Defend Liberty Quotes & Sayings

It was an elevating, transforming vision: a new, fresh, vigorous, and above all morally regenerate people rising from the obscurity to defend the battlements of liberty and then in triumph standing forth, heartening and sustaining the cause of freedom everywhere. — Bernard Bailyn

With the blessings of liberty, we have responsibilities to defend it. — Michael Reagan

The strength of the Constitution lies entirely in the determination of each citizen to defend it. Only if every single citizen feels duty bound to do his share in this defense are the constitutional rights secure. — Albert Einstein

Americans want our leaders to defend our values, our culture, our legacy of liberty and our way of life, not apologize. — Christine O'Donnell

The founders also knew that every government system risks corruption, and they wanted to make sure Americans would be able to defend themselves should the nation's leaders become tyrannical. To that end, they ratified the Second Amendment, guaranteeing the right of Americans to bear arms. An armed populace is a powerful deterrent to tyrants both domestically and internationally, and we must defend this liberty as part of our common defense. — Ben Carson

I have spent almost my entire adult life fighting to defend the religious liberty of every American to follow his or her faith and live according to his conscience. — Ted Cruz

God grants liberty only to those who love it and are always ready to guard and defend it. — Daniel Webster

Destructive and irresponsible freedom has been granted boundless space. Society appears to have little defense against the abyss of human decadence, such as, for example, misuse of liberty for moral violence against young people, motion pictures full of pornography, crime and horror. It is considered to be part of freedom and theoretically counter-balanced by the young people's right not to look or not to accept. Life organized legalistically has thus shown its inability to defend itself against the corrosion of evil. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

I will fight to defend liberty. — Ted Cruz

Let us form one body, one heart, and defend to the last warrior our country, our homes, our liberty, and the graves of our fathers. — Tecumseh

The way to secure liberty is to place it in the people's hands, that is, to give them the power at all times to defend it in the legislature and in the courts of justice. — John Adams

No matter how much of our liberty Washington takes away in the name of security, there are no guarantees that there won't be another terrorist attack. Instead of attacking American liberties, the government ought to go after terrorists in their countries of origin. It should be like what our military attempted during WWII. Don't wait to defend ships against the kamikaze
bomb the fields where they take off. — Walter E. Williams

If you defend a behavior by arguing that people are programmed directly for it, then how do you continue to defend it if your speculation is wrong, for the behavior then becomes unnatural and worthy of condemnation. Better to stick resolutely to a philosophical position on human liberty: what free adults do with each other in their own private lives is their business alone. It need not be vindicated and must not be condemned by genetic speculation. — Stephen Jay Gould

There is none of you who would not publicly exclaim that everyone should be moderator and arbitrator in his own matter, who would not command all citizens to use rivers and public places equally and indifferently, who would not with all his power defend the liberty of going hither and thither and trading. — Hugo Grotius

I'm not against the government. I'm against this ever-expanding government that doesn't know its limits. And that's how I see the role of the attorney general, as someone in an office that can protect you and defend the Constitution and defend state sovereignty and our individual liberty. — Alan Wilson

Laws are the very bulkwarks of liberty; they define every man's rights, and defend the individual liberties of all men. — J.G. Holland

It has been suggested that those of us who are fighting to defend liberty - fighting to turn around the out-of-control spending and out-of-control debt in this country, fighting to defend the Constitution, it has been suggested that we are wacko birds. — Ted Cruz

Our Nation owes a lasting debt of gratitude to all those selfless members of our Armed Forces who have risked their own freedom and safety to defend the the lives and liberty of others. — William J. Clinton

The government is an artificial creation, established by the people to defend everyone's equal right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And when the government does not fulfill that obligation, it is the right of the people, in the words of the Declaration of Independence, to 'alter or abolish' the government. — Howard Zinn

Religion, a mediaeval form of unreason, when combined with modern weaponry becomes a real threat to our freedoms. This religious totalitarianism has caused a deadly mutation in the heart of Islam and we see the tragic consequences in Paris today. I stand with Charlie Hebdo, as we all must, to defend the art of satire, which has always been a force for liberty and against tyranny, dishonesty and stupidity. 'Respect for religion' has become a code phrase meaning 'fear of religion.' Religions, like all other ideas, deserve criticism, satire, and, yes, our fearless disrespect."

[I Stand With Charlie Hebdo, as We All Must (Wall Street Journal, January 7, 2015)] — Salman Rushdie

Sex as you like it is an animal right -- no mere civil liberty. Defend it with your beak and claw. — Irving Rosenthal

I wish I could tell you which issues will move forward surprisingly fast and which will slip unaccountably backward. There will be surprises in store on both fronts. All I know for sure is that those twenty-six shapes are what we have to defend our liberty and sustain our hope. — Andrew Solomon

We are witnessing a great awakening. Millions of Texans, millions of Americans are rising up to reclaim our country, to defend liberty and to restore the Constitution. — Ted Cruz

If you want a candidate to defend life and marriage and religious liberty and the Second Amendment and to appoint strong constitutionalists to the court, I'm the only candidate with that record. That's why conservatives are uniting behind our campaign. And if they want to continue with the attacks, that's their prerogative. — Ted Cruz

I will keep my word. My father fled Cuba, and I will fight to defend liberty because my family knows what it's like to lose it. — Ted Cruz

[L]et me point out that libertarians defend a tradition of liberty that is the fruit of thousands of years of human history. — Tom G. Palmer

I would defend the liberty of consenting adult creationists to practice whatever intellectual perversions they like in the privacy of their own homes; but it is also necessary to protect the young and innocent. — Arthur C. Clarke

The moment you say that any idea system is sacred, whether it's a religious belief system or a secular ideology, the moment you declare a set of ideas to be immune from criticism, satire, derision, or contempt, freedom of thought becomes impossible.
[Defend the right to be offended (openDemocracy, 7 February 2005)] — Salman Rushdie

A nation is born into freedom on the day when such a people, moulded into a nation by a process of cultural evolution and sense of oneness born of common struggle and suffering, announces to the world that it asserts its natural right to liberty and is ready to defend it with blood, life, and honor. — Diosdado Macapagal

Libertarianism is the view that each person has the right to live his life in any way he chooses so long as he respects the equal rights of others. Libertarians defend each person's right to life, liberty, and property - rights that people possess naturally, before governments are created. In the libertarian view, all human relationships should voluntary; the only actions that should be forbidden by law are those that involve the initiation of force against those who have themselves used force - actions like murder, rape, robbery, kidnapping, and fraud. — David Boaz

When someone has to intervene to defend the liberty of the press, that society is sick. — Umberto Eco

Is natural that they should hasten to invoke the assistance of religion, for they must know that liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith; but they have seen religion in the ranks of their adversaries, and they inquire no further; some of them attack it openly, and the remainder are afraid to defend it. — Alexis De Tocqueville

The people's liberties strengthen the king's prerogative, and the king's prerogative is to defend the people's liberties. — Charles I Of England

Defend our liberties and fashion into one united people the multitudes brought hither out of many kindred and tongues. — Thomas Jefferson

In that case the current orthodoxy happens to be challenged, and so the principle of free speech lapses. Now, when one demands liberty of speech and of the press, one is not demanding absolute liberty. There always must be, or at any rate there always will be, some degree of censorship, so long as organised societies endure. But freedom, as Rosa Luxembourg [sic] said, is 'freedom for the other fellow'. The same principle is contained in the famous words of Voltaire: 'I detest what you say; I will defend to the death your right to say it.' If the intellectual liberty which without a doubt has been one of the distinguishing marks of western civilisation means anything at all, it means that everyone shall have the right to say and to print what he believes to be the truth, provided only that it does not harm the rest of the community in some quite unmistakable way. — George Orwell

I've been involved in the intelligence side of the federal government for a long time. We all know that we have to have a balance between security to protect the American people and liberty. We take an oath to protect and defend the constitution and the American people. — Barack Obama

I want to make a toast to all at this press event who agree with Thomas Jefferson, who said that our liberty depends on the freedom of the press. So I want to lift a glass to those who defend that freedom. Our finest, the men and women in uniform who defend that freedom, our Constitution, and our exceptional way of life in America. — Sarah Palin

The most terrible struggle in our recent history is being played out. It is not only a struggle for our land, it is a struggle for our soul ... A thousand years of tradition suffice for a nation to learn once and for always these two things: to defend its existence, and with all its heart and all its strength to stand on the side of peace and liberty. — Karel Capek

The Americans of 1776 were among the first men in modern society to defend rather than to seek an open society and constitutional liberty ... Perhaps the most remarkable characteristic of this political theory sits in its deep-seated conservatism. However radical the principles of the Revolution may have seemed to the rest of the world, in the minds of the colonists they were thoroughly preservative and respectful of the past. — Clinton Rossiter

President Obama orders religious organizations to violate their conscience. I will defend religious liberty and overturn regulations that trample on our first freedom. — Mitt Romney

Each of us has a natural right, from God, to defend his person, his liberty, and his property. — Frederic Bastiat

Liberty cannot be guaranteed by law. Nor by any thing else except the resolution of free citizens to defend their liberties. — Edward Abbey

They defend their errors as if they were defending their inheritance. — Edmund Burke

The agitation for a Scottish militia failed to move legislators in London. But it did set a new standard for later debates about the future of free societies, and the place of military virtues and military arms in them. The idea that a free people needed to keep and bear arms in order to defend their liberty was an ancient one, reaching back to the Greeks and forward to Andrew Fletcher. But now Ferguson and his friends had added something new, a social-psychological dimension. By owning weapons and learning to use them, a commercial people can keep alive a collective sense of honor, valor, and physical courage, traditions that no society, no matter how sophisticated and advanced, can afford to do without. — Arthur Herman

But we know that the very God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time. And sometimes we're called upon to defend both life and liberty - God's blessings to Americans, and indeed, to all of His creation. — Sonny Perdue

This is America. We must defend the principles symbolized by Lady Liberty - unless she's on the pill, in which case, she is a giant green tramp. — Stephen Colbert

I will not nullify, I will not secede, but I will under sovereign State authority fight in the Union another revolutionary conflict for civil liberty, and a Union which will defend it. — Henry A. Wise

Whoever prefers life to death, happiness to suffering, well-being to misery must defend without compromise private ownership in the means of production. — Ludwig Von Mises

The enemies of liberty and our country should make no mistake: America remains engaged in the world by history and by choice, shaping a balance of power that favors freedom. We will defend our allies and our interests. We will show purpose without arrogance. We will meet aggression and bad faith with resolve and strength. And to all nations, we will speak for the values that gave our nation birth ... an angel still rides in the whirlwind and directs this storm. — George W. Bush

It is from within, among yourselves
from cupidity, from corruption, from disappointed ambition and inordinate thirst for power
that factions will be formed and liberty endangered. It is against such designs, whatever disguise the actors may assume, that you have especially to guard yourselves. You have the highest of human trusts committed to your care. Providence has showered on this favored land blessings without number, and has chosen you as the guardians of freedom, to preserve it for the benefit of the human race. May He who holds in His hands the destinies of nations make you worthy of the favors He has bestowed and enable you, with pure hearts and pure hands and sleepless vigilance, to guard and defend to the end of time the great charge He has committed to your keeping. — Andrew Jackson

My work is my life, and my life is my work. I invented this assault rifle to defend my country. Today, I am proud that it has become for many synonymous with liberty. — Mikhail Kalashnikov

In 1776, 1950, or now, there's never been a golden age of liberty, and there never will be. People who value freedom will always have to defend it from those who claim the right to wield power over others ... And, in today's world, that means more than a musket by the door. It means being an active citizen. — David Boaz

I have been proud to fight and stand for religious liberty, to stand against Planned Parenthood, to defend life for my entire career. — Ted Cruz

As I have shown, I will defend democracy with arms when it is threatened by violence; with firmness when it is weakened by division; with law and order when it is subverted by anarchy; and always, I will try to sustain it by wise policies of economic progress so that a democracy means not just an empty liberty, but a full life for all. — Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo

Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: First a right to life, secondly to liberty, and thirdly to property; together with the right to defend them in the best manner they can. — Samuel Adams

The whole point of religious faith, its strength and chief glory, is that it does not depend on rational justification. The rest of us are expected to defend our prejudices. But ask a religious person to justify their faith and you infringe 'religious liberty'. — Richard Dawkins

In inventing [General Juan Manuel de] Rosas' self-justification, I have taken the liberty of drawing almost exclusively on the words of Tony Blair, and the various self-justifications he produced to defend his foreign policy adventures with George Bush in the Middle East and the Central Asia. — Harry Thompson

Educate your children, educate yourself, in the love for the freedom of others, for only in this way will your own freedom not be a gratuitous gift from fate. You will be aware of its worth and will have the courage to defend it. — Joaquim Nabuco

Some of us have to fight. There are great traditions of liberty to defend. I am no partisan man. Where I see the infamy I seek to erase it. Party names mean nothing. The tradition of liberty means all. The common people will let it go, oh yes. They will sell liberty for a quieter life. That is why they must be prodded, prodded-. — Anthony Burgess

Ultimately, I'm about liberty and I think you have to defend it. — David Hockney

Those which defend liberty, equality and fraternity, seem to us superior to those which accept tyranny, the subservience of women, social and ethnic hatred. — Claude Gueant

When the day comes in which the Kingdom of God will bear rule, the flag of the United States will proudly flutter unsullied on the flag staff of liberty and equal rights, without a spot to sully its fair surface; the glorious flag our fathers have bequeathed to us will then be unfurled to the breeze by those who have power to hoist it aloft and defend its sanctity. — Brigham Young

History comes and history goes, but principles endure, and ensure future generations will defend liberty not as a gift from government but as a blessing from our Creator. — Ronald Reagan

The timid and fearful cannot defend liberty
or anything else. — G. Edward Griffin