Quotations: Justice/Freedom
Quotations on this page deal with the topics of Freedom and Justice.
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"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
-Voltaire
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"Freedom of speech and freedom of action are meaningless without freedom to think. And there is no freedom of thought without doubt."
-Bergen Evans
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"The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number is self-protection."
-John Stuart Mill
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"Man is condemned to be free. Condemned because he did not create himself, yet is nevertheless at liberty, and from the moment he is thrown into this world he is responsible for everything he does."
-Jean-Paul Sartre
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"Conscience is the chamber of justice."
-Origen
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"Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too."
-Voltaire
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"The right to do something does not mean that doing it is right."
-William Safire
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"Man was born free, and everywhere he is in chains."
-Jean-Jacques Rousseau
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"The only thing that permits us to acquiesce in an erroneous theory is the lack of a better one; analogously, an injustice is tolerable only when it is necessary to avoid an even greater injustice."
-John Rawls
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"Those who have ever valued liberty for its own sake believed that to be free to choose, and not to be chosen for, is an inalienable ingredient in what makes human beings human."
-Isaiah Berlin
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"So long as we have enough people in this country willing to fight for their rights, we'll be called a democracy."
-Roger Baldwin
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"We must remember that a right lost to one is lost to all."
-William Reece Smith, Jr.
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"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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"When they took the fourth amendment, I was silent because I don't deal drugs. When they took the sixth amendment, I kept quiet because I know I'm innocent. When they took the second amendment, I said nothing because I don't own a gun. Now they've come for the first amendment, and I can't say anything at all."
-Tim Freeman
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"If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich."
-John F. Kennedy
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"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
-Thomas Jefferson
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"Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure."
-Bertrand Russell
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"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself."
-Rudyard Kipling
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"The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins."
-Oliver Wendell Holmes
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"Laws are only words words written on paper, words that change on society's whim and are interpreted differently daily by politicians, lawyers, judges, and policemen. Anyone who believes that all laws should always be obeyed would have made a fine slave catcher. Anyone who believes that all laws are applied equally, despite race, religion, or economic status, is a fool."
-John J. Miller
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"You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered."
-Lyndon Johnson
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"The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government."
-Thomas Jefferson
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"Respect for individual rights is the essential precondition for a free and prosperous world, ... and that only through freedom can peace and prosperity be realized."
-Preamble to the Libertarian Platform
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"The man is free, we say, who exists for his own sake and not for another's."
-Aristotle
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"To none will we sell, to none deny or delay, right or justice."
-The Magna Carta
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"If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost."
-Aristotle
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"The principles of justice are chosen behind a veil of ignorance."
-John Rawls
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"Man is free at the moment he wishes to be."
-Voltaire
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"Liberty is the possibility of doubting, the possibility of making a mistake, the possibility of searching and experimenting, the possibility of saying No to any authority--literary, artistic, philosophic, religious, social and even political."
-Ignazio Silone
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"Most people want security in this world, not liberty."
-H. L. Mencken
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"Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it."
-George Bernard Shaw
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"I'm the one that has to die when it's time for me to die, so let me live my life, the way I want to."
-Jimi Hendrix
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"A free society is a place where it's safe to be unpopular."
-Adlai Stevenson
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"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evilminded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."
-Justice Louis D. Brandeis
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"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficial. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding."
-Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis
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"Intellect annuls fate. So far as a man thinks, he is free."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
36 quotes in this category
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