Liberty Quotations

The American's Creed

“I believe in the United States of America as a government of the people, by the people, for the people; whose just powers area derived from the consent of the governed; a democracy in a republic; a sovereign Nation of many sovereign States; a perfect Union, one and inseparable; established upon those principles of freedom, equality, justice, and humanity for which American patriots sacrificed their lives and fortunes.

I therefore believe it is my duty to my country to love it; to support its Constitution; to obey its laws; to respect its flag; and to defend it against all enemies.” ~William Tyler Page

Education

"The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of the government in the next." —Abraham Lincoln

"Information is the currency of democracy." —Thomas Jefferson

"If virtue and knowledge are diffused among the people, they will never be enslaved. This will be their great security." —Samuel Adams

"No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffused and Virtue is preserved. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauched in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders." —Samuel Adams

"A nation of well-informed men who have been taught to know and prize the rights which God has given them cannot be enslaved. It is in the region of ignorance that tyranny begins." —Benjamin Franklin

"Take away the heritage of a people and they are easily persuaded." —Karl Marx

"Diffusion of authority among tens of thousands of school districts is a safeguard against centralized control and abuse of the educational system that must be maintained." —Dwight D. Eisenhower, New York Herald Tribune, February 9, 1955

"Give me your four year olds, and in a generation I will build a socialist state." —Vladimir Lenin

Politics

"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter." —Winston Churchill

"One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors." —Plato

"If government could create jobs and raise children, socialism would have worked." —George Gilder

"You can always count on Americans to do the right thing, after they've tried everything else." —Winston Churchill

"We waged war on poverty, and poverty won." —Ronald Reagan

"We can and must write in a language which sows among the masses hate, revulsion, and scorn toward those who disagree with us." —Vladimir Lenin

Liberty

"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free." —Ronald Reagan

"And I hope we have once again reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There's a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: 'As government expands, liberty contracts.'"—Ronald Reagan, Farewell Address to the Nation, January 11, 1989

"The central bank is an institution of the most deadly hostility existing against the Principles and form of our Constitution. I am an Enemy to all banks discounting bills or notes for anything but Coin. If the American People allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the People of all their Property until their Children will wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered." —Thomas Jefferson

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." —Benjamin Franklin

"These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman." —Thomas Paine

"The release of initiative and enterprise made possible by self-government ultimately generates disintegrating forces from within. Again and again, after freedom brings opportunity and some degree of plenty, the competent become selfish, luxury-loving and complacent; the incompetent and unfortunate grow envious and covetous; and all three groups turn aside from the hard road of freedom to worship the golden calf of economic security. The historical cycle seems to be: from bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to apathy; from apathy to dependency; and from dependency back to bondage once more." —Attributed to various, source: "The Truth about Tytler," by Loren Collins, http://www.lorencollins.net/tytler.html, January 2009.

“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude than the animating contest of freedom, go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen!” —Samuel Adams

“At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, If it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us; it cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”—Abraham Lincoln

“He who pays the piper calls the tune.” —Traditional saying

America's religious heritage

"Religion and morality are the essential pillars of civil society." —George Washington

"God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever." —Thomas Jefferson

"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." —John Adams

"[O]nly a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters." —Benjamin Franklin

"No nation can be strong except in the strength of God, or safe except in His defense." —U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase, November 20, 1861

"Our modern democratic way of life has its deepest roots in our great common religious tradition, which for ages past has taught to civilized mankind the dignity of the human being, his equality before God, and his responsibility in the making of a better and fairer world. [...] In teaching this democratic faith to American children, we need the sustaining, buttressing aid of those great ethical religious teachings which are the heritage of our modern civilization. For 'not upon strength nor upon power, but upon the spirit of God'¹ shall our democracy be founded." —President Franklin D. Roosevelt, December 16, 1940
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¹Zechariah 4:6

"If we will not be ruled by God, then we will be ruled by tyrants." --William Penn