C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Liberty
Give me liberty, or give me death.
Liberty is not the right of one, but of all.
Liberty must be limited in order to be enjoyed.
Nature gives liberty even to dumb animals.
Liberty, without wisdom, is license.
The love of liberty with life is given.
Liberty is a slow fruit.
Headstrong liberty is lashed with woe.
Liberty is no negation. It is a substantive, tangible reality.
Liberty is quite as much a moral as a political growth,—the result of free individual action, energy, and independence.
The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.
A bird in a cage is not half a bird.
Reason and virtue alone can bestow liberty.
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.
Liberty is worth whatever the best civilization is worth.
Perfect love holds the secret of the world’s perfect liberty.
Few persons enjoy real liberty; we are all slaves to ideas or habits.
The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time.
The tree of liberty grows only when watered by the blood of tyrants.
God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to guard and defend it.
Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.
Liberty, like chastity, once lost, can never be regained in its original purity.
The tidal wave of God’s providence is carrying liberty throughout the globe.
Where slavery is, there liberty cannot be; and where liberty is, there slavery cannot be.
Where liberty dwells, there is my country.
Liberty is from God; liberties from the Devil.
O liberty! liberty! how many crimes are committed in thy name.
Every bondman in his own hand bears the power to cancel his captivity.
Interwoven is the love of liberty with every ligament of the heart.
Whether in chains or in laurels, liberty knows nothing but victories.
Personal liberty is the paramount essential to human dignity and human happiness.
Liberty must be a mighty thing; for by it God punishes and rewards nations.
True liberty can exist only when justice is equally administered to all.
Liberty and union, now and forever, one and inseparable.
Give me the centralism of liberty; give me the imperialism of equal rights.
Natural liberty is the right of common upon a waste; civil liberty is the safe, exclusive, unmolested enjoyment of a cultivated enclosure.
Give me the liberty to know, to think, to believe, and to utter freely according to conscience, above all other liberties.
There are two freedoms—the false, where a man is free to do what he likes; the true, where a man is free to do what he ought.
Do you wish to be free? Then above all things, love God, love your neighbor, love one another, love the common weal; then you will have true liberty.
The only rational liberty is that which is born of subjection, reared in the fear of God and the love of man.
The love of liberty that is not a real principle of dutiful behavior to authority is as hypocritical as the religion that is not productive of a good life.
Wise laws and just restraints are to a noble nation not chains, but chains of mail,—strength and defense, though something of an incumbrance.
Liberty will not descend to a people, a people must raise themselves to liberty; it is a blessing that must be earned before it can be enjoyed.
Liberty knows nothing but victories. Soldiers call Bunker Hill a defeat; but liberty dates from it though Warren lay dead on the field.
The people’s liberties strengthen the king’s prerogative, and the king’s prerogative is to defend the people’s liberties.
Liberty is to the collective body what health is to every individual body. Without health no pleasure can be tasted by man; without liberty, no happiness can be enjoyed by society.
Not until right is founded upon reverence will it be secure; not until duty is based upon love will it be complete; not until liberty is based on eternal principles will it be full, equal, lofty, and universal.
Liberty***is one of the choicest gifts that heaven hath bestowed upon man, and exceeds in value all the treasures which the earth contains within its bosom, or the sea covers. Liberty, as well as honor, man ought to preserve at the hazard of his life, for without it life is insupportable.
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The only liberty that is valuable is a liberty connected with order; that not only exists along with order and virtue, but which cannot exist at all without them. It inheres in good and steady government, as in its substance and vital principle.
The liberty of a people consists in being governed by laws which they have made themselves, under whatsoever form it may be of government; the liberty of a private man, in being master of his own time and actions, as far as may consist with the laws of God and of his country.
If the true spark of religious and civil liberty be kindled, it will burn. Human agency cannot extinguish it. Like the earth’s central fire, it may be smothered for a time; the ocean may overwhelm it; mountains may press it down; but its inherent and unconquerable force will heave both the ocean and the land, and at some time or other, in some place or other, the volcano will break out and flame up to heaven.