Famous Liberty Quotes That You’ll Want to Free up Some Time For

“Give me liberty or give me death!”
– Patrick Henry, Speech to the Second Virginia Convention, March 23, 1775

“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
– George Orwell, Animal Farm (unused preface)

“Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.”
– Benjamin Franklin, Silence Dogood, the Busy‑Body, and Early Writings

“This is my doctrine: Give every other human being every right you claim for yourself.”
– Robert G. Ingersoll, The Liberty Of Man, Woman And Child

“Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.”
– Henry David Thoreau

“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it.”
– Thomas Paine, The Crisis, no. 4, September 11, 1777

“Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.”
– George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman

“Without Freedom of Thought, there can be no such Thing as Wisdom; and no such Thing as public Liberty, without Freedom of Speech; which is the Right of every Man, as far as by it, he does not hurt or controul the Right of another: And this is the only Check it ought to suffer, and the only Bounds it ought to know.”
– Benjamin Franklin, The New-England Courant, July 9, 1722

“A state which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes–will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished.”
– John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

“Every friend of freedom, and I know you are one, must be as revolted as I am by the prospect of turning the United States into an armed camp, by the vision of jails filled with casual drug users and of an army of enforcers empowered to invade the liberty of citizens on slight evidence.”
– Milton Friedman, An Open Letter To Bill Bennett

“The ideal Government of all reflective men, from Aristotle onward, is one which lets the individual alone – one which barely escapes being no government at all.”
– H. L. Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy

“Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.”
– Edmund Burke, Letter to M. de Menonville, 1789

“The idea of restraining the legislative authority, in the means for providing for the national defense, is one of those refinements, which owe their origin to a zeal for liberty more ardent than enlightened.”
– Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers

“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”
– John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address, January 20, 1961

“Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of the government. The history of liberty is a history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it.
– Woodrow Wilson, Address to the New York Press Club, September 9, 1912

“In the early ages of the world, according to the scripture chronology, there were no kings; the consequence of which was there were no wars; it is the pride of kings which throws mankind into confusion.”
– Thomas Paine, Common Sense

“Even despotism does not produce its worst effects, so long as individuality exists under it; and whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called, and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men.”
– John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

“Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”
– Louis D. Brandeis, Olmstead v. U.S., 277 U.S. 438 (1928) (dissenting)

“Doesn’t matter what the press says. Doesn’t matter what the politicians or the mobs say. Doesn’t matter if the whole country decides that something wrong is something right. This nation was founded on one principle above all else: The requirement that we stand up for what we believe, no matter the odds or the consequences. When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth, and tell the whole world – ‘No, YOU move.’”
– Captain America, The Amazing Spider-Man: Civil War

“Every law that curbs my basic human freedom; every lie about the things I care for; every crime committed against me by their politics; that what’s makes me get up and hound these *******, and I’ll do that until the day I die … or until my brain dries up or something.”
– Spider Jerusalem, Transmetropolitan

“Better to die fighting for freedom then be a prisoner all the days of your life.”
– Bob Marley

And I keep on fighting for the things I want
Though I know that when you’re dead you can’t
I’d rather be a free man in my grave
Than living as a puppet or a slave
– Jimmy Cliff, “The Harder They Come”

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
– The US Declaration of Independence

“It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance.”
– John Philpot Curran

“I am an American; free born and free bred, where I acknowledge no man as my superior, except for his own worth, or as my inferior, except for his own demerit.”
– Theodore Roosevelt

“Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide.”
– Napoleon Bonaparte

“I would die to preserve the law upon a solid foundation; but take away liberty, and the foundation is destroyed.”
– Alexander Hamilton, A Full Vindication of the Measures of Congress, December 15, 1774

“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
– Benjamin Franklin, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Benjamin Franklin

“Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.”
– John Adams, Letter to Abigail Adams, July 17, 1775

“Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves.”
– Abraham Lincoln, Complete Works – Volume XII

“Don’t interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties. And not to Democrats alone do I make this appeal, but to all who love these great and true principles.”
– Abraham Lincoln, Speech at Kalamazoo, Michigan, August 27th, 1856

“I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.”
– Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Archibald Stuart, December 23, 1971

“For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.”
– Nelson Mandela

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it on 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, Encroaching Control, March 30, 1961

“Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth. The checks he endeavors to give it, however warrantable by ancient usage, will, more than probably, kindle a flame which may not easily be extinguished”
– George Washington, Letter to James Madison, March 2, 1788

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure.”
– Thomas Jefferson, Letter to William Stephens Smith, November 13,1787