Quotes about Freedom

We fight not to enslave, but to set a country free, and to make room upon the earth for honest men to live in.

When men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon.

Man did not enter society to be worse off, or to have fewer rights, but rather to have those rights better secured

As to religion, I hold it to be the indispensible duty of all government, to protect all conscientious professors thereof, and I know of no other business which government hath to do therewith.

If the present generation, or any other, are disposed to be slaves, it does not lessen the right of the succeeding generation to be free.

Here, then, is the origin and rise of government: namely, a mode rendered necessary by inability of moral virtue to govern the world; here too is the design and end of government, viz, freedom and security.

In whatever manner the separate parts of a constitution may be arranged, there is one general principle that distinguishes freedom from slavery, which is, that all hereditary government over a people is to them a species of slavery, and representative government is freedom.

The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind.

The government of a free country, properly speaking, is not in the persons, but in the laws.

Though we have been wise enough to shut and lock the door against an absolute monarchy, we at the same time have been foolish enough to put the crown in possession of the key.

O ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose not only the tyranny but the tyrant, stand forth! Every spot of the old world is overrun with oppression. Freedom hath been hunted round the globe. Asia and Africa have long expelled her. Europe regards her like a stranger, and England hath given her warning to depart. O receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an asylum for mankind!

My days have been so wondrous free,The little birds that flyWith careless ease from tree to tree,Were but as bless'd as I.