“We are right to take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties.”
“Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.”
“Liberty can not be preserved without a general knowledge among the people.”
“Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.”
“The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts.”
“It is easy to take liberty for granted when you have never had it taken from you.”
“Liberty may be endangered by the abuse of liberty, but also by the abuse of power.”
“When liberty comes with hands dabbled in blood it is hard to shake hands with her.”
“There is nothing with which it is so dangerous to take liberties as liberty itself.”
“The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.”
“Liberty is the only thing you cannot have unless you are willing to give it to others.”
“I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death.”
“Old England liberty -- to be robbed by the Ministry, and insulted by the populace without redress.”
“Show me the country that has no strikes and I'll show you the country in which there is no liberty.”
“They who give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
“The liberty of the individual is no gift of civilization. It was greatest before there was any civilization.”
“I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.”
“What light is to the eyes -- what air is to the lungs -- what love is to the heart, liberty is to the soul of man.”
“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
“I would rather belong to a poor nation that was free than to a rich nation that had ceased to be in love with liberty.”
“The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal -- well-meaning but without understanding.”
“They who are in the highest places, and have the most power, have the least liberty, because they are the most observed.”
“I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.”
“Absolute liberty is absence of restraint; responsibility is restraint; therefore, the ideally free individual is responsible to himself.”
“We are as great as our belief in human liberty -- no greater. And our belief in human liberty is only ours when it is larger than ourselves.”
“The shallow consider liberty a release from all law, from every constraint. The wise man sees in it, on the contrary, the potent Law of Laws.”
“I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue.”
“When liberty is mentioned, we must always be careful to observe whether it is not really the assertion of private interests which is thereby designated.”
“The effect of liberty to individuals is that they may do what they please: we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations.”
“Over grown military establishments are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty.”