Inspirational Quotes on Liberty

“Martin took the same course, thinking as he went, that perhaps the free and independent citizens, who in their moral elevation, owned the colonel for their master, might render better homage to the goddess, Liberty, in nightly dreams upon the oven of a Russian Serf.”

“I am not one of those who underrate the value of civil and political liberty; but I am well assured that it is only the principles of Christianity which can impart true security, prosperity, and happiness either to individuals or to nations.”

“Bad men cannot make good citizens. It is when a people forget God that tyrants forge their chains. A vitiated state of morals, a corrupted public conscience, is incompatible with freedom. No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue; and by a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.”

“False notions of liberty are strangely common. People talk of it as if it meant the liberty of doing whatever one likes - whereas the only liberty that a man, worthy of the name of man, ought to ask for, is, to have all restrictions, inward and outward, removed that prevent his doing what he ought.”

“Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.”

“Wherefore, though the Christian, as a Christian, is the only man at liberty, as called thereunto of God; yet his liberty is limited to things that are good: he is not licensed thereby to indulge the flesh.”

“By nature all men are equal in liberty, but not in other endowments.”

“For the sake of method, I could wish to consider the African trade,—first, with regard to the effect it has upon our own people ; and secondly, as it concerns the blacks, or, as they are more contemptuously styled, the negro slaves, whom we purchase upon the coast. But these two topics are so interwoven together, that it will not be easy to keep them exactly separate. ... When I have charged a black with unfairness and dishonesty, he has answered, if able to clear himself, with an air of disdain, " What! do you think I am a white man ?" Such is the nature, such are the concomitants, of the slave trade... Will not sound policy suggest the necessity of some expedient here?”

“Christian liberty is freedom not to indulge the flesh but to control the flesh, freedom not to exploit our neighbor but to serve our neighbor, freedom not to disregard the law but to fulfill the law.”

“Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!”

“The truth is, of course, that the curtness of the Ten Commandments is an evidence, not of the gloom and narrowness of a religion, but, on the contrary, of its liberality and humanity. It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted: precisely because most things are permitted, and only a few things are forbidden.”

“Interwoven is the love of liberty with every ligament of the heart.”

“However many blessings we expect from God, His infinite liberality will always exceed all our wishes and our thoughts.”

“Wherever God pardons sin, he subdues it... If the fetters of sin be broken off, and we walk at liberty in the ways of God, this is a blessed sign we are pardoned.”

“Many men say right and many men say wrong. I might be more ready to speak my mind were it not that I greatly doubt some of those who cry loudest for liberty. I fear that once they had power, they would be the first to trample her underfoot. Liberty with some men means my liberty to do, and your liberty to suffer.”

“Personal liberty is not personal license.”

“Free will is not the liberty to do whatever one likes, but the power of doing whatever one sees ought to be done, even in the very face of otherwise overwhelming impulse. There lies freedom, indeed.”

“If we mean to support the liberty and independence which have cost us so much blood and treasure to establish, we must drive far away the demon of party spirit and local reproach.”

“The moment any mention is made of Christian liberty lust begins to boil, or insane commotions arise, if a speedy restraint is not laid on those licentious spirits by whom the best things are perverted into the worst.”

“There is something childish and legalistic about churches in which all of the saints observe precisely the same standards. When all lives begin to sink into the same mould of denial and exercise of liberty, something is amiss.”