If there are any persons who contest a received opinion, or who will do so if law or opinion will let them, let us thank them for it, open our minds to listen to them, and rejoice that there is some one to do for us what we otherwise ought, if we hav...
We as human beings need freedom, and justice, and a true cause to engage in to make life meaningful. This basic and comprehensive dream cannot be allowed to be shattered under any circumstances; if it starts shattering then the resistance will arise....
The law has placed the collective force at the disposal of the unscrupulous who wish, without risk, to exploit the person, liberty, and property of others. It has converted plunder into a right, in order to protect plunder. And it has converted lawfu...
But what more oft in Nations grown corrupt, And by thir vices brought to servitude, Than to love Bondage more than Liberty, Bondage with ease than strenuous liberty;
They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
When you go home you ought to go like a ray of light—so that it will, even in the night, burst out of the doors and windows and illuminate the darkness.
Most white Americans were willing to sacrifice civil liberties in the name of national security as long as they were the civil liberties of someone else.
I say to you that the price of liberty is and always has been blood, human blood, and if our liberties are lost, we shall never regain them except at the price of blood. They must not be lost.
I like contradictions. We have never attained the infinite variety and contradictions that exist in nature. Tomorrow I shall contradict myself. That is the one way I have of asserting my liberty, the real liberty one does not find as a member of soci...
Ransom Stoddard: You're not going to use the story, Mr. Scott? Maxwell Scott: No, sir. This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.
Tom Doniphon: I know those law books mean alot to you, but not out here. Out here a man settles his own problems.
Amos Carruthers: [bringing his truant son Herbert to school] Ain't you goin' to give him a whoppin'? Ransom Stoddard: No, he's too big.
Election Council President: [after a mounted politician working for Langhorne has ridden a horse into the convention and performed rope tricks for the audience] This is a convention, *not* a rodeo, Langhorne!
Dutton Peabody: Give me a drink. Tom Doniphon: Bar's closed. Dutton Peabody: Just a beer! Tom Doniphon: The bar's closed. Dutton Peabody: A beer's not drinking!
The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty. Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of lib...
Dutton Peabody: Liberty Valance defeated. D-E-F-E-E... T-E-D? The unsteady hand betrays. What's the matter, Mr. Peabody? Are you afraid? The answer is indub... yes. No courage left. Well, courage can be purchased at yon tavern. But have we credit? Th...
Liberty may be endangered by the abuses of liberty as well as by the abuses of power.
They who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. —written for the Pennsylvania Assembly in its , 11 November 1755
But I will tell you what I say to my children: 'Go where you will; commit what crime you may; fall to what depth of degradation you may; .
We are told, that the subjection of Americans may tend to the diminution of our own liberties; an event, which none but very perspicacious politicians are able to foresee. If slavery be thus fatally contagious, how is it that we hear the loudest yelp...
Do we exert our own liberties without injury to others - we exert them justly; do we exert them at the expense of others - unjustly. And, in thus doing, we step from the sure platform of liberty upon the uncertain threshold of tyranny.
