Free Society Quotes - Page 4

• The free society does not guarantee virtue, any more than it guarantees happiness. But it allows for the pursuit of both, a pursuit rendered all the more meaningful and profound because success is not guaranteed, it has to be won through personal striving.

  Dinesh D'Souza

  Meaningful, Profound, Doe

  Dinesh D'Souza (2012). “What's So Great About America”, p.190, Regnery Publishing

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• A free society, to be truly worthy of that name, owes healthy, competent individuals the right to end their lives on their own terms.

  Jacob M. Appel

  Names, Healthy, Individual

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• We live in a free society, and freedom means freedom for everybody. We shouldn't be able to choose and say, 'You get to live free and you don't.' That means people should be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to enter into. Like Joe (Lieberman), I'm also wrestling with the extent to which there ought to be legal sanction of those relationships. I think we ought to do everything we can to tolerate and accommodate whatever kind of relationships people want to enter into.

  Dick Cheney

  Mean, Wrestling, Thinking

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• If the supply of virtue is insufficient in a free society like America, it is almost nonexistent in an unfree society like Iran's. The reason is that coerced virtues are not virtues at all.

  Dinesh D'Souza

  Islamic, America, Virtue

  "10 things to celebrate / Why I'm an anti-anti-American" by Dinesh D'Souza, www.sfgate.com. June 29, 2003.

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• A free society releases the energies and abilities of people to pursue their own objectives. It prevents some people from arbitrarily suppressing others. It does not prevent some people from achieving positions of privilege, but so long as freedom is maintained, it prevents those positions of privilege from becoming institutionalized; they are subject to continued attack by other able, ambitious people.

  Milton Friedman

  Long, People, Ambitious

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• Now, it is sometimes said that medical care is too important to be left to the market, and that it is immoral to profit from the illnesses of others. I say medical care is too important to be left to the failed central plans of the political class. And as for profiting from providing medical care, we can never be reminded enough that in a free society, a profit is a signal that valuable services are being rendered to people on a voluntary basis.

  Llewellyn Rockwell

  Class, People, Political

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• Few policies are more calculated to destroy the existing basis of a free society than the debauching of its currency. And few tasks, if any, are more important to the champion of freedom than creation of a sound monetary system.

  Hans F. Sennholz

  Champion, Important, Sound

  Hans F. Sennholz (1979). “Age of inflation”

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• I've devoted most of my life to understanding the principles that enable people to improve their lives. It's those principles, the principles of free society, that have shaped my life, my family, our company, and America.

  Charles Koch

  America, People, Understanding

  Source: www.rushlimbaugh.com

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• There are just two rules of governance in a free society: Mind your own business. Keep your hands to yourself.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Hands, Two, Mind Your Own Business

  "The Liberty Manifesto". P. J. O'Rourke's Speech for the opening of the Cato Institute's headquarters in Washington, D.C., May 6, 1993.

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• I want people to take thought about their condition and to recognize that the maintainence of a free society is a very difficult and complicated thing and it requires a self-denying ordinance of the most extreme kind. It requires a willingness to put up with temporary evils on the basis of the subtle and sophisticated understanding that if you step in to do something about them you not only may make them worse, you will spread your tenticles and get bad results elsewhere.

  Milton Friedman

  Self, People, Evil

  Interview with Richard Heffner on "The Open Mind", December 7, 1975.

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• We can't impose freedom, but we can eliminate roadblocks to freedom, and to allow free societies to develop.

  George W. Bush

  Freedom, Roadblock

  George W. Bush (1982). “Public paper of the presidents of the United States”, p.1035, Government Printing Office

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• Free societies are hopeful societies. And free societies will be allies against these hateful few who have no conscience, who kill at the whim of a hat.

  George W. Bush

  Freedom, Hopeful, Allies

  George W. Bush “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, George W. Bush, 2004, Book 2, July 1 to September 30, 2004”, Government Printing Office

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• ...this bill will require the creation of a Federal police force of mammoth proportions. It also bids fair to result in the development of an 'informer' psychology in great areas of our national life-neighbors spying on neighbors, workers spying on workers, business spying on businessmen-were those who would harass their fellow citizens for selfish and narrow purposes will have ample inducement to do so. These, the Federal police force an 'informer' psychology, are the hallmarks of the police state and landmarks in the destruction of a free society.

  Barry Goldwater

  Selfish, Police, Psychology

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• Only in a free society do individuals have the best chance to seek virtue, strive for excellence, improve their economic well-being, and achieve personal happiness. The worthy goals of civilization can only be achieved by freedom-loving individuals. When government uses force, liberty is sacrificed and the goals are lost. It is freedom that is the source of all creative energy.

  Ron Paul

  Freedom, Government, Civilization

  Ron Paul Video Address Announcing 2008 Presidential Exploratory Committee, blog.4president.org. February 19, 2007.

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• You can't talk about the environment, you can't talk about political correctness, affirmative action and all the other innumerable things that freedom is about, unless you have a free society based upon the integrity of the individual. If you have a responsible society, these other issues will not come up in a responsible society, and that is what freedom is all about.

  Russell Means

  Freedom, Integrity, Responsibility

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• Revolution will free society of its afflictions, while science will free the individual of his.

  Mario Vargas Llosa

  Affliction, Revolution, Individual

  Mario Vargas Llosa (2011). “The War of the End of the World”, p.14, Macmillan

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• But let it not be said that we did nothing. Let not those who love the power of the welfare/warfare state label the dissenters of authoritarianism as unpatriotic or uncaring. Patriotism is more closely linked to dissent than it is to conformity and a blind desire for safety and security. Understanding the magnificent rewards of a free society makes us unbashful in its promotion, fully realizing that maximum wealth is created and the greatest chance for peace comes from a society respectful of individual liberty.

  Ron Paul

  Safety, Understanding, Desire

  Congressional Record, Volume 153, pt. 10, 2010.

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• People in free societies don't have to fear the pathology of the state. We create our own frenzy, our own mass convulsions, driven by thinking machines that we have no final authority over. The frenzy is barely noticeable most of the time. It's simply how we live.

  Don DeLillo

  Thinking, People, Finals

  Don DeLillo (2004). “Cosmopolis: A Novel”, p.85, Simon and Schuster

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• Saints, it has been said, are the sinners who go on trying. So free men and women are the oppressed who go on trying and who in the process make themselves fit to bear the responsibilities and uphold the disciplines which will maintain a free society.

  Aung San Suu Kyi

  Responsibility, Men, Discipline

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• We must make the building of a free society once more an intellectual adventure, a deed of courage. Unless we can make the philosophic foundations of a free society once more a living intellectual issue, and its implementation a task which challenges the ingenuity and imagination of our liveliest minds, the prospects of freedom are indeed dark. But if we can regain that belief in the power of ideas which was the mark of liberalism at its best, the battle is not lost.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Adventure, Dark, Issues

  "Hayek on a Society Based on Freedom" by Scott Horton, harpers.org. August 08, 2007.

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• ...morally speaking, there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings, that indifference to evil is worse than evil itself, that in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Evil, Suffering, Limits

  Abraham Joshua Heschel, Harold Kasimow (1991). “No Religion Is an Island: Abraham Joshua Heschel and Interreligious Dialogue”, Orbis Books

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• To those peoples in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required - not because the Communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right. If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.

  John F. Kennedy

  Peace, Struggle, Best Effort

  Inaugural Address, 20 Jan. 1961

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• The free access to information is not a privilege, but a necessity for any free society. One of my favorite things to do as a young man was wander through the stacks of my hometown library. I'd just browse until I found something interesting. Libraries have definitely changed my life.

  Ed Asner

  Men, Interesting, Library

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• Dissident Natan Sharansky writes that there are two kinds of states - “fear societies” and “free societies.”… The two societies make up two kinds of consciousness. The consciousness derived of oppression is despairing, fatalistic, and fearful of inquiry. It is mistrustful of the self and forced to trust external authority. It is premised on a dearth of self-respect. It is cramped …
  In contrast, the consciousness of freedom … is one of expansiveness, trust of the self, and hope. It is a consciousness of limitless inquiry … It builds up in a citizen a wealth of self-respect.

  Naomi Wolf

  Writing, Self, Two

  "Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries". Book by Naomi Wolf, September 16, 2008.

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• A truly free society must not include a peace which oppresses us. We must learn on our own terms what peace and freedom mean together. There can be no peace if there is social injustice and suppression of human rights, because external and internal peace are inseparable. Peace is not just the absence of mass destruction, but a positive internal and external condition in which people are free so that they can grow to their full potential.

  Petra Kelly

  Peace, Mean, Rights

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