The right to discuss freely and openly, by speech, by the pen, by the press, all political questions, and to examine and animadvert (speak out) upon all political institutions, is a right so clear and certain, so interwoven with our other liberties, so necessary, in fact to their existence, that without it we must fall at once into depression or anarchy. To say that he who holds unpopular opinions must hold them at the peril of his life, and that, if he expresses them in public, he has only himself to blame if they who disagree with him should rise and put him to death, is to strike at all rights, all liberties, all protection of the laws, and to justify and extenuate all crimes.
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Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.
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The Media is an abstraction (because a newspaper is not concrete and only in an abstract sense can be considered an individual), which in association with the passionlessness and reflection of the times creates that abstract phantom, the public, which is the actual leveler. . . . More and more individuals will, because of their indolent bloodlessness, aspire to become nothing, in order to become the public, this abstract whole, which forms in this ridiculous manner: the public comes into existence because all its participants become third parties. This lazy mass, which understands nothing and does nothing, this public gallery seeks some distraction, and soon gives itself over to the idea that everything which someone does, or achieves, has been done to provide the public something to gossip about. . . . The public has a dog for its amusement. That dog is the Media. If there is someone better than the public, someone who distinguishes himself, the public sets the dog on him and all the amusement begins. This biting dog tears up his coat-tails, and takes all sort of vulgar liberties with his leg--until the public bores of it all and calls the dog off. That is how the public levels.
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A rioter with a Molotov cocktail in his hands is not fighting for civil rights any more than a Klansman with a sheet on his back and mask on his face. They are both more or less what the law declares them lawbreakers, destroyers of constitutional rights and liberties and ultimately destroyers of a free America.
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How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.
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It was not a religion that attacked us that September day. It was al-Qaeda. We will not sacrifice the liberties we cherish or hunker down behind walls of suspicion and mistrust.
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The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks ... It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men.
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I think the problem with the Patriot Act is not the law itself, it's the way it's being administered, particularly the way it's being administered by the attorney general of the United States, General Ashcroft, ... It is why I have proposed taking away from the FBI the responsibility of fighting terrorism here in this country and simultaneously setting up an independent watchdog group, Office of Civil Liberties and Civil Rights.
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Shackled heart, free spirit.—Whoever binds his heart tightly and imprisons it may indulge his spirit in many liberties: I have already said ...
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Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties
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Health is the first of all liberties, and happiness gives us the energy which is the basis of health.
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Can a free people restrain crime without sacrificing fundamental liberties and a heritage of compassion?... Let us show that we can temper tog...
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'While Austria is introducing herself as a perfect host for football fans, because of imprisonment of animal rights activists, protests are being held in front of the embassies all around the world. With every day it is becoming clearer that this is a federal assault against the growing Animal rights movement, including the misuse of laws and massive violation of civil liberties.'
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The Godless would deny and destroy human rights .... the liberties of a nation cannot be secure when belief in God is abandoned.
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There is nothing with which it is so dangerous to take liberties as liberty itself.
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To surpress minority thinking and minority expression would tend to freeze society and prevent progress...Now more than ever, we must keep in the forefront of our minds the fact that whenever we take away the liberties of those we hate, we are opening the way to loss of liberty for those we love.
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It would indeed be ironic if, in the name of national defense, we would sanction the subversion of those liberties which make the defense of the nation worthwhile.
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You can protect your liberties in this world only by protecting the other man's freedom. You can be free only if I am free.
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That doctrine of peace at any price has done more mischief than any I can well recall that have been afloat in this country. It has occasioned more wars than any of the most ruthless conquerors. It has disturbed and nearly destroyed that political equilibrium so necessary to the liberties and the welfare of the world.
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You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man's freedom.
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The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them
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The real danger is the gradual erosion of individual liberties through automation, integration, and interconnection of many small, separate record-keeping systems, each of which alone may seem innocuous, even benevolent, and wholly justifiable.
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Rome remained free for four hundred years and Sparta eight hundred, although their citizens were armed all that time; but many other states that have been disarmed have lost their liberties in less than forty years
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The Framers of the Bill of Rights did not purport to create rights. Rather, they designed the Bill of Rights to prohibit our Government from infringing rights and liberties presumed to be preexisting.
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The proposition that the people are the best keepers of their own liberties is not true. They are the worst conceivable, they are no keepers at all; they can neither judge, act, think, or will, as a political body.
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The proposition that the people are the best keepers of their own liberties is not true. They are the worst conceivable, they are no keepers at all they can neither judge, act, think, or will, as a political body.
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We are right to take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties.
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If the women of the United States, with their free schools and all their enlarged liberties, are not superior to women brought up under monarc...
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Don't interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.
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We Americans... bear the ark of liberties of the world.
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