Personal Liberty Quotes

• Under the law of nature, all men are born free, every one comes into the world with a right to his own person, which includes the liberty of moving and using it at his own will. This is what is called personal liberty, and is given him by the Author

  Thomas Jefferson

  Moving, 4th Of July, Men

  Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Reports of Cases Determined in the General Court of Virginia: From 1730, to 1740; and from 1768, to 1772”, p.92

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• Liberty is not collective, it is personal. All liberty is individual liberty.

  Calvin Coolidge

  Liberty, Libertarian, Individualism

  "Authority and Religious Liberty". Address before the Holy Name Society, Washington, D.C., archive.org. September 21, 1924.

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• But when no risk is taken there is no freedom. It is thus that, in an industrial society, the plethora of laws made for our personal safety convert the land into a nursery, and policemen hired to protect us become selfserving busybodies.

  Alan Watts

  Taken, Law, Land

  Alan Watts (2010). “Tao: The Watercourse Way”, p.43, Souvenir Press

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• A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

  John Stuart Mill

  Freedom, War, Military

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• Democracies have been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their death.

  James Madison

  Freedom, Democracies Have, Rights

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay (1842). “The Federalist, on the New Constitution, Written in the Year 1788”, p.46

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• A personal note to the Founding Fathers: We're sorry. We blew it. You made it possible for us to live free and we blew it. We've given up nearly every personal liberty in the name of a false sense of security sold to the masses by the same type of maniacal government about which you warned us and against which you fought so bravely. We now have to ask permission to take a leak on an airline flight. We never deserved you.

  Philip D. Murphy

  Sorry, Father, Government

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• If the personal freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution inhibit the government's ability to govern the people, we should look to limit those guarantees.

  William J. Clinton

  War, Government, People

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• The American heritage was one of individual liberty, personal responsibility and freedom from government ... Unfortunately ... that heritage has been lost. Americans no longer have the freedom to direct their own lives ... Today, it is the government that is free - free to do whatever it wants. There is no subject, no issue, no matter ... that is not subject to legislation.

  Harry Browne

  Responsibility, Issues, Government

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• In fact, a fundamental interdependence exists between the personal right to liberty and the personal right to property.

  Potter Stewart

  Liberty, Facts, Fundamentals

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• Wherever Law ends, Tyranny begins.

  John Locke

  Law, Ends, Tyranny

  Second Treatise of Civil Government ch. 18, sec. 202 (1690)

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• Personal liberty is the paramount essential to human dignity and human happiness.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Liberty, Essentials, Dignity

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• Are we going to continue to yield personal liberties and community autonomy to the steady inexplicable centralization all political power or restore the Republic to Constitutional direction, regain our personal liberties and reassume the individual state's primary responsibility and authority in the conduct of local affairs? Are we going to permit a continuing decline in public and private morality or re-establish high ethical standards as the means of regaining a diminishing faith in the integrity of our public and private institutions?

  Douglas MacArthur

  Integrity, Mean, Responsibility

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• It is not enough to call yourself a feminist because you are a strong woman. Thatcher was an enemy to feminism, as is Nadine Dorries. Like other liberation movements, feminism has an ideology and a goal. It is not about personal liberty and freedom, but the emancipation from oppression and tyranny for ALL women, whatever our race or class.

  Julie Bindel

  Strong Women, Class, Race

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• We built this [socialistic] society not for the curbing of personal liberty, but in order that human personalities should really feel free.

  Joseph Stalin

  Order, Personality, Liberty

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• Next to the right of liberty, the right of property is the most important individual right guaranteed by the Constitution and the one which, united with that of personal liberty, has contributed more to the growth of civilization than any other institution established by the human race.

  William Howard Taft

  Race, Civilization, Presidential

  William Howard Taft, William Taft “Popular Government: Its Essence, Its Permanence and Its Perils”, Transaction Publishers

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• The fact throughout history is that whenever government dominates the economic affairs of its citizenry, a free society is eroded, then destroyed, and a minority government ensues. Personal liberty without economic liberty is an absolute contradiction; the one cannot exist without the other.

  William E. Simon

  Government, Liberty, Minorities

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• By far the most numerous and most flagrant violations of personal liberty and individual rights are performed by governments... The major crimes throughout history, the ones executed on the largest scale, have been committed not by individuals or bands of individuals but by governments, as a deliberate policy of those governments-that is, by the official representatives of governments, acting in their official capacity.

  John Hospers

  Life, Rights, Government

  John Hospers (1971). “Libertarianism: a political philosophy for tomorrow”

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• It is difficult for me to imagine what “personal liberty” is enjoyed by an unemployed hungry person. True freedom can only be where there is no exploitation and oppression of one person by another; where there is not unemployment, and where a person is not living in fear of losing his job, his home and his bread. Only in such a society personal and any other freedom can exist for real and not on paper.

  Joseph Stalin

  Jobs, Real, Home

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• By definition, the moment one crosses from center to left, one accepts more government control of people's lives. Therefore, the further left society moves, the more there is government control over its citizens' lives. It is astonishing that this obvious fact is not universally acknowledged and that the Left has somehow successfully portrayed itself as preoccupied with personal liberty.

  Dennis Prager

  Moving, Government, People

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• And these great natural rights may be reduced to three principal or primary articles: the right of personal security; the right of personal liberty; and the right of private property; because as there is no other known method of compulsion, or of abridging man's natural free will, but by an infringement or diminution of one or other of these important rights, the preservation of these, inviolate, may justly be said to include the preservation of our civil immunities in their largest and most extensive sense.

  William Blackstone

  Wisdom, Men, Rights

  Sir William BLACKSTONE, Samuel Warren (1856). “Blackstone's Commentaries systematically abridged and adapted to the existing state of the law and constitution, with great additions. By Samuel Warren”, p.101

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• In a tribal organization, even in time of peace, service to tribe or state predominates over all self seeking; in war, service for the tribe or state becomes supreme, and personal liberty is suspended.

  Arthur Keith

  War, Self, Organization

  Sir Arthur Keith (1947). “Evolution and Ethics”

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• This growing poverty in the midst of growing population constitutes a permanent menace to peace. And not only to peace, but also to democratic institutions and personal liberty For overpopulation is not compatible with freedom.

  Aldous Huxley

  Liberty, Population, Growing

  Aldous Huxley (2002). “Complete Essays: 1939-1956”, Ivan R Dee

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• I don't think I should tell you what to do, nor should the government. As long as you enjoy your own personal liberties and don't infringe on the liberties of others, I don't care.

  Armie Hammer

  Thinking, Government, Long

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• It is difficult for me to imagine what "personal liberty" is enjoyed by an unemployed person, who goes about hungry, and cannot find employment.

  J. Stalin

  Liberty, Employment, Imagine

  Source: www.marxists.org

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• It is difficult for me to imagine what "personal liberty" the unemployed can have who go hungry and cannot find utilization of their labor.

  Joseph Stalin

  Liberty, Imagine, Hungry

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