Veteran’s Day 2009- Thoughts on Liberty

On this Veteran’s Day, I’m thankful for those who have borne the burden of preserving the freedoms we enjoy. We have an amazing heritage! Here are a few of my favorite quotes on the subject.

Benjamin Franklin

“They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

Abraham Lincoln

“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter, and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”

Alexis de Tocqueville

“… liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith.”

John Adams

“But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.”

“Liberty can not be preserved without a general knowledge among the people.”

“Be not intimidated… nor suffer yourselves to be wheedled out of your liberties by any pretense of politeness, delicacy, or decency. These, as they are often used, are but three different names for hypocrisy, chicanery and cowardice.”

Thomas Paine

“He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from opposition; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach himself.”

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

“Those who expect to reap the blessings of liberty must undergo the fatigues of supporting it.”

Mikhail A. Bakunin

“Freedom, morality, and the human dignity of the individual consists precisely in this; that he does good not because he is forced to do so, but because he freely conceives it, wants it, and loves it.”

Mahatma Gandhi

“Freedom is never dear at any price. It is the breath of life. What would a man not pay for living ?”

Samuel Adams

“The liberties of our country, the freedoms of our civil Constitution are worth defending at all hazards; it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors. They purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood. It will bring a mark of everlasting infamy on the present generation – enlightened as it is – if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of designing men.”

“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.”

“He therefore is the truest friend to the liberty of his country who tries most to promote its virtue, and who, so far as his power and influence extend, will not suffer a man to be chosen into any office of power and trust who is not a wise and virtuous man…The sum of all is, if we would most truly enjoy this gift of Heaven, let us become a virtuous people.”

Thomas Jefferson

“The liberty of speaking and writing guards our other liberties.”

Ardis Whitman

“Freedom is not in doing what you want to do, but in becoming what you want to be.”

George Bernard Shaw

“Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.”

Voltaire

“The true character of liberty is independence, maintained by force.”

Woodrow T. Wilson

“I would rather belong to a poor nation that was free than to a rich nation that had ceased to be in love with liberty.”