Quotes & Sayings About Liberty And Responsibility

From too much liberty, my Lucio, liberty
As surfeit is the father of much fast,
So every scope of the immoderate use
Turns to restraint. Our natures do pursue, -
Like rats that ravin down their proper bane, -
A thirsty evil; and when we drink we die. — William Shakespeare

Debate is never finished; it can't be, lest democracy be no longer democratic and society be stripped of or forfeit its autonomy. Democracy means that the citizen's task is never complete. Democracy exists through persevering and unyielding citizens' concern. Once that concern is put to sleep, democracy expires.
And so there is no, and cannot be, a democracy, an autonomous society, without autonomous citizens - that is, citizens endowed with individual liberty and individual responsibility for the ways they use it. That liberty is another value - though unthinkable in separation from the value of democracy. Democracy rests on the freedom of its citizens, and citizens rest their confidence of being free and the courage to be free on the democracy of their polis. The two make each other and are made in the process of that making. — Zygmunt Bauman

The American heritage was one of individual liberty, personal responsibility and freedom from government ... Unfortunately ... that heritage has been lost. Americans no longer have the freedom to direct their own lives ... Today, it is the government that is free - free to do whatever it wants. There is no subject, no issue, no matter ... that is not subject to legislation. — Harry Browne

And we can celebrate when we have a government that has earned back the trust of the people it serves ... when we have a government that honors our Constitution and stands up for the values that have made America, America: economic freedom, individual liberty, and personal responsibility. — John Boehner

The literature of a people must so ring from the sense of its nationality; and nationality is impossible without self-respect, and self-respect is impossible without liberty. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

I can't think of anything that would do more toward putting us back on the road to liberty and personal responsibility than for the average American, and for the news media, to come to the understanding that we are not a democracy, nor were we supposed to be. — Neal Boortz

Yes, I am a thorough republican. No other form of government is so favorable to the growth of art ... because of the importance it places on the individual, their liberty, self-expression, creativity, and personal responsibility. — Oscar Wilde

Living off others is a form of bondage - for if you take from a person his responsibility to care for himself, you also take from him the opportunity to be free. — Cameron C. Taylor

Liberty means that a man is recognized as free and treated as free by those who surround him. — Mikhail Bakunin

This election presents a stark choice - we can continue down the road of the Obama Democrats, more and more spending, debt and government control of the economy, or we can return to the founding principles of our nation - free markets, fiscal responsibility and individual liberty. — Ted Cruz

The genius of the Reformation lay in the fact that human beings were made free under God. Justification "by faith alone" cut away the bureaucratic jungle of human authorities and subservience. But where this liberty was not balanced by responsibility, the Reformation made human beings so free under God that it was only a short step to their being free from God. We might say that the despair of existentialism is simply the logic of atheism, but this is true only insofar as atheism itself is the logic of ungrateful Protestantism. — Os Guinness

There is no liberty, save wisdom and self-control. Liberty is within
not without. It is each man's own affair. — H.G.Wells

Liberty not only means that the individual has both the opportunity and the burden of choice; it also means that he must bear the consequences of his actions ... Liberty and responsibility are inseparable. — Friedrich Hayek

We are now in a position to understand the anti-Semite. He is a man who is afraid. Not of the Jews, to be sure, but of himself, of his own consciousness, of his liberty, of his instincts, of his responsibilities, of solitariness, of change, of society, and of the world of everything except the Jews. — Jean-Paul Sartre

The modern West has been deeply split about freedom and responsibility. On the one hand, it has championed human freedom in many forms - human rights, sexual freedom, political liberty, freedom to choose in many spheres. On the other hand, many of its most intelligent members have not believed that people are free at all, and have devoted great efforts to show that really we are the product of our genes, our unconscious drives, our education, economic pressures, or other forms of conditioning. — David F. Ford

Alwasy remember ... We are engaged in a battle for the continuation of
our capitalist, free-market economic model; our way of life; and our
liberty. The enemy is anticapitalist, believes in big government, embraces
collectivist ideologies, and has, over the past century, infiltrated every
level of our government and most of the banking industry. They don't care about patriotism, although they may sport the red, white, and
blue and the stars and stripes on their bumper stickers. They don't
care about personal responsibility or civic duty. They don't share your
sense of honor. All they care about is power and control over your
money and every aspect of your life. — Ziad K. Abdelnour

A man cannot live intensely except at the cost of the self. Now the bourgeois treasures nothing more highly than the self (rudimentary as his may be). And so at the cost of intensity he achieves his own preservation and security. His harvest is a quiet mind which he prefers to being possessed by God, as he does comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty, and a pleasant temperature to that deathly inner consuming fire. The bourgeois is consequently by nature a creature of weak impulses, anxious, fearful of giving himself away and easy to rule. Therefore, he has substituted majority for power, law for force, and the polling booth for responsibility. — Hermann Hesse

Sound morals, religious liberty, and a just sense of religious responsibility are essentially connected with all true and lasting happiness. — William Henry Harrison

The time had finally come when she would have to accept the full power of the Starwife. No longer could she be just Ysabelle. Now she had a land to govern and all the daunting responsibilities that that entailed. The liberty she had experienced since the night she had escaped from the Ring of Banbha seemed to vanish. She was left stripped of her freedom, and only long years of a lonely reign stretched out before her. — Robin Jarvis

The fact is that the government, like a highwayman, says to a man: Your money, or your life ... The government does not, indeed, waylay a man in a lonely place, spring upon him from the road side and, holding a pistol to his head, proceed to rifle his pockets. But the robbery is none the less a robbery on that account; and it is far more dastardly and shameful. The highwayman takes solely upon himself the responsibility, danger, and crime of his own act. He does not pretend that he has any rightful claim to your money, or that he intends to use it for your own benefit. He does not pretend to be anything but a robber ... Furthermore, having taken your money, he leaves you as you wish him to do. He does not persist in following you on the road, against your will; assuming to be your rightful 'sovereign,' on account of the 'protection' he affords you. — Lysander Spooner

Modern Western democracies no longer engage in such despotic assaults on freedom, Instead, they deprive people of liberty indirectly, by relieving them of responsibility for their own (allegedly self-injurious) actions and calling the intervention treatment. — Thomas Szasz

Men love liberty because it protects them from control and humiliation from others, and thus affords them the possibility of dignity. They loathe liberty because it throws them back on their own abilities and resources, and thus confronts them with the possibility of insignificance. — Thomas Szasz

But it is recognized that punishment for the abuse of the liberty accorded to the press is essential to the protection of the public, and that the common law rules that subject the libeler to responsibility for the public offense, as well as for the private injury, are not abolished by the protection extended in our constitutions. The law of criminal libel rests upon that secure foundation. There is also the conceded authority of courts to punish for contempt when publications directly tend to prevent the proper discharge of judicial functions. — Charles Evans Hughes

Why do children want to grow up? Because they experience their lives as constrained by immaturity and perceive adulthood as a condition of greater freedom and opportunity. But what is there today, in America, that very poor and very rich adolescents want to do but cannot do? Not much: they can do drugs, have sex, make babies, and get money (from their parents, crime, or the State). For such adolescents, adulthood becomes synonymous with responsibility rather than liberty. Is it any surprise that they remain adolescents? — Thomas Szasz

The question is whether voters, particularly independents, believe that Obama truly values personal liberty and responsibility as much as the government-bought safety net. — Ron Fournier

It is not because we have been free, but because we have a right to be free, that we ought to demand freedom. Justice and liberty have neither birth nor race, youth nor age. — James Mackintosh

There are those that want freedom from individual responsibility, and then there are those that want individual liberty. "Freedom" and "liberty" no longer mean what they used to. A desire for dependence has been made fashionably desirable. — A.E. Samaan

Law is justice. And it is under the law of justice - under the reign of right; under the influence of liberty, safety, stability, and responsibility - that every person will attain his real worth and the true dignity of his being. It is only under this law of justice that mankind will achieve - slowly, no doubt, but certainly - God's design for the orderly and peaceful progress of humanity. — Frederic Bastiat

Whatever new threats and challenges may emerge, our nation will be able to face them squarely, deal with them, and yet allow our people to continue to live free and unafraid. The decisions you make, the courage and creativity you bring to your responsibilities, will determine America's future. Liberty and our way of life are fragile gifts - their care is in your hands. We thank you for stepping forward to shoulder that immense responsibility. Your country is grateful, and proud of each of you. — Donald Rumsfeld

I represent what I think is a traditional Republican ... a limited government, fiscal responsibility, strong national defense, individual freedom and liberty. — Olympia Snowe

I realized that conservatism was the philosophy that best suited me, with its emphasis on individual liberty, personal responsibility, and merit. — Mark R. Levin

For me, socialism has always been about liberty and solidarity, but also about responsibility. — Jacques Delors

Liberty is no heirloom. It requires the daily bread of self-denial, the salt of law and, above all, the backbone of acknowledging responsibility for our deeds. — Fulton J. Sheen

I'm a conservative Republican, small-business guy, married to same gal - love of my life - for 36 years. Strong family man, deacon at my church; I believe in America. I know government is not the answer; individual liberty and personal responsibility is the answer. — Randy Weber

Then we are assured by Sartre that owing to the final disappearance of God our liberty is absolute! At this the entire audience waves its hat or claps its hands. But this natural enthusiasm is turned abruptly into something much less buoyant when it is learnt that this liberty weighs us down immediately with tremendous responsibilities. We now have to take all God's worries on our shoulders -now that we are become men like gods. It is at this point that the Anxiety and Despondency begin, ending in utter despair. — Wyndham Lewis

The highwayman takes solely upon himself the responsibility, danger, and crime of his own act. He does not pretend that he has any rightful claim to your money, or that he intends to use it for your own benefit ... Furthermore, having taken your money, he leaves you, as you wish him to do ... He does not keep "protecting" you by commanding you to bow down and serve him; by requiring you to do this, and forbidding you to do that. — Lysander Spooner

We have come to world leadership because our people have had the opportunity to develop this nation under a government and a Constitution that gave them political freedom and encouraged initiative, enterprise, responsibility, industry and thrift. Freedom and achievement are not unrelated. This nation has become one of history's finest illustrations of how a people can enrich life and raise their whole level of economic well-being when they are given justice, liberty and incentive. — Herbert V. Prochnow

In your dread of dictators you established a state of society in which every ward boss is a dictator, every financier a dictator, every private employer a dictator, all with the livelihood of the workers at their mercy, and no public responsibility. And to symbolize this state of things, this defeat of all government, you have set up in New York Harbour a monstrous idol which you call Liberty. The only thing that remains to complete this monument is to put on its pedestal the inscription written by Dante on the gate of Hell 'All hope abandon, ye who enter here. — George Bernard Shaw

Why is freedom such a hard sell? That's the question. In this country, why has the idea of individual liberty and responsibility become such a hard sell? That's something I never thought would happen here. — Rush Limbaugh

Now they have come to the place where their faith can no longer feed on the bread of repression and violence. They ask for the bread of liberty, of public equality, and public responsibility. It must not be denied them. — Mordecai Wyatt Johnson

Americans love their captivity. There's no responsibility. When you're a captive, you don't have to make a decision about anything, though you have no Liberty. People don't want Liberty. Liberty is nothing but uncertainty. It's much easier to have someone tell you where you'll be, what you'll do and who you'll pay tomorrow than to worry about it yourself. The same goes for what you think — Eustace Mullins

As part of "moral philosophy," the concept of "natural liberty" clicks easily into place. Man, as an ethical integer, is either free to choose between good and bad courses within the
limits of his circumstances, or he is not. If he is not free, if he can
only accept what is handed to him from above (by fate, or by decree of the human agents of fate), then there is not much use in talking about morality or ethics. To make any sense of the idea
of morality, it must be presumed that the human being is responsible for his actions-and responsibility cannot be understood apart from the presumption of freedom of choice. — John Chamberlain

I developed the concept of the Happy Warrior as a rallying cry for those of us who want to restore America to its great foundational principles: individual freedom, personal responsibility, fiscal restraint, and economic liberty. — Monica Crowley