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LAISSEZFAIRE.FREESERVERS.COM

A Compilation of Quotes on Liberty

"I hope Congress never meddles with religion further than to say their own prayers." Thomas Jefferson

"Love your country, but never trust its government." Robert A. Heinlein

"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficient... The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding." Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis

"Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters." Daniel Webster

" Under the law of nature, all men are born free, every one comes into the world with a right to his own person, which includes the liberty of moving and using it at his own will. This is what is called personal liberty, and is given him by the Author of nature, because necessary for his own sustenance."- Thomas Jefferson: Legal Argument, 1770. FE 1:376

" The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." - Notes on Virginia, 1782

"...If we did a good act merely from the love of God and a belief that is pleasing to him, whence arises the morality of the Atheist? It is idle to say, as some do, that no such thing exists. We have the same evidence of the fact as of most of those we act on, to wit: their own affirmations, and their reasonings in support of them. Their virtue, then, must have had some other foundation than love of God." - Letter to Thomas Law Jun. 13, 1814

"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law - Thomas Jefferson in letter to Thomas Cooper Feb. 10, 1814"

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"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action, according to our will, within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others." Thomas Jefferson

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." Benjamin Franklin 1759.

"I am convinced that those societies (as the Indians) which live without government, enjoy in their general mass an infinitely greater degree of happiness than those who live under the European governments. Among the former, public opinion is in the place of law, and restrains morals as powerfully as laws ever did anywhere. Among the latter, under pretense of governing, they have divided their nations into two classes, wolves and sheep. I do not exaggerate... Experience declares that man is the only animal which devours his own kind; for I can apply no milder term to the governments of Europe, and to the general prey of the rich on the poor." --Thomas Jefferson to Edward Carrington, 1787. ME 6:58

"[The European nations] are nations of eternal war. All their energies are expended in the destruction of the labor, property and lives of their people. On our part, never had a people so favorable a chance of trying the opposite system, of peace and fraternity with mankind, and the direction of all our means and faculties to the purpose of improvement instead of destruction." --Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, 1823. ME 15:436

"I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical." Thomas Jefferson 1787

"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action." George Washington 1790

"The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it always to be kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion."