Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Comment on this quote Share via Email Print this Page [341-360] of 1279 Liberty quotesLiberty QuotesLiberty Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes We are opposed to state interference with parental rights and rights of conscience in the education of children as an infringement of the fundamental Democratic doctrine that the largest individual liberty consistent with the rights of others insures the highest type of American citizenship and the best government.~ Democratic National Platform of 1892 Our First Amendment expresses a far different calculus for regulating speech than for regulating nonexpressive conduct and that is as it should be. The right to swing your fist should end at the tip of my nose, but your right to express your ideas should not necessarily end at the lobes of my ears.~ Alan Dershowitz Students throughout the totalitarian world risk life and limb for freedom of expression, many American college students are demanding that big brother restrict their freedom of speech on campus. This demand for enhanced censorship is not emanating only from the usual corner – the know-nothing fundamentalist right – it is coming from the radical, and increasingly not-so-radical left as well.~ Alan Dershowitz Liberty is not just an idea, an abstract principle. It is power, effective power to do specific things. There is no such thing as liberty in general; liberty, so to speak, at large.~ John Dewey Indeed nations, in general, are not apt to think until they feel; and therefore nations in general have lost their liberty: For as violations of the rights of the governed, are commonly not only specious, but small at the beginning, they spread over the multitude in such a manner, as to touch individuals but slightly. Thus they are disregarded. The power or profit that arises from these violations centering in few persons, is to them considerable. For this reason the governors having in view their particular purposes, successively preserve an uniformity of conduct for attaining them. They regularly increase the first injuries, till at length the inattentive people are compelled to perceive the heaviness of their burthens -- They begin to complain and inquire — but too late. They find their oppressors so strengthened by success, and themselves so entangled in examples of express authority on the part of their rulers, and of tacit recognition on their own part, that they are quite confounded: for millions entertain no other idea of the legality of power, than it is founded on the exercise of power.~ John Dickenson Kings or parliaments could not give the rights essential to happiness... We claim them from a higher source -- from the King of kings, and Lord of all the earth. They are not annexed to us by parchments and seals. They are created in us by the decrees of Providence, which establish the laws of our nature. They are born with us; exist with us; and cannot be taken from us by any human power, without taking our lives.~ John Dickinson To brand man with infamy, and let him free, is an absurdity that peoples our forests with assassins. [Fr., Rendre l'homme infame, et le laisser libre, est une absurdite qui peuple nos forets d'assassins.]~ Denis Diderot I am a Canadian, free to speak without fear, free to worship in my own way, free to stand for what I think right, free to oppose what I believe wrong, or free to choose those who shall govern my country. This heritage of freedom I pledge to uphold for myself and all mankind.~ John G. Diefenbaker Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right to do wrong.~ John G. Diefenbaker For you see, the world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes.~ Benjamin Disraeli Individuality is freedom lived.~ John Dos Passos It is better, so the Fourth Amendment teaches us, that the guilty sometimes go free than the citizens be subject to easy arrest.~ Justice William O. Douglas The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedom.~ Justice William O. Douglas Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.~ Justice William O. Douglas The framers of the constitution knew human nature as well as we do. They too had lived in dangerous days; they too knew the suffocating influence of orthodoxy and standardized thought. They weighed the compulsions for restrained speech and thought against the abuses of liberty. They chose liberty.~ Justice William O. Douglas The privacy and dignity of our citizens [are] being whittled away by sometimes imperceptible steps. Taken individually, each step may be of little consequence. But when viewed as a whole, there begins to emerge a society quite unlike any we have seen -- a society in which government may intrude into the secret regions of a [person’s] life.~ Justice William O. Douglas A people who extend civil liberties only to preferred groups start down the path either to dictatorship of the right or the left.~ Justice William O. Douglas The Fifth Amendment is an old friend and a good friend. It is one of the great landmarks in men’s struggle to be free of tyranny, to be decent and civilized.~ Justice William O. Douglas The Constitution is not neutral. It was designed to take the government off the backs of people.~ Justice William O. Douglas The function of free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute. It may indeed best serve its high purpose when it invites a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger. Speech is often provocative and challenging. It may strike at prejudices and preconceptions and have profound unsettling effects as it passes for acceptance of an idea.~ Justice William O. Douglas Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes Share on Facebook Tweet Email Print