Quotes about Freedom

To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.

Tyranny is defined as that which is legal for the government but illegal for the citizenry.

Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends [life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness] it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government...

Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.

In questions of power, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the constitution.

I am mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, the sale of a book can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too.

No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free no one ever will.

To take from one because it is thought that his own industry and that of his father's has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association--the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.

A nation which expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, expects that which never was and never will be.

No people who are ignorant can be truly free.

The main objects of all science, the freedom and happiness of man. . . . [are] the sole objects of all legitimate government. (A plaque with this quotation, with the first phrase omitted, is in the stairwell of the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty.)

This institution will be based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind. For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.