"He
who wants to remain free, must fight unto death those who are intent upon
depriving him of his freedom."
Von Mises ~ In Human Action
'A people averse to the institution of private property is without the first
elements of freedom'
Lord Acton
'The finest opportunity ever given to the world was thrown away because the
passion for equality made vain the hope for freedom'
Lord Acton
"Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest
political end. It is not for the sake of good public administration that it is
required, but for security in the pursuit of the highest objects of civil
society, and of private life."
Lord Acton The History of Freedom in Antiquity
'The truth that makes men free is for the most part the truth which men prefer
not to hear'
H. Agar A Time for Greatness
'It is to the free and multifarious movements of human activity that
civilization owes its most notable achievements.'
C. C. Allen Economic Fact and Fantasy
Freedom! Equality! Brotherhood!
Motto of the French Revolution, but of earlier origin. The Club des Cordeliers
passed a motion, 30 June 1793, 'que les propri'taires seront invit's .... de
faire peindre sur la fa'ade de leurs maisons, en gros caract'res, ces mots:
Unit', indivisibilit' de la R'publique, Libert', 'galit', Fraternit' ou la mort
[that owners should be urged to paint on the front of their houses, in large
letters, the words: Unity, indivisibility of the Republic, Liberty, Equality,
Fraternity or death]; in Journal de Paris no. 1 (from 1795 the words 'ou la
mort' were dropped). Cf. Chamfort 6 Anon.
'Liberty is always also responsibility, and to be free to act is also to be
responsible for action'
Ernest Barker Principles of Social and Political Theory
"And now that the legislators and do gooders have so futilely
inflicted so many systems on society, may they finally end where they should
have begun. May they reject all systems and try freedom, for freedom is an
acknowledgement of faith in God and his works" Frederick Bastiat.
'Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the
government's purposes are beneficial. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to
repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greater dangers to
liberty lurk in insidious encroachment of men of zeal, well-meaning but without
under-standing'
Justice Louis Brandeis Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 479 (1928)
'How can there be a definite limit to the supreme power if an indefinite general
happiness, left to its judgment, is to be its aim? Are the princes to be the
fathers of the people, however great be the danger that they will also become
its despots?'
G. H. von Berg
'Liberty is liberty, not equality or fairness or justice or human happiness or a
quiet conscience'.
Isaiah Berlin Two Concepts of Liberty
It is this - the 'positive' conception of liberty: not
freedom from, but freedom to - which the adherents of the negative notion
represent as being, at times, no better than a specious disguise for brutal
tyranny.
Two Concepts of Liberty (1958) p. 16 Isaiah Berlin
'To the medieval mind a liberty was a right to the enjoyment of a specific
property It was a freedom to do something with one's own without interference by
the king or any other man.'
Sir Arthur Bryant The Makers of the Realm
'Slavery is the ultimate and greatest evil. For it is based on a denial of the
dignity of the human soul.'
Arthur Bryant 1948
"Freedom and not servitude is the cure of anarchy; as
religion, and not atheism, is the true remedy for superstition"
On Conciliation with America (1775) p. 40 Edmund Burke
"Deny them this participation of freedom, and you break that sole bond, which
originally made, and must still preserve the unity of the empire"
On Conciliation with America (1775) p. 61 Edmund Burke
'I wish men to be free
As much from mobs as kings ' from you as me.'
Lord Byron Don Juan
"As to the King, the laws of the land will clearly instruct
you for that ..... For the people; and truly I desire their liberty and freedom,
as much as any body: but I must tell you, that their liberty and freedom
consists in having the government of those laws, by which their life and their
goods may be most their own; 'tis not for having share in government [sirs] that
is nothing pertaining to 'em. A subject and a sovereign are clean different
things ..... If I would have given way to an arbitrary way, for to have all laws
changed according to the power of the sword, I needed not to have come here; and
therefore I tell you (and I pray God it be not laid to your charge) that I am
the martyr of the people"
Speech on the scaffold, 30 January 1649. J. Rushworth Historical Collections pt.
4, vol. 2 (1701) p. 1 King Charles 1
"My holy of holies is the human body, health, intelligence,
talent, inspiration, love and the most absolute freedom - freedom from violence
and lying, whatever the forms they may take"
Letter to A. N. Pleshcheyev, 4 October 1888, in L. S. Friedland (ed.) Anton
Chekhov: Letters on the Short Story (1964) Anton Chekhov
'It is in the interest of the wage-earner to have many other alternatives open
to him than service under one all-powerful employer called the State'
Sir Winston Churchill 1946
'If we look to our responsibility to the generations yet unborn who will come
after us, how can we fail to recognize that peace and freedom are inextricably
bound up one with another and that the threat to one is a threat to both'
Sir Winston Churchill 1976
'A spontaneous economic order is more efficient than an imposed order'..A
spontaneous order is inconceivable without personal freedom and, in particular,
without freedom of choice'
Lord Coleraine
'Man never mounts higher than when he knows not where he is going'.
Oliver Cromwell
'We need to be more aware than we are that freedom has no built-in preservatives
of its own'
Michael Dixon
'Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who
can labour in freedom.'
Albert Einstein My Later Years
'The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice'
George Eliot
'Liberty is a different kind of pain from prison'
T. S. Eliot The Family Reunion
'On the threshold of the moral world we meet the idea of Freedom, 'one of the
weightiest concepts man has ever formed,' once a dogma, in the course of time a
hypothesis, now in the eyes of many a fiction, yet we cannot do without it, even
although we may be firmly convinced that our acts are determined by laws that
cannot be broken.'
Havelock Ellis The Dance of Life.
'Individual liberty cannot in the long run survive unless the economic base of
society is independent and separate from the State and buttresses the brittle
self-restraint of men in power'
Philip Vander Elst
'Those who would give essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety
deserve neither liberty nor safety'
Benjamin Franklin
'A free society releases the energies and abilities of people to pursue their
own objectives'.. Freedom means diversity but also mobility. It preserves the
opportunity for today's disadvantaged to become tomorrow's privileged and, in
the process, enables almost everyone, from top to bottom, to enjoy a fuller and
richer life.'
Milton and Rose Friedman Free to Choose
'A society that puts equality - in the sense of equality of outcome ' ahead of
freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom. The use of force to
achieve equality will destroy the freedom, and the force, introduced for good
purposes, will end up in the hands of people who use it to promote their own
interests. On the other hand, a society that puts freedom first will, as a happy
by-product, end up with both greater freedom and greater equality'
Milton and Rose Friedman Free to Choose
`In a free society, a government has no business using the power of the law or
the taxpayers' money to propagandize for some views and to prevent the
transmission of others' Freedom of speech is for the listener as well as the
speaker ' to enable him to make his own choice among as wide an assortment of
views as his fellows are inclined, for whatever reason to set forth.
Milton Friedman Newsweek 1969.
'There is all the difference in the world between the more fortunate among us
giving of our substance in order to establish a minimum standard below which no
disadvantaged person or child shall be force to live, and trying to legislate
uniformity of condition. The difference is between freedom and slavery.'
Milton Friedman Homogenized Schools, Newsweek 1972
'The rule of law does not guarantee freedom, since general law as well as
personal edicts can be tyrannical. But increasing reliance on the rule of law
clearly played a major role in transforming Western society from a world in
which the ordinary citizen was literally subject to the arbitrary will of his
master to a world in which the ordinary citizen could regard himself as his own
master'
Milton Friedman New York Times, 1971
'In a free society, it is hard for 'good' people to do 'good', but that is a
small price to pay for making it hard for 'evil' people to do 'evil', especially
since one man's good is another's evil'
Milton Friedman New York Times Magazine 1970
'Every person shall be free to do good ' at his own expense.'
Milton Friedman
'The excuse for the destruction of liberty is always the plea of necessary '
that there is no alternative'
Milton Friedman Morality and Controls
'Freedom is more precious than any gifts for which you may be tempted to give it
up'
Baltasar Giracian
'A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take
it all away'
Barry Goldwater.
'We shall experience the final defeat of liberalism not when immigration but
when emigration is forbidden'
Jo Grimond The Bureaucratic Blight
'The economic freedom which is the prerequisite of any other freedom cannot be
the freedom from economic care which the socialist promise us, and which can be
obtained only by relieving the individual at the same time of the necessity and
of the power of choice: it must be the freedom of economic activity which, with
the right of choice, inevitably also carries the risk and the responsibility of
that right'
Friedrich Hayek The Road to Serfdom.
'It may be that a free society '.. carries in itself the forces of its own
destruction, that once freedom has been achieved it is taken for granted and
ceases to be valued, and that the free growth of ideas which is the essence of a
free society will bring about the destruction of the foundations on which it
depends.'
Friedrich Hayek The Intellectuals and Socialism
'If freedom is to flourish the philosophic foundations of a free society must be
kept a living intellectual issue and its implementation a task which challenges
the ingenuity and imagination of the liveliest minds.'
Friedrich Hayek The Intellectuals and Socialism
'Freedom necessarily means that many things will be done which we do not like.
Our faith in freedom does not rest on the foreseeable results in particular
circumstances but in the belief that it will, on balance, release more forces
for the good than the bad.'
Friedrich Hayek The Constitution of Liberty
'The mischievous idea that all public needs should be satisfied by compulsory
organization and that all the means that individuals are willing to devote to
pubic purposes should be under the control of government, is wholly alien to the
basic principles of a free society.'
Friedrich Hayek Law, Legislation and Liberty
'Our freedom of choice in a competitive society rest on the fact that, if one
person refuses to satisfy our wishes we can turn to another. But if we face a
monopolist we are at his mercy. And an authority directing the whole economic
system would be the most powerful monopolist conceivable'
Friedrich Hayek Road to Serfdom
'In any society freedom of thought will probably be of direct significance for a
small minority. But this does not mean that anyone is competent, or ought to
have power, to select those to whom this freedom is to be reserved.'
Friedrich Hayek Road to Serfdom
'Liberty'''.that condition of man in which coercion of some by others is reduced
as much as possible in society'
Friedrich Hayek The Constitution of Liberty
'There is only one '' principle that can preserve a free society: namely, the
strict prevention of all coercion except in the enforcement of general abstract
rules equally applicable to all.'
Friedrich Hayek The Constitution of Liberty
'Wherever liberty as we understand it has been destroyed, this has almost always
been done in the name of some new freedom promised to the people'
Friedrich Hayek The Road to Serfdom
'If none were to have liberty but those who understand what it is, there would
not be many free men in the world.'
Lord Halifax
'The superior freedom of the capitalist system, its superior justice, and its
superior productivity are not three superiorities, but one. The justice follows
from the freedom and the productivity follows from the freedom and the justice.'
Henry Hazlitt The Freeman. June 1993.
'Capitalism, the system of private property and free markets, is not only a
system of freedom and of natural justice ' which tends in spite of exceptions to
distribute rewards in accordance with production ' but it is a great
co-operative and creative system that has produced for our generation an
affluence that our ancestors did not dare dream of.'
Henry Hazlitt Towards Liberty
'The love of liberty is the lover of others; the love of power is the love of
ourselves'
William Hazlitt The Times
'Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains or
slavery? Forbid it, almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as
for me, give me liberty of give me death.'
Patrick Henry Virginia Convention 1795
'It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once.'
David Hume
'Whatever one's race, colour or creed, one must admit the necessity of 'freedom'
as the environment within which the ultimate social atom, the individual,
develops to the fullest extent his or her potentialities'
Graham Hutton Agenda for a Free Society
.
'The despotism of the majority is as little justifiable and as dangerous as that
of one man'.
Thomas Hendry Huxley On the National Inequality of Men 1890
'The enemies of freedom do not argue; they shout and they shoot.'
W. R. Inge The End of an Age
'''the best way to appreciate freedom is to lose it'
Michael Ivens Pressure for Conformity
'It has always been true that there could be no liberty without law; for if
everybody is free to do as he pleased there is no liberty for anybody to do as
he pleases'.. On the other hand every law is a restriction of liberty'.. The
problem has been to find out where law should end and liberty begin'
Ivor Jennings The Queen's Government
'No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free, no one
ever will. If virtuous, it need not fear fair operation of attack and defence.
Nature has given to man no other means of sifting out the truth, either in
religion, law, or politics.'
Thomas Jefferson
"Freedom of religion; freedom of the press, and freedom of
person under the protection of habeas corpus, and trial by juries impartially
selected. These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before
us, and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation"
The Speech [First Inaugural Address] on the 4th of March, 1801 Thomas Jefferson
'Timid men prefer despotism to the boisterous sea of liberty'
Thomas Jefferson
'They make a rout about universal liberty, without considering that all that is
to be valued, or indeed can be enjoyed by individuals is private liberty.
Political liberty is good only so far as it produces private liberty.'
Samuel Johnson
'Since every tyrant is ipso facto immoral and ruthless, it has much more freedom
in the choice of its methods than an institution which still takes account of
the individual'
C. G. Jung The Undiscovered Self
"However distinguished by rank or property, in the rights of
freedom we are all equal"
Public Advertiser 19 March 1770, Letter 3 Junius
"And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can
do for you - ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the
world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the
freedom of man"
Inaugural address, 20 January 1961, in Vital Speeches 1 February 1961, p. 227.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., speaking at Keene, New Hampshire, 3 May 1884 said:
'We pause to .... recall what our country has done for each of us and to ask
ourselves what we can do for our country in return'. Cf. Gibran 1 John F Kennedy
'Every limitation on freedom makes the next limitation seem less shocking and
more acceptable'
Anthony Lejeune Freedom and the Politicians
'if the majority wants to oppress them, the coming of democracy will mean, for
the minority, not the beginning of freedom, but the permanent loss of it.'
Anthony Lejeune Freedom and the Politicians
"While the State exists, there can be no freedom. When there
is freedom there will be no State"
State and Revolution (1919) ch. 5 Lenin
'Let us never allow ourselves to think that poverty is an excuse for an
invitation to totalitarianism, and if we should be tempted to think as much, let
us remind ourselves that totalitarianism not only extinguishes liberty but
institutionalises poverty as well'
Bernard Levin The Times.
'The ballot is stronger than the bullet'
Abraham Lincoln
"In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the
free - honourable alike in what we give and what we preserve.
We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last, best hope of earth"
Annual Message to Congress, 1 December 1862, in R. P. Basler (ed.) Collected
Works (1953) vol. 5, p. 5 Abraham Lincoln
"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth
upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the
proposition that all men are created equal. In a larger sense we cannot
dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men,
living and these dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our
power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we
say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living,
rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here
have thus far so nobly advanced ..... we here highly resolve that the dead shall
not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of
freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people,
shall not perish from the earth.
Address at the Dedication of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg, 19 November
1863, in R. P. Basler (ed.) Collected Works (1953) vol. 7, p. 2, as reported
the following day; the Lincoln Memorial inscription reads 'by the people, for
the people' Abraham Lincoln
'In a free society the state does not administer the affairs of men. It
administers justice among men who conduct their own affairs.'
Walter Lippman An Enquiry into the Principles of a Good Society.
'The liberty of Man in society is to be under no other legislative power but
that established by consent in the commonwealth; nor under the dominion of any
rule or restraint of the law, but what the legislative shall enact according to
the trust put in it.'
John Locke Two Treatises on Civil Government
'The end of the law is, not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge
freedom. For in all the state of created beings capable of laws, where there is
no law there is no freedom. For liberty is to be free from restraint and
violence from others; which cannot be where there is no law; and is not, as we
are told, a liberty for every man to do what he lists. (For who could be free
when every other man's humour might domineer over him?) But a liberty to
dispose, and order as he lists, his person, actions, possessions, and his whole
property, within the allowance of those law as under which he is, and therein
not to be the subject of the arbitrary will of another, but freely follow his
own.'
John Locke.
"That ill deserves the name of confinement which hedges us
in only from bogs and precipices. So that, however it may be mistaken, the end
of law is, not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom"
Second Treatise of Civil Government (1690) ch. 6, sect. 57 John Locke
'It is only within a free society that the crucial moral features of human life
can be protected and preserved'
Tibor Machan
"Many politicians of our time are in the habit of laying it
down as a self-evident proposition, that no people ought to be free till they
are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story,
who resolved not to go into the water till he had learnt to swim. If men are to
wait for liberty till they become wise and good in slavery, they may indeed wait
for ever"
Essays Contributed to the Edinburgh Review (1843) vol. 1 'Milton' T B Macaulay
'It is unreasonable to expect any genuine social science to thrive where there
is no under girding of civil liberty.'
Masas Maruyama Thought and Behaviour in Modern Japanese
Politics
"The word 'freedom' means for me not a point of departure but
a genuine point of arrival. The point of departure is defined by the word
'order'. Freedom cannot exist without the concept of order"
Mein Politisches Testament in Aus Metternich's Nachgelassenen Papieren (ed. A.
von Klinkowstr'm, 1880) vol. 7, p. 636 Prince Metternich
'All free communities have both been more exempt from social injustice and
crime, and have attained more brilliant prosperity, than any others, or than
they themselves after they have lost their freedom.'
John Stuart Mill Representative Government
'Judgement is given to men that they may use it. Because it may be used
erroneously, are men to be told that they ought not to use it at all?'
John Stuart Mill On Liberty
'The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in
our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede
their efforts to obtain it.'
John Stuart Mill On Liberty
'The liberty of the individual must be thus far limited: he must not make
himself a nuisance to other people'
John Stuart Mill On Liberty
'Genius can only breathe freely in an atmosphere of freedom'
John Stuart Mill On Liberty
'A people may prefer a free government, but if, from indolence, or carelessness,
or cowardice, or want of public spirit, they are unequal to the exertions
necessary for preserving it'. They are more or less unfit for liberty; and
although it may be for their good to have had it even for a short time, they are
unlikely long to enjoy it'
John Stuart Mill
'Human liberty requires liberty of tastes and pursuits; of framing the plan of
our life to suit our own character; of doing as we like, subject to such
consequences as may follow; without impediment from our fellow creatures, so
long as what we do does not harm them, even thought they should think our
conduct foolish, perverse, or wrong'
John Stuart Mill On Liberty
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love
not freedom, but licence"
The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (1649) John Milton
'Liberalism must be intolerant of every sort of intolerance.'
Ludwig von Mises Liberalism: In the Classical Tradition
'Where there is no market economy, the best intentioned provisions of
constitutions and laws remain a dead letter.'
Ludwig von Mises Human Action
'Servile labour disappeared because it could not stand the competition of free
labour; its un-profitability sealed its doom in the market economy.'
Ludwig von Mises Human Action
'A free press can only exist where there is private control over the means of
production'
Ludwig von Mises Human Action
'What impels every man to the utmost exertion in the service of his fellow man'.
Is, in the market not compulsion on the part of gendarmes, hangmen and penal
courts, it is self interest.'
Ludwig von Mises Human Action
'No people ever yet grew rich by policies, but it is peace, industry and freedom
that bring trade and wealth'
Dudley North A Discourse Upon Trade
'Tyranny is always better organised then freedom'
Charles Peguy
"I believe in the United States of America as a government of the people, by the
people, for the people, whose just powers are 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"
American's Creed (prize-winning competition entry, 1918) in Congressional Record
vol. 56, p. 286. Cf. Lincoln 12 William Tyler Page
'The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom is courage".
Pericles' Funeral Oration 431BC
'Freedom is perhaps threatened above all by the fact that a small minority has
realised that its own resolve enables it to cut like a hot knife through the
butter of the great uncertain and irresolute majority'
John Peyton The Daily Telegraph 1977
'Throughout history orators and poets have extolled liberty, but no one has told
us why liberty is so important. Out attitude towards such matters should depend
on whether we consider civilization as fixed or advancing'. In an advancing
society, any restriction on liberty reduces the number of things tried and so
reduces the rate of progress. In such a society freedom of action is granted to
the individual, not because it gives him greater satisfaction but because if
allowed to go his own way he will on the average serve the rest of us better
than under any orders we know how to give.'
H.B. Phillips
'Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the
argument of tyrants: it is the creed of slaves.'
William Pitt, the Younger House of Commons, 1783.
'We must plan for freedom, and not only for security, if for no other reason
than that only freedom can make security secure'
Karl Popper The Open Society and its Enemies
'Reason like science, grows by way of mutual criticism; the only possible way of
planning its growth is to develop those institutions that safeguard'. the
freedom of thought'
Karl Popper The Open Society and its Enemies
'Lift the curtain and 'the State' reveals itself as a little group of fallible
men in Whitehall, making guesses about the future, influenced by political
prejudices and partisan prejudices, and working on projections drawn from the
past by a staff of economists.'
Enoch Powell
'When we look at the astonishing material achievements of the West'. we see
these things as the result, not of compulsion or government action or the
superior wisdom of a few, but of that system of competition and free enterprise,
rewarding success and penalising failure, which enables every individual to
participate by his private decisions in shaping the future of his society.'
Enoch Powell
'It is no accident that wherever the State ha taken economic decision away from
the citizen, it has deprived him of his other liberties as well.'
Enoch Powell.
'Liberty ' the mother not the daughter of order'
Pierre Joseph Proudhon
'Freedom, in a political context, means freedom from government coercion. It
does not mean freedom from the landlord, from the employer, or freedom from the
laws of nature which do not provide men with automatic prosperity. It means
freedom from the coercive power of the state ' and nothing else'
Ayn Rand
'Free men are not equal and equal men are not free'.
Lawrence Reed.
'I confess to considerable doubts about the eventual stability of democracy,
unless buttressed by constitutional safeguards and a general climate of opinion
which thoroughly understands the case for liberty in general'
Lord Robbins Liberty and Equality
'Pollution and overuse of resources stem directly from the failure of government
to defend private property. If property rights were to be defended adequately,
we would find that here, as in other areas of our economy and society, private
enterprise and modern technology would come not as a curse to mankind but as its
salvation.'
Murray Rothbard
'Most human beings, though in varying degrees, desire to control, not only their
own lives but also the lives of others'
Bertrand Russell Freedom and Government
'A generation educated in fearless freedom will have wider and bolder hopes than
are possible to us'
Bertrand Russell
'Freedom incurs responsibility; that is why so many men fear it'
George Bernard Shaw Maxims for Revolutionists.
'Money'..enables us to get what we want instead of what other people think we
want.'
George Bernard Shaw The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism
'There exists no more democratic institution than the market'
J.A. Schumpeter.
'It is very difficult to preserve liberty unless those who have power to
legislate at any given moment are subject to general rules which express the
most permanent purposes of the state.'
Arthur Shenfield Agenda for a Free Society
'The natural effort of every individual to better his own condition, when
suffered to exert itself with freedom and security, is so powerful a principle,
that it is alone, and without any assistance, not only capable of carrying the
society on to wealth and prosperity, but of surmounting a hundred impertinent
obstructers''. of human laws'
Adam Smith The Wealth of Nations
'The statesman who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they
ought to employ their capitals, would not only load himself with a most
unnecessary attention, but assume an authority which could safely be entrusted
to no council and senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in
the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to
exercise it.'
Adam Smith The Wealth of Nations
'The great advantage of the market is that is able to use the strength of
self-interest to offset the weakness and partiality of benevolence, so that
those who are unknown, unattractive or unimportant, will have their wants
served.'
Adam Smith The Wealth of Nations.
'Great nations are never impoverished by private though they sometimes are by
public prodigality and misconduct. The whole or almost the whole public revenue,
is in most countries, employed in maintaining unproductive hands'
Adam Smith The Wealth of Nations
'My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular'
Adlai Stevenson
'Nothing is more fertile in prodigies than the art of being free; but there is
nothing more arduous than the apprenticeship of liberty'.. 'liberty is generally
established with difficulty in the midst of storms; it is perfected by civil
discord; and its benefit cannot be appreciated until it is already old'.
Alexis de Tocqueville
"Books can not be killed by fire. People die, but books never
die. No man and no force can abolish memory - In this war, we know, books are
weapons. And it is a part of your dedication always to make them weapons for
man's freedom"
Message to the Booksellers of America 6 May 1942, in Publisher's Weekly 9 May
1942 Franklin D Roosevelt
We look forward to a world founded upon four essential human
freedoms. The first is freedom of speech and expression - everywhere in the
world. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way -
everywhere in the world. The third is freedom from want - everywhere in the
world. The fourth is freedom from fear - anywhere in the world.
Message to Congress, 6 January 1941, in Public Papers (1941) vol. 9, p. 6
Franklin D Roosevelt
'It is not our task as politicians to make out prescriptions of other people's
happiness against their will. That would be the end of Freedom'
Franz-Joseph Strauss Speech in Augsburg, 1976
"Both the existing economic order, and too many of the
projects advanced for reconstructing it, break down through their neglect of the
truism that, since even quite common men have souls, no increase in material
wealth will compensate them for arrangements which insult their self-respect and
impair their freedom. A reasonable estimate of economic organisation must allow
for the fact that, unless industry is to be paralysed by recurrent revolts on
the part of outraged human nature, it must satisfy criteria which are not purely
economic"
Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (1926) conclusion R H Tawney
"Ladies and gentlemen, I stand before you tonight in my red
chiffon evening gown, my face softly made up, my fair hair gently waved...the
Iron Lady of the Western World! Me? A cold war warrior? Well, yes - if that is
how they wish to interpret my defence of values and freedoms fundamental to our
way of life"
Speech at Finchley, 31 Jan. 1976, in Sunday Times 1 Feb. 1976 Margaret Thatcher
"Despots themselves do not deny that freedom is excellent; only they desire
it for themselves alone, and they maintain that everyone else is altogether
unworthy of it"
L'Ancien r'gime (1856, ed. J. P. Mayer, 1951) p. 75 (translated by M. W.
Patterson, 1933)
Alexis de Tocqueville 1789
'There exist in the human heart a depraved taste for equality which impels the
weak to attempt to lower the powerful down to their own level, and reduce men to
prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom.'
Alexis de Tocqueville Democracy in America
'I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say
it'
Voltaire The Friends of Voltaire
'Freedom is the opportunity for continuous initiative'
Graham Wallas
'Power is the great enemy of freedom'
Henry C. Wallich
'Freedom is like health, it is taken for granted while one has it. One becomes
aware of it when it has gone.'
Henry C. Wallich The Cost of Freedom
'Every principle that wants to command strong allegiance must make a moral case.
Men want to feel that what they are doing is useful, but they want also, and
mainly, to feel that it is right. Freedom is one of these principles'
Henry C. Wallich
'Freedom is an indivisible word. If we want to enjoy it, and fight for it, we
must be prepared to extend it to everyone, whether they are rich or poor,
whether they agree with us or not, no matter what their race or the colour of
their skin'
Wendell Wilkie
'What threatens civilization today is not war, but the changing conception of
life values entailed by certain political doctrines. Only by recapturing the
dream of human freedom and restoring the importance of the common man's
liberties can that undermining threat to modern civilization be averted'
Lin Yutang Reader's Digest 1976
