“I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.”
Thomas Jefferson
LibertyGovernment
Freedom Quotes
200 FAMOUS QUOTES · FREEDOM
Freedom Quotes
Read the best freedom quotes from Thomas Jefferson, John Stuart Mill, Swami Vivekananda, Shakespeare, the Bible and more, with timeless words on liberty and independence.
“Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.”
Thomas Jefferson
CourageTyranny
“Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”
Thomas Jefferson
Free PressDemocracy
“Freedom of speech is a principal pillar of a free government; when this support is taken away, the constitution of a free society is dissolved, and tyranny is erected on its ruins.”
Benjamin Franklin
Free SpeechDemocracy
“Liberty once lost is lost forever.”
John Adams
Protecting FreedomShort Quotes
“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace.”
Samuel Adams
SacrificeRevolution
“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.”
Thomas Paine
ResponsibilitySacrifice
“Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”
Thomas Paine
TyrannyPerseverance
“He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression.”
Thomas Paine
JusticeHuman Rights
“What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly.”
Thomas Paine
ValueSacrifice
“Liberty may be endangered by the abuses of liberty, but also by the abuses of power.”
James Madison
PowerBalance
“Liberty and Union, now and for ever, one and inseparable!”
Daniel Webster
UnityPatriotism
“To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.”
Frederick Douglass
Free SpeechHuman Rights
“I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample under foot.”
Robert G. Ingersoll
Human RightsEquality
“Liberty sustains the same relation to mind that space does to matter.”
Robert G. Ingersoll
Freedom Of ThoughtMind
“Free peoples, remember this maxim: Liberty may be gained, but can never be recovered.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Protecting FreedomWarning
“A State which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes, will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished.”
John Stuart Mill
GovernmentIndividual Rights
“Abstract liberty, like other mere abstractions, is not to be found.”
Edmund Burke
Real WorldPhilosophy
“The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.”
Edmund Burke
Losing FreedomVigilance
“None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but licence.”
John Milton
CharacterResponsibility
“The true aim of government is liberty.”
Baruch Spinoza
GovernmentShort Quotes
“Hereditary bondsmen! know ye not who would be free themselves must strike the blow?”
Lord Byron
ActionRevolution
“A land of settled government, a land of just and old renown, where Freedom slowly broadens down from precedent to precedent.”
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
ProgressHistory
“Nothing has ever been more insupportable for a man and a human society than freedom.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Human NaturePhilosophy
“Is freedom anything else than the power of living as we choose?”
Epictetus
Personal FreedomStoicism