Here the free spirit of mankind, at length,
Throws its last fetters off; and who shall place
A limit to the giant's unchained strength,
Or curb his swiftness in the forward race?
-- The Ages. William Cullen Bryant. 1794-1878.Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature.
-- Tom Robbins
-- Stef.
America's not about liking each other. Our history doesn't have much of that. America is about TOLERATING each other.... It's easier to do. And it's black and white. You either do it or you don't.
-- Joe Bob Briggs. Clear a time each day for contemplation, for a space to live in that is clearly [your] own with paper, pens, paints, tools, conversations, time, freedoms that are for this work only.
-- Women Who Run With the Wolves. Clarissa Pinkola Estes. Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.
-- Jean-Paul Sartre. Who to himself is law no law doth need,
Offends no law, and is a king indeed.
-- Bussy D'Ambois. Act ii. Sc. 1. George Chapman. 1557-1634. I have heard of reasons manifold
Why Love must needs be blind,
But this the best of all I hold,--
His eyes are in his mind.
-- To a Lady, Offended by a Sportive Observation. Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 1772-1834. Let us go forth not as defenders of the status quo, but as crusaders with a revolutionary idea -- that government should be the servant and not the master of the people; that its purpose is to protect, not deny, each man's freedom; that the purpose of a free press is to liberate, not enslave the human spirit.
-- A. S. Hills. A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular.
-- Adlai Stevenson. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do."
-- Bernardo de la Paz. The life of the people must be freed from the asphyxiating perfume of our modern eroticism, as it must be from unmanly and prudish refusal to face facts.... The right to personal freedom comes second in importance to the duty of sustaining the race.
-- Mein Kampf, 1924. Adolf Hitler. It is not the fact of liberty but the way in which liberty is exercised that ultimately determines whether liberty itself survives... When liberty is taken away by force it can be restored by force. When it is relinquished voluntarily by default it can never be recovered.
-- Dorothy Thompson. 1894-1961. Liberty is the mother, not the daughter, of order.
-- Proudhon. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.
-- Olmstead vs. United States. Justice Louis O. Brandeis. If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.
-- Freewill. Rush. (the rock group, not the TV pundit.) We have given away far too many freedoms in order to be free. Now it's time to take some back.
-- John Le Carre. Again to the battle, Achaians!
Our hearts bid the tyrants defiance!
Our land, the first garden of Liberty's tree,
It has been, and shall yet be, the land of the free.
-- Song of the Greeks. Thomas Campbell. 1777-1844. Knowledge is the only fountain both of the love and the principles of human liberty.
-- Completion of Bunker Hill Monument, 1843. Daniel Webster. 1782-1852. God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to guard and defend it.
-- Speech, 1834. Daniel Webster. 1782-1852. Puritanism, believing itself quick with the seed of religious liberty, laid, without knowing it, the egg of democracy.
-- New England Two Centuries ago. James Russell Lowell. 1819-1891. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance.
-- Speech upon the Right of Election, 1790. John Philpot Curran. There is one safeguard known generally to the wise, which is an advantage and security to all, but especially to democracies as against despots. What is it? Distrust.
-- Philippic. Demosthenes. Freedom has a thousand charms to show,
That slaves, howe'er contented, never know.
-- Table Talk. William Cowper. 1731-1800. We hold these truths to be self-evident,--that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
-- Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson. 1743-1826. Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do ingloriously, by licensing and prohibiting, to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple: who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter?
-- Areopagitica. John Milton. Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.
-- Inaugural Address. Thomas Jefferson. This hand, to tyrants ever sworn the foe,
For Freedom only deals the deadly blow;
Then sheathes in calm repose the vengeful blade,
For gentle peace in Freedom's hallowed shade.
-- Written in an Album, 1842. John Quincy Adams. Truth is its [justice's] handmaid, freedom is its child, peace is its companion, safety walks in its steps, victory follows in its train; it is the brightest emanation from the Gospel; it is the attribute of God.
-- Lady Holland's Memoir. Sydney Smith. 1769-1845. We must be free or die who speak the tongue
That Shakespeare spake, the faith and morals hold
Which Milton held.
-- It is not to be thought of. William Wordsworth. How does the meadow-flower its bloom unfold?
Because the lovely little flower is free
Down to its root, and in that freedom bold.
-- A Poet! He hath put his Heart to School. William Wordsworth. For freedom's battle, once begun,
Bequeath'd by bleeding sire to son,
Though baffled oft, is ever won.
-- The Giaour. Lord Byron. Power, like a desolating pestilence,
Pollutes whate'er it touches; and obedience,
Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth,
Makes slaves of men, and of the human frame
A mechanized automaton.
-- Queen Mab. Percy Bysshe Shelley. Ay, call it holy ground,
The soil where first they trod:
They have left unstained what there they found,--
Freedom to worship God.
-- Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers. Felicia D. Hemas. 1794-1835. Forever float that standard sheet!
Where breathes the foe but falls before us,
With Freedom's soil beneath our feet,
And Freedom's banner streaming o'er us?
-- The American Flag. Joseph Rodman Drake. 1795-1820. England may as well dam up the waters of the Nile with bulrushes as to fetter the step of Freedom, more proud and firm in this youthful land than where she treads the sequestered glens of Scotland, or couches herself among the magnificent mountains of Switzerland.
-- Supposititious Speech of James Otis. The Rebels. Lydia Maria Child. 1802-1880. For what avail the plough or sail,
Or land or life, if freedom fail?
-- Boston. Ralph Waldo Emerson. 1803-1882. My country, 'tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty,
Of thee I sing:
Land where my fathers died,
Land of the pilgrims' pride,
From every mountain-side
Let freedom ring.
-- Samuel Francis Smith. But Memory blushes at the sneer,
And Honor turns with frown defiant,
And Freedom, leaning on her spear,
Laughs louder than the laughing giant.
-- A Good Time going. Oliver Wendell Holmes. They are slaves who fear to speak
For the fallen and the weak.
. . . . . .
They are slaves who dare not be
In the right with two or three.
-- Stanzas on Freedom. James Russell Lowell. 1819-1891. Where bastard Freedom waves
The fustian flag in mockery over slaves.
-- To the Lord Viscount Forbes, written from the City of Washington. Thomas Moore. 1779-1852. A day, an hour, of virtuous liberty
Is worth a whole eternity in bondage.
-- Cato. Joseph Addison. 1672-1719. They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
-- Historical Review of Pennsylvania. Benjamin Franklin. 1706-1790.