Quotes about Freedom

By a declaration of rights, I mean one which shall stipulate freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of commerce against monopolies, trial by juries in all cases, no suspensions of the habeas corpus, no standing armies. These are fetters against doing evil which no honest government should decline.

Democracy is 51% of the people taking away the rights of the other 49%.

Enlighten the people, generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like spirits at the dawn of day.

That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then.

The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image.

Political Liberty consists in the power of doing whatever does not injure another. The exercise of the natural rights of every [human], has no other limits than those which are necessary to secure to every other [human] the free exercise of the same rights.

We fight not to enslave, but to set a country free, and to make room upon the earth for honest men to live in.

When men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon.

Man did not enter society to be worse off, or to have fewer rights, but rather to have those rights better secured

As to religion, I hold it to be the indispensible duty of all government, to protect all conscientious professors thereof, and I know of no other business which government hath to do therewith.

If the present generation, or any other, are disposed to be slaves, it does not lessen the right of the succeeding generation to be free.