William H. Wharton

#72. We're about to shoot an episode on Air Force One, for instance, and we're going to take liberties, small liberties, with Air Force One, as we take small liberties with our White House set.

Aaron Sorkin

#73. The protection of our liberties does not ultimately depend on parliaments or even the courts. It depends on the love of the people for liberty.

Michael Kirby

#74. In the summer of 1776 our Founding Fathers sought to secure our independence and the liberties that remain the foundation of our nation today.

Doc Hastings

#75. This is the true lesson of our history: war, preparation for war, and foreign military interventions have served for the most part not to protect us, as we are constantly told, but rather to sap our economic vitality and undermine our civil and economic liberties.

Robert Higgs

#76. Today the devil as a wolf in supposedly a new suit of sheep's clothing is enticing some men to parrot his line by advocating planned government guaranteed security at the expense of our liberties.

Ezra Taft Benson

#77. At the root of the assault on our liberties is, in fact, an assault on our character
an assault that assumes that we are not good enough to be free, and that aims to make sure that we are no longer strong enough, courageous enough, disciplined enough to be a free people.

Alan Keyes

#78. America will be far safer if we reduce the chances of a terrorist attack in one of our cities than if we diminish the civil liberties of our own people.

Nancy Pelosi

#79. I think we [Americans] are going to look back and realize that the civil liberties that we've given up in the name of security, the authority that we've given Democratic and Republican presidents, all have contributed to a fraying of the fabric of our democratic republic.

Jeremy Scahill

#80. I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.

Thomas Jefferson

#81. Freedom does not come without a price. We may sometimes take for granted the many liberties we enjoy in America, but they have all been earned through the ultimate sacrifice paid by so many of the members of our armed forces.

Charlie Dent

#82. Defend our liberties and fashion into one united people the multitudes brought hither out of many kindred and tongues.

Thomas Jefferson

#83. The issue isn't gun control but state control
obtuse and arbitrary state control, state control run amok ... Forget guns. If Dr. Hudson, Mr. Turnbull, Dr. Gingrich and others end up in jail it won't be for their guns but our liberties.

George Jonas

#84. I came home from Portugal convinced that nothing is so important as making known what the Mother of God asked in those apparitions of 1917 ... The future of our civilization, our liberties, our very existence may depend upon the acceptance of her commands.

William Thomas Walsh

#85. The lessons of September 11 are that if we allow law enforcement to do their work free of political interference, if we give them adequate resources and modern technologies, we can protect our citizens without intruding on our liberties.

Lucille Roybal-Allard

#86. Now that Bin Laden dead, can we get our civil liberties back?
That George Bush stole with the Patriot Act?

Ras Kass

#87. A tolerance that no longer distinguishes between good and evil would become chaotic and self-destructive, just as a freedom that did not respect the freedom of others or find the common measure of our respective liberties would become anarchy and destroy authority.

Pope Benedict XVI

#88. Our basic civil liberties are in jeopardy, but we're going to be spending our time as a society arguing about whether or not schoolchildren should be forced to pay tribute to imaginary invisible beings who live in magical kingdoms in outer space some

Tom Tomorrow

#89. The history of America is to expand civil liberties in a responsible and civil manner. We need to remember that our wonderful Democracy with its freedoms has been working.

James McGreevey

#90. I want my candidacy for the presidency of the United States to stand for a moment when we the people, stand once again for the independence from a government that has gotten too big and spends too much and has taken away too much of our liberties.

Michele Bachmann

#91. I would consider all of the legislation which I have supported meaningless if I were to sit idly by, silent, during a period which may go down in history as an era when we permitted the curtailment of our liberties.

Dennis Chavez

#92. Means and ends are central. If your means are corroded, your ends will be corroded. And if you're fighting to preserve liberty and you use means that eviscerate our liberties, the end will be corroded, too.

Nat Hentoff

#93. As government regulations grow slowly, we become used to the harness. Habit is a powerful force, and we no longer feel as intensely as we once would have [the] constriction of our liberties that would have been utterly intolerable a mere half century ago.

Robert Bork

#94. Our government, taxes, and ideas of freedom are already duplicates of the Old World. Our politicians determine how we should live our lives - and our individual liberties are sacrificed for the benefit of the Fatherland.

Harry Browne

#95. We are right to take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties.

James Madison

#96. There are certain songs that are sacred. People want to hear them just as they are in their head; they don't want you messing around with them. And then there are some other songs, if they've been around a long time in our set list, that I think we can take some creative liberties with.

Keith Urban

#97. For now more than ever, we must keep in the forefront of our minds the fact that whenever we take away the liberties of those we hate, we are opening the way to loss of liberty for those we love.

Wendell Willkie

#98. The right to a trial is a core principle of the American legal system. Depriving Americans of these essential liberties undermines the Constitution while doing nothing to strengthen our national security.

John Garamendi

#99. I urge calm and sensitivity to the fundamental civil liberties of our country.

Larry Craig

#100. In addition, as citizens, we must fight in their incipient stages all movements by government or party or pressure groups that seek to limit the legitimate liberties of any of our fellow citizens.

Wendell Willkie