On Liberty Quotes

Central to Mill's approach throughout On Liberty is his 'Harm Principle', the idea that individual adults should be free to do whatever they wish up to the point where they harm another person in the process. Mill's principle is apparently straightforward: the only justification for interference with someone's freedom to live their life as they choose is if they risk harming other people. ~ Nigel Warburton

The commitment to civil liberty is going to be reasserted strongly. But the concept of liberty is under attack, and our definition of insecurity, security and threats will change fundamentally. The depth of the attack on liberty will be felt painfully. ~ Ashraf Ghani

If you ask me, my ideal would be the society based on liberty, equality and fraternity.
An ideal society should be mobile and
full of channels of conveying a change taking place in one part to other parts. ~ B.R. Ambedkar

The fetters imposed on liberty at home have ever been forged out of the weapons provided for defense against real, pretended, or imaginary dangers from abroad. ~ James Madison

On Liberty, 'that truth, merely as truth, has any inherent power denied to error, of prevailing against the dungeon and the stake. ~ Andrew Roberts

John Stuart Mill (20 May 1806 – 8 May 1873), English philosopher, political theorist, political economist, civil servant and Member of Parliament, was an influential liberal thinker of the 19th century whose works on liberty justified freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state control. He was an exponent of utilitarianism, an ethical theory developed by Jeremy Bentham, although his conception of it was very different from Bentham's. He clearly set forth the premises of the scientific method. ~ John Stuart Mill

John Stuart Mill, in his wonderful 1859 book On Liberty, talks about civility. And this is why you should always be concerned about calls for civility. He points out that civility ends up getting defined by the people who are in charge. And you'll notice that when people argue for civility, they tend to actually believe that whatever they say is civil. And if they're angry about it, it's righteous rage. But if you say it and it's kind of sharp or mean, then it's incivil ... And sometimes, disagreement-to be productive-can't be all that civil. ~ Greg Lukianoff

A colleague once described political theorists as people who were obsessed with two dozen books; after half a century of grappling with Mill's essay On Liberty, or Hobbes's Leviathan, I have sometimes thought two dozen might be a little on the high side. ~ Alan Ryan

The proper role of government is exactly what John Stuart Mill said in the middle of the nineteenth century in On Liberty. The proper role of government is to prevent other people from harming an individual. Government, he said, never has any right to interfere with an individual for that individual's own good. ~ Milton Friedman

To prevent the weaker members of the community from being preyed upon by innumerable vultures, it was needful that there should be an animal of prey stronger than the rest, commissioned to keep them down. But as the king of vultures would be no less bent upon preying upon the flock than any of the minor harpies, it was indispensable to be in a perpetual attitude of defense against his beak and claws. ~ John Stuart Mill

I went from the glamour of working with Karl Lagerfeld and John Galliano to living on an isolated hilltop, with my husband gone most of the time. ~ Liberty Ross

It's not enough to celebrate the ideals that we're built on, liberty and justice and equality for all. Those just can't be words on paper, the work of every generation is to make those words mean something, concrete in the lives of our children. And we won't get there as long as kids in Baltimore or Ferguson or New York or Appalachia or the Mississippi delta or the Pine Ridge reservation believe that their lives are somehow worthless. ~ Barack Obama

Only the Catholic Church protested against the Hitlerian onslaught on liberty. Up till then I had not been interested in the Church, but today I feel a great admiration for the Church, which alone has had the courage to struggle for spiritual truth and moral liberty ~ Albert Einstein

ANARCHISM: - The philosophy of a new social order based on liberty unrestricted by man-made law; the theory that all forms of government rest on violence, and are therefore wrong and harmful, as well as unnecessary. ~ Emma Goldman

People say America is exceptional. I agree, but it's not the complexion of our skin or the twists in our DNA that make us unique. America is exceptional because we were founded upon the notion that everyone should be free to pursue life, liberty, and happiness. ~ Rand Paul

Contrary to the claims of the supporters of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the sponsors of H.Res. 676, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not improve race relations or enhance freedom. Instead, the forced integration dictated by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 increased racial tensions while diminishing individual liberty. ~ Ron Paul

Every man may claim the fullest liberty to exercise his faculties compatible with the possession of like liberties by every other man. ~ Herbert Spencer

We must face the fact that the preservation of individual freedom is incompatible with a full satisfaction of our views of distributive justice. ~ Friedrich August Von Hayek

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 ~ Thomas Jefferson

President George Washington's namesake capital, once a marketplace for slave auctions, is now synonymous with democracy and freedom; so is the iconic Jefferson, who wanted to build an "Empire of Liberty" for the world. ~ Patrick Mendis

Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions. ~ James Madison

If even one new drug of the stature of penicillin or digitalis has been unjustifiably banished to a company's back shelf because of exceedingly stringent regulatory requirements, that event will have harmed more people than all the toxicity that has occurred in the history of modern drug development. ~ William Wardell

Political scientists and professors are the new clergy; the clergy of oppression. ~ A.E. Samaan

Government exists to protect the product of men's labor, their property, and therewith life and liberty. The notion that man possesses inalienable natural rights, that they belong to him as an individual prior, both in time and in sanctity, to any civil society, and that civil societies exist for and acquire their legitimacy from ensuring those rights, is an invention of modern philosophy. Rights, like the other terms discussed in this chapter, are new in modernity, not a part of the common-sense language of politics or of classical political philosophy." from "Closing of the American Mind" by Allan Bloom, Saul Bellow, Andrew Ferguson ~ Allan Bloom

To follow foolish precedents, and wink With both our eyes, is easier than to think. ~ William Cowper

There can be no self-government without self-discipline. There can be no self-government without self-control. There can be no liberty unless it is grounded in moral discipline and the ability to do what is right. ~ Alan Keyes

Liberty of speech invites and provokes liberty to be used again, and so bringeth much to a man's knowledge. ~ Francis Bacon

The immigrant experience of all of us is what makes us Americans, because we value in our DNA liberty and opportunity above all else. ~ Ted Cruz

Used to the conditions of a capitalistic environment, the average American takes it for granted that every year business makes something new and better accessible to him. Looking backward upon the years of his own life, he realizes that many implements that were totally unknown in the days of his youth and many others which at that time could be enjoyed only by a small minority are now standard equipment of almost every household. He is fully confident that this trend will prevail also in the future. He simply calls it the American way of life and does not give serious thought to the question of what made this continuous improvement in the supply of material goods possible. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

Freedom is the foundation for all wonderful things in life. ~ Jeffrey Tucker

People are average when they are driven by a motivation to fit in. The American challenge, then, is to be oneself - only, exactly, and totally." "Why is that American?" "Because of our freedom to pursue life, liberty, and happiness. People assume the most important word in that sentence is 'freedom,' when, in fact, it is 'pursue.' If we don't pursue life, we are just as free to waste it. ~ Ryan Quinn

How many victims must that be? Slaughtered in vain across the land,
And how many strugles must that be?
Before we choose to live the profits plan
Everybody sing-
Every day create your History,
Every path you take you're leaving your legacy
Every soldier dies in his glory
Every legend tells of conquest and liberty. ~ Michael Jackson

Remember, to them it is us who are the enemy. ~ N. F. Simpson

Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it ~ Thomas Sowell

A sound like a sound of thunder rolled,
And the heart of a nation stirred ~ William Ross Wallace

During the greater part of the day the guillotine had been kept busy at its ghastly work: all that France had boasted of in the past centuries, of ancient names, and blue blood, had paid toll to her desire for liberty and for fraternity. ~ Emmuska Orczy

Tell men that God is love; that right is right, and wrong, wrong; let them cease to admire philanthropy, and begin to love men; cease to pant for heaven, and begin to love God; then the spirit of liberty begins. ~ Frederick William Robertson

The planter, the farmer, the mechanic, and the laborer ... form the great body of the people of the United States, they are the bone and sinew of the country men who love liberty and desire nothing but equal rights and equal laws. ~ Andrew Jackson

England and America owe their liberty to commerce, which created a new species of power to undermine the feudal system. But let them beware of the consequences: the tyranny of wealth is still more galling and debasing than that of rank. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

It ain't so much what a man doesn't know that causes him so many problems, but what he knows that ain't so. ~ Will Rogers

Freemasonry teaches not merely temperance, fortitude, prudence, justice, brotherly love, relief, and truth, but liberty, equality, and fraternity, and it denounces ignorance, superstition, bigotry, lust tyranny and despotism. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Patterning your life around other's opinions is nothing more than slavery.
~ Lawana Blackwell

The numbers of men in all ages have preferred ease, slumber, and good cheer to liberty, when they have been in competition. ~ John Adams

In our struggle between liberty and destiny, we must never stop challenging the masterminds of fate that tries to deconstruct the stepping stones of our freedom. ("Wrong time. Wrong place") ~ Erik Pevernagie

Free software' is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of 'free' as in 'free speech,' not as in 'free beer'. ~ Richard Stallman

We rail at trade, but the historian of the world will see that it was the principle of liberty; that it settled America, and destroyed feudalism, and made peace and keeps peace; that it will abolish slavery. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

What is there to hold a post-prosperity, constrained-liberty, un-dreamt America together? The nation's ruling class has, in practical terms, already seceded from the idea of America. In the ever more fractious, incoherent polity they're building as a substitute, why would they expect their discontented subjects not to seek the same solution as Slovenes and Uzbeks? ~ Mark Steyn

I lent only half an ear to those well-intentioned folk who say that happiness is enervating, liberty too relaxing, and that kindness is a corruption for those upon whom it is practiced. That may be; but in the world as it is, such reasoning amounts to a refusal to nourish a starving man decently, for fear that in a few years he may suffer from overfeeding. When useless servitude has been alleviated as far as possible, and unnecessary misfortune avoided, there will remain as a test of man's fortitude that long series of veritable ills, death, old age, and incurable sickness, love unrequited and friendship rejected or betrayed, the mediocrity of a life less vast than our projects and duller than our dreams; in short, all the woes caused by the divine nature of things. ~ Marguerite Yourcenar

They have received many wounds; nevertheless they stand fast in that liberty wherewith God has made them free; and they are strict to remember the Lord their God from day to day; yea, they do observe to keep his statutes, and his judgments, and his commandments continually; and their faith is strong in the prophecies concerning that which is to come. ~ Joseph Smith Jr.

I love going out dancing. There is nothing better than letting your hair down and staying up far too late, is there? ~ Liberty Ross

Liberty is the act of making the Government Fear
what you KNOW! ~ Faith Brashear

As long as men die, liberty will never parish. ~ Charlie Chaplin

I couldn't believe Liberty actually had a course that teaches students how to condemn homosexuals and combat feminism. GNED II is the class a liberal secularist would invent if he were trying to satirize a Liberty education. It's as if Brown offered a course called Godless Hedonism 101: How to Smoke Pot, Cross-dress, and Lose Your Morals. ~ Kevin Roose

The last woman I was in was the Statue of Liberty. ~ Woody Allen