Speaking Freely
Quotes on Rights and Liberty #38
Speaking Freely is a series of quotes meant to lay out the ideals of classical liberalism. The quotes are meant to show different aspects of those ideas. Presenting a quote here is not necessarily an endorsement of the speaker or everything they have ever said or done. It is merely an endorsement for the idea expressed in the quote.
John F. Kennedy • 1917–1963
“Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.”
𝐃𝐚𝐯𝐢𝐝 𝐑𝐞𝐢𝐬𝐦𝐚𝐧 • 𝟏𝟗𝟎𝟗 — 𝟐𝟎𝟎𝟐
“Men are created different; they lose their social freedom and their individual autonomy in seeking to become like each other.”
𝐑𝐨𝐛𝐞𝐫𝐭 𝐈𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐥𝐥 • 𝟏𝟖𝟑𝟑 — 𝟏𝟖𝟗𝟗
“The trouble with most people is they bow to what is called authority; they have a certain reverence for the old because it is old. They think a man is better for being dead, especially if he has been dead a long time.”
Herbert Spencer • 1820—1903
“Every man has freedom to do all that he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man.”
Milton Friedman • 1912–2006
“The heart of the liberal philosophy is a belief in the dignity of the individual, in his freedom to make the most of his capacities and opportunities according to his own lights.”
Ayn Rand • 1905—1982
“Individualism regards man — every man — as an independent, sovereign entity who possesses an inalienable right to his own life, a right derived from his nature as a rational being. Individualism holds that a civilized society, or any form of association, cooperation or peaceful coexistence among men, can be achieved only on the basis of the recognition of individual rights — and that a group, as such, has no rights other than the individual rights of its members.”
Madam Necker • 1737—1794
“How immense to us appear the sins we have not committed.”
Barack Obama • 1961—
“When all Americans are treated as equal, no matter who they are or whom they love, we are all more free.”
Barbara Gittings • 1932—2007
“Equality means more than passing laws. The struggle is really won in the hearts and minds of the community, where it really counts.”
F.A. Hayek • 1889–1992
“I prefer true but imperfect knowledge, even if it leaves much undetermined and unpredictable, to a pretense of exact knowledge that is likely to be false.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson • 1803–1882
“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
Oliver Brett • 1881–1963
“If the Conservative premise is once granted, the Static State follows logically and inevitably, and free play is given to the tyrannical instincts of the superior mind.”
Abraham Maslow • 1908–1970
“A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be. This need we may call self-actualization.”
Nelson Mandela • 1918–2013
“It is not our diversity which divides us; it is not our ethnicity, or religion or culture that divides us. Since we have achieved our freedom, there can only be one division amongst us: between those who cherish democracy and those who do not.”
Jeff Flake • 1962—
“The impulse to scapegoat and belittle threatens to turn us into a fearful, backward-looking people. In the case of the Republican Party, those things also threaten to turn us into a fearful, backward-looking minority party.”
Gloria Steinem • 1934 —
“However sugarcoated and ambiguous, every form of authoritarianism must start with a belief in some group’s greater right to power, whether that right is justified by sex, race, class, religion or all four.”
Jean-Philippe Courtois • 1960 —
“While globalization will make the world smaller and more accessible, we must continue to appreciate its vibrant diversity.”
Alexander Hamilton • 1757–1804
“There can be no truer principle than this — that every individual of the community at large has an equal right to the protection of government.”
Call the Midwife • BBC 2012 —
“There is much to be said for the old ways, but one must be careful to take care to not become like Lot’s Wife, frozen in the act of looking backwards.”
Daniel Defoe • 1660—1731
“…Fear of danger is ten thousand times more terrifying than danger itself when apparent to the eyes; and we find the burden of anxiety greater, by much, than the evil which we are anxious about.”
Thomas Szasz • 1920–2012
“Every creed, philosophy, political system that prescribes how people should live is bound to be wrong — in the sense that it sets itself against the fundamental human need for autonomy and diversity.”
Aldous Huxley • 1894—1963
“At least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols.”
Albert Gallatin • 1761–1849
“The whole of the Bill (of Rights) is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals…. It establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has a right to deprive them of.”
Eric Hoffer • 1898—1983
“Freedom gives us a chance to realize our human and individual uniqueness.”
Edmund Burke • 1729— 1797
“No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.”
𝐂𝐡𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐩𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐇𝐢𝐭𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐧𝐬 • 𝟏𝟗𝟒𝟗 — 𝟐𝟎𝟏𝟏
“The secular state is the guarantee of religious pluralism. This apparent paradox, again, is the simplest and most elegant of political truths.”
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