Human Quotes

A free man is as jealous of his responsibilities as he is of his liberties.

All free men wherever they may live are citizens of Berlin. And therefore as a free man I take pride in the words 'Ich bin ein Berliner.'

Liberty is the right to do what the law permits.

Baron de Montesquieu

Once freedom lights its beacon in a man's heart the gods are powerless against him.

Jean-Paul Sartre

Equality is the result of human organization. We are not born equal.

When you have robbed a man of everything he is no longer in your power. He is free again.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The effect of liberty on individuals is that they may do what they please: we ought to see what it will please them to do before we risk congratulations.

We are in bondage to the law in order that we may be free.

Cicero

People hardly ever make use of the freedom they have for example freedom of thought instead they demand freedom of speech as a compensation.

Søren Kierkegaard

Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.

Jean-Paul Sartre

My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.

Adlai Stevenson

One should never put on one's best trousers to go out to battle for freedom and truth.

I understand by 'freedom of spirit' something quite definite - the unconditional will to say No where it is dangerous to say No.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Man was born free and everywhere he is in shackles.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.

George Bernard Shaw

For two decades the state has been taking liberties and these liberties were once ours.

By physical liberty I mean the right to do anything which does not interfere with the happiness of another. By intellectual liberty I mean the right to think wrong.

Robert G. Ingersoll

There can be no real freedom without the freedom to fail.

Liberty as it is conceived by current opinion has nothing inherent about it it is a sort of gift or trust bestowed on the individual by the state pending good behaviour.

The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.

Hubert Humphrey

If liberty has any meaning it means freedom to improve.

Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must like men undergo the fatigue of supporting it.

Let every nation know whether it wishes us well or ill that we shall pay any price bear any burden meet any hardship support any friend oppose any foe in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.

The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic... The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

Send these the homeless tempest toss'd to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

To be truly free it takes more determination courage introspection and restraint than to be in shackles.

Pietro Bellusch

Equality of opportunity is an equal opportunity to prove unequal talents.

Viscount Samuel

The greatest right in the world is the right to be wrong.

Harry Weinberger

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances - to choose one's own way.

The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest no domination. We seek no indemnities for ourselves no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely give. We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have been made as secure as the faith and freedom of nations can make them.

I am not so much concerned with the right of everyone to say anything he pleases as I am about our need as self-governing people to hear everything relevant.

Liberty is always unfinished business.

Anonymous

Rights that do not flow from duty well performed are not worth having.

So free we seem so fettered fast we are!

Robert Browning

The liberty of the individual must be thus far limited he must not make himself a nuisance to other people.

John Stuart Mill

We look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. The first is freedom of speech and expression - everywhere in the world. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way everywhere in the world. The third is freedom from want...everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear... anywhere in the world.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Yes 'n' how many years can some people exist before they're allowed to be free? Yes. 'n' how many times can a man turn his head pretending he just doesn't see? The answer my friend is blowin' in the wind.

Bob Dylan

These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will in this crisis shrink from the service of their country but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny like hell is not easily conquered yet we have this consolation with us that the harder the conflict the more glorious the triumph.

It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have frequently been forged in cases involving not very nice people.

Felix Frankfurter

The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right.

Liberty is always dangerous - but it is the safest thing we have.

Harry Emerson Fosdick

Let the word go forth from this time and place to friend and foe alike that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans - born in this century tempered by war disciplined by a hard and bitter peace proud of our ancient heritage - and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed and to which we are committed today at home and around the world. Let every nation know whether it wishes us well or ill that we shall pay any price bear any burden meet any hardship support any friend oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty. All this will not be finished in the first 100 days. Nor will it be finished in the first 1 000 days nor in the life of this administration nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin. Now the trumpet summons us again - not as a call to bear arms though arms we need - not as a call to battle though embattled we are - but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle year in and year out "rejoicing in hope patient in tribulation"- a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny poverty disease and war itself. And so my fellow Americans ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country . My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you but what together we can do for the freedom of man.

None can love freedom heartily but good men - the rest love not freedom but licence.

If you treat men the way they are you never improve them. If you treat them the way you want them to be you do.

Goethe

See everything: overlook a great deal: correct a little.

Pope John XXIII

The more you let yourself go the less others let you go.

Friedrich Nietzsche

A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depend on the labours of other men living and dead and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received.

Albert Einstein

At bottom the world isn't a joke. We only joke about it to avoid an issue with someone to let someone know that we know he's there with his questions to disarm him by seeming to have heard and done justice to his side of the standing argument.

I reckon there's as much human nature in some folks as there is in others if not more.

Edward Noyes Westcott

If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Science may have found a cure for most evils: but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all - the apathy of human beings.

The go-between wears out a thousand sandals.

Japanese Proverb

Life is livable because we know that wherever we go most of the people we meet will be restrained in their actions toward us by an almost instinctive network of taboos.

I was taught when I was young that if people would only love one another all would be well with the world. This seemed simple and very nice but I found when I tried to put it in practice not only that other people were seldom lovable but that I was not very lovable myself.

George Bernard Shaw

It is well to remember that the entire population of the universe with one trifling exception is composed of others.

John Andrew Holmes

Our concern is not how to worship in the catacombs but how to remain human in the skyscrapers.

Abraham J. Heschel

I was born modest not all over but in spots.

A modest man is usually admired - if people ever hear of him.

Edgar Watson Howe

Only the person who has faith in himself is able to be faithful to others.

Make yourself necessary to somebody.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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