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Freedom

Something we should always be thankful for is our freedom, especially in this time when it is being eroded. I have no idea where I found these wonderful quotes about freedom, who compiled them nor how long I stored them in an external hard drive so they would not be lost when my computers die. If any of you know where they came from, please inform me so that I might give credit.

2 Corinthians 3:17b: . . . where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.

Give me liberty or give me death. (Patrick Henry)
Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves. (Abraham Lincoln)
Make us to see that our liberty is not the right to do as we please, but the opportunity to be pleased to do what is right. (Peter Marshall*s prayer)
There are two freedoms - the false, where a man is free to do what he likes; the true, where he is free to do what he ought. (Charles Kingsley)
Men fight for freedom, then they begin to accumulate laws to take it away from themselves. (Author Unknown)
No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck. (Frederick Douglass, speech, Civil Rights Mass Meeting, Washington, D.C., 1883)
Who speaks of liberty while the human mind is in chains? (Francis Wright, 1828)
The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power. (Daniel Webster)
Men fight for liberty and win it with hard knocks. Their children, brought up easy, let it slip away again, poor fools. And their grandchildren are once more slaves. (D.H. Lawrence, Classical American Literature, 1922)
I prefer liberty with danger to peace with slavery. (Author Unknown)
Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it. (George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman, Maxims: Liberty and Equality, 1905)
The fact, in short, is that freedom, to be meaningful in an organized society must consist of an amalgam of hierarchy of freedoms and restraints. (Samuel Hendel)
He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from opposition; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach himself. (Thomas Paine)
History does not teach fatalism. There are moments when the will of a handful of free men breaks through determinism and opens up new roads. (Charles de Gaulle)
Freedom has its life in the hearts, the actions, the spirit of men and so it must be daily earned and refreshed - else like a flower cut from its life-giving roots, it will wither and die. (Dwight D. Eisenhower)
Liberty is the possibility of doubting, of making a mistake, . . . of searching and experimenting, . . . of saying No to any authority - literary, artistic, philosophical, religious, social, and even political. (Ignazio Silone)
Liberty: One of Imagination*s most precious possessions. (Ambrose Bierce, The Devil*s Dictionary)
The patriot*s blood is the seed of Freedom*s tree. (Thomas Campbell)
Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide. (Napoleon Bonaparte)
Here is my advice as we begin the century that will lead to 2081. First, guard the freedom of ideas at all costs. Be alert that dictators have always played on the natural human tendency to blame others and to oversimplify. And don*t regard yourself as a guardian of freedom unless you respect and preserve the rights of people you disagree with to free, public, unhampered expression. (Gerard K. O*Neill)
I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom. (Simone de Beauvoir)
My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular. (Adlai Stevenson, speech, Detroit, 1952)
It is easy to take liberty for granted, when you have never had it taken from you. (Author unknown, sometimes attributed to M. Grundler)
We on this continent should never forget that men first crossed the Atlantic not to find soil for their ploughs but to secure liberty for their souls. (Robert J. McCracken)
You have freedom when you*re easy in your harness. (Robert Frost)
For what avail the plough or sail, or land or life, if freedom fail? (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it. (Thomas Paine)
In the truest sense, freedom cannot be bestowed; it must be achieved. (Franklin D. Roosevelt)
We have to call it freedom: who*d want to die for a lesser tyranny? (Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic*s Notebook, 1960)
Freedom is the oxygen of the soul. (Moshe Dayan)
No one is free when others are oppressed. (Author Unknown)
Nations grown corrupt love bondage more than liberty; bondage with ease than strenuous liberty. (John Milton)
Just, harmonious, temperate as is the spirit of liberty, there is in the name and mere notion of it a vagueness so opposite to the definite clearness of the moral law. (Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827)
Freedom means choosing your burden. (Hephzibah Menuhin)
Most people want security in this world, not liberty. (H.L. Mencken, Minority Report, 1956)
We feel free when we escape - even if it be but from the frying pan into the fire. (Eric Hoffer)
Freedom is that instant between when someone tells you to do something and when you decide how to respond. (Jeffrey Borenstein)
Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have. (Harry Emerson Fosdick)
Freedom is not enough. (Lyndon B. Johnson)
Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it. The history of liberty is a history of resistance. (Woodrow Wilson)
The sound of tireless voices is the price we pay for the right to hear the music of our own opinions. (Adlai Stevenson, speech, New York City, 28 August 1952)
We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it. (William Faulkner)
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. (Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759)
Everywhere the human soul stands between a hemisphere of light and another of darkness on the confines of two everlasting hostile empires, - Necessity and Free Will. (Thomas Carlyle, Essays, The Opera)
We have enjoyed so much freedom for so long that we are perhaps in danger of forgetting how much blood it cost to establish the Bill of Rights. (Felix Frankfurter)
O Liberty...! is it well to leave the gates unguarded? (Thomas Bailey Aldrich)
Let freedom never perish in your hands. (Joseph Addison)
Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth. (George Washington)
I believe 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, speech, Virginia Convention, 1788)
Liberty doesn*t work as well in practice as it does in speeches. (Will Rogers)
Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err. (Mahatma Gandhi)
Order without liberty and liberty without order are equally destructive. (Theodore Roosevelt)
We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home. (Edward R. Murrow)
Freedom has a thousand charms to show, that slaves, howe*er contented, never know. (William Cowper)
Most men, after a little freedom, have preferred authority with the consoling assurances and the economy of effort which it brings. (Walter Lippmann, A Preface to Morals, 1929)
Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better. (Albert Camus)
Freedom is the will to be responsible to ourselves. (Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, 1888)
The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding. (Louis D. Brandeis)
When the People contend for their liberty, they seldom get anything for their Victory but new Masters. (George Savile)
Without freedom, no one really has a name. (Milton Acorda)
A nation may lose its liberties in a day and not miss them in a century. (Baron de Montesquieu)
The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion. (Edmund Burke)
We anarchists do not want to emancipate the people; we want the people to emancipate themselves. (Errico Malatesta, l*Agitazione, 18 June 1897)
Freedom is never free. (Author Unknown)
We are free, truly free, when we don*t need to rent our arms to anybody in order to be able to lift a piece of bread to our mouths. (Ricardo Flores Magon, speech, 31 May 1914)
Many politicians are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim. (Thomas Macaulay)

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