Liberties Quotes

“Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
― Frederick Douglass

“What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July?

I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.”
― Frederick Douglass

“If you're patriotic, stand up for the Bill of Rights because once they strip your rights from you, you will pay hell to get them back. You will and we're in the process of it right now.”
― Jesse Ventura

“The state does not oppose the freedom of people to express their particular cultural attachments, but nor does it nurture such expression—rather [...] it responds with 'benign neglect' [....] The members of ethnic and national groups are protected against discrimination and prejudice, and they are free to maintain whatever part of their ethnic heritage or identity they wish, consistent with the rights of others. But their efforts are purely private, and it is not the place of public agencies to attach legal identities or disabilities to cultural membership or ethnic identity. This separation of state and ethnicity precludes any legal or governmental recognition of ethnic groups, or any use of ethnic criteria in the distribution of rights, resources, and duties.”
― Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights

“Most every charge you level at American capitalism applies with equal force to communism, with this nice difference, that the Reds make no pretense at such frivolities as civil liberties or environmentalism. The differences in degree are so great that they result in a radical difference in kind.”
― Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

“I care about a lot of issues. I care about libraries, I care about healthcare, I care about homelessness and unemployment. I care about net neutrality and the steady erosion of our liberties both online and off. I care about the rich/poor divide and the rise of corporate business.”
― Sara Sheridan

“كل حاكم مستبد ادعى أنه يعطل الحريات ليغني الناس، ولم يحدث مرة واحدة أن إغتنى شعب في ظل طغيان أو إرتفع مستوى الناس في عهد ديكتاتوري”
― مصطفى أمين, أفكار ممنوعة

“Take liberties you shouldn’t and you’ll find your liberties are taken from you.”
― John Kramer, Blythe

“Lie, take liberties and pursue women.”
― Steven Magee

“Freedom (properly understood) is less about the privilege that we’ve been granted to make decisions. Rather, I think that it’s far more about the opportunity that we have not to make them when we shouldn’t.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“What we require is a balance between protest and stability. This is never easy to obtain but is worth attempting, because we know that if through indifference we lose our liberties we shall not regain them in this century.”
― James MICHENER

“It is the definition of RIGHTS or LIBERTIES that is at the core of the issue. Real rights are concerned with what a man CAN DO. False rights are concerned with what a man CAN GET. True rights are concerned with the ability to live freely; false rights are concerned with the ability to get free things.”
― Rob Primeau

“To consider the rights of others before I exercise my own, to see my fellowman as my opportunity not my liability, and to understand that a life shaped by Biblical values is a life of deep endurance and raw power...to embrace all of this is to be the very thing that a wounded world is begging for.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“At the point that I have confused ‘rights’ with ‘privileges,’ I will have lost both.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“We should always be braced to defend justice against injustice at all costs. For once injustice becomes tolerable, then our liberties shall be dismantled.”
― R.J. Intindola

“Liberties conflict with one another, and almost any policy whatever can be represented as a defence — direct or indirect — of some sort of liberty. What we need, therefore, is not a general defence of liberty, but adjudication between particular rival claims to freedom.”
― J.L. Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong

“Government surveillance is a blatant violation of our fundamental right to privacy, an intrusion into the sacred space where personal thoughts and actions unfold. Beyond its legal ramifications, the emotional toll is profound, eroding the very fabric of trust that binds citizens to their government. This unwarranted scrutiny transforms society into a panopticon, where individuals feel perpetually observed, stifling genuine self-expression and fostering an atmosphere of fear. The notion that constant surveillance is necessary for security undermines the principles of democracy, as it sets a dangerous precedent, sacrificing essential liberties in the name of an elusive safety that comes at the cost of our collective freedom.”
― James William Steven Parker

“Government surveillance is a surreptitious infringement on our basic human rights, an affront to the principles of autonomy and individuality that form the bedrock of a just society. Its literal ramifications extend far beyond the boundaries of legality, seeping into the emotional and psychological well-being of individuals who find themselves under constant scrutiny. Trust, once eroded by the overreach of surveillance, becomes a casualty, fragmenting the delicate bond between citizens and their government. Instances of surveillance overreach, both historical and contemporary, reveal the potential for grave abuse, reinforcing the imperative to resist such infringements in the name of preserving our liberties and maintaining the emotional health of our collective consciousness.”
― James William Steven Parker