![]() ![]() Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right, from the frame of their nature, to knowledge, as their great Creator, who does nothing in vain, has given them understandings, and a desire to know but besides this, they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean, of the characters and conduct of their rulers.John Adams, in notes for an oration at Braintree (Spring 1772).The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty. It is not for the sake of a good public administration that it is required, but for security in the pursuit of the highest objects of civil society, and of private life. Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. Liberty and good government do not exclude each other and there are excellent reasons why they should go together. ![]() By liberty I mean the assurance that every man shall be protected in doing what he believes his duty against the influence of authority and majorities, custom and opinion.John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton, The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877).If hostile interests have wrought much injury, false ideas have wrought still more and its advance is recorded in the increase of knowledge, as much as in the improvement of laws. No obstacle has been so constant, or so difficult to overcome, as uncertainty and confusion touching the nature of true liberty. At all times sincere friends of freedom have been rare, and its triumphs have been due to minorities, that have prevailed by associating themselves with auxiliaries whose objects often differed from their own and this association, which is always dangerous, has been sometimes disastrous, by giving to opponents just grounds of opposition, and by kindling dispute over the spoils in the hour of success.Lord Acton, The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877).In every age its progress has been beset by its natural enemies, by ignorance and superstition, by lust of conquest and by love of ease, by the strong man’s craving for power, and the poor man’s craving for food. It is the delicate fruit of a mature civilization and scarcely a century has passed since nations, that knew the meaning of the term, resolved to be free. Liberty, next to religion has been the motive of good deeds and the common pretext of crime, from the sowing of the seed at Athens, 2,460 years ago, until the ripened harvest was gathered by men of our race.~ Samuel Adams The basis of a democratic state is liberty. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. ~ John Adams If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. External links A Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right to knowledge, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean, of the characters and conduct of their rulers.Arranged alphabetically by author or source: ![]()
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