Free Society Quotes:

The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society.

- Abraham Lincoln

source: Ulysses S. Grant, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Stephen Crane, Jefferson Davis, Abraham Lincoln (2012). “The Modern Library Civil War Bookshelf 5-Book Bundle: Personal Memoirs, Uncle Tom's Cabin, The Red Badge of Courage, Jefferson Davis: The Essential Writings, The Life and Writings of Abraham Lincoln”, p.2600, Modern Library

topic: Principles, Definitions, Free Society

We must seek to be intellectually inclusive, just as we seek to be culturally inclusive. Ideas come and go - that's what makes a free society so vital.

- Marianne Williamson

source: Source: scottlondon.com

topic: Ideas, Comes And Goes, Free Society

We can't impose freedom, but we can eliminate roadblocks to freedom, and to allow free societies to develop.

- George W. Bush

source: George W. Bush (1982). “Public paper of the presidents of the United States”, p.1035, Government Printing Office

topic: Freedom, Free Society, Roadblock

In a free society, you get what you celebrate.

- Dean Kamen

source: "Science’s Vital Role In America’s Future" by Dean Kamen, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 24, 2011.

topic: Celebrate, Free Society

Free societies are societies in motion, and with motion comes friction.

- Salman Rushdie

source: "Joseph Anton: A Memoir". Book by Salman Rushdie, September 2012.

topic: Friction, Free Society

In a free society with a government based on reason, it is inevitable that there will be no uniform opinion about important issues. Those accustomed to suppression and control by governmental authority see this as leading only to chaos. But a government of the people requires difference of opinion in order to discover truth and to take advantage of the opportunity that only understanding brings.

- Thomas Jefferson

topic: Opportunity, Order, Differences, Differences Of Opinion, Free Society

If you never encounter anything in your community that offends you, then you are not living in a free society.

- Kim Campbell

topic: Community, Encounters, Anarchy, Free Society

During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.

- Nelson Mandela

topic: Inspirational, Inspiring, Success, Opportunities Of A Lifetime, Equal Opportunity

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.

- John F. Kennedy

topic: Inspirational, Success, Helping Others, Hunger And Poverty, Hunger Poverty

My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.

- Adlai E. Stevenson

source: Adlai E. Stevenson's speech in Detroit, Michigan, October 7, 1952.

topic: Freedom, Patriotic, Independent, Independence And Freedom, Free Society

Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent.

- Louis D. Brandeis

topic: Government, Liberty, Purpose, Justice Truth, Law Courts

This freedom of movement is the very essence of our free society, setting us apart. Like the right of assembly and the right of association, it often makes all other rights meaningful-knowing, studying, arguing, exploring, conversing, observing and even thinking. Once the right to travel is curtailed, all other rights suffer, just as when curfew or home detention is placed on a person.

- William O. Douglas

topic: Meaningful, Home, Thinking, Detention, Curfew

I believe in a free society, where aspiration and effort can make the difference in every life. Where your starting point is not your destiny and where your first chance is not your only chance.

- Paul Ryan

source: Source: www.foxnews.com

topic: Believe, Destiny, Differences, Free Society

It is only within a free society that the crucial moral features of human life can be protected and preserved

- Tibor R. Machan

source: Tibor R. Machan (2003). “The Passion for Liberty”, p.76, Rowman & Littlefield

topic: Moral, Human Life, Humans, Free Society

No single person, including the President of the United States, should ever be given the power to make a medical decision for potentially millions of Americans. Freedom over one's physical person is the most basic freedom of all, and people in a free society should be sovereign over their own bodies. When we give government the power to make medical decisions for us, we in essence accept that the state owns our bodies.

- Ron Paul

topic: Freedom, Acceptance, Rights, Free Society

To continue on the road we Americans have traveled for the past century is ultimately to deliver ourselves completely into the hands of an unlimited government. We can have a free society or a welfare state. We cannot have both.

- Robert Higgs

topic: Past, Government, Hands, Free Society

The benefit of living in a free society is that we all have the choice to be rich, poor, or middle class. The decision is up to you.

- Robert Kiyosaki

topic: Class, Choices, Decision, Free Society

No country can possibly move ahead, no free society can possibly be sustained, unless it has an educated citizenry whose qualities of mind and heart permit it to take part in the complicated and increasingly sophisticated decisions that pour not only upon the President and upon the Congress, but upon all the citizens who exercise the ultimate power.

- John F. Kennedy

source: Kennedy, John F. (1964). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy, 1963”, p.446, Best Books on

topic: Country, Moving, Heart, Moving Ahead, Free Society

To be born in a free society and not to be born free is to be born into a lie. To be told by co-citizens and co-Christians that you have no value, no history, have never done anything that is worthy of human respect destroys you because in the beginning you believe it.

- James A. Baldwin

topic: Christian, Lying, Believe, Born Free, Free Society

Sometimes You Have to Pay a Heavy Price to Live in a Free Society

- Chelsea Manning

topic: Pay, Sometimes, Heavy, Free Society

There is no reason, in a free society, that farmers shouldn’t be allowed to raise hemp. Hemp is a good product.

- Ron Paul

topic: Hemp, Reason, Farmers, Free Society

Gun control laws don't work. What is worse, they act perversely. While legitimate users of firearms encounter intense regulation, scrutiny and bureaucratic control, illicit markets easily adapt to whatever difficulties a free society throws in their way. Also, efforts to curtail the supply of firearms inflict collateral damage on freedom and privacy interests that have long been considered central to American public life.

- Daniel D. Polsby

topic: Gun, Law, Long, Collateral Damage, Free Society

The media insist that crime is the major concern of the American public today. In this connection they generally push the point that a disarmed society would be a crime-free society. They will not accept the truth that if you take all the guns off the street you still will have a crime problem, whereas if you take the criminals off the street you cannot have a gun problem.

- Jeff Cooper

source: "Jeff Cooper's Commentaries", Vol. 2, No. 5, May 1994.

topic: Gun, Media, Today, Free Society, Accepting The Truth

It is now well established that the Constitution protects the right to receive information and ideas. ... This right to receive information and ideas, regardless of their social worth, ... is fundamental to our free society.

- Thurgood Marshall

topic: Ideas, Government, Fundamentals, Free Society

I think that in free societies, and we're constantly talking about living in free societies, aren't we, in contradiction with unhappy people who live in non-free societies, that the benefit, the dividend of living in a free society is that you say what you think.

- Malcolm Muggeridge

source: Source: www.hrc.utexas.edu

topic: Thinking, Talking, People, Unhappy People, Free Society

Individual freedom and drug laws contradict each other. In a genuinely free society, people are free to ingest whatever they want to ingest, no matter how harmful or destructive. What people ingest is none of the government's business. If drug users or drug addicts wish to get help, a free society provides the means to do so.

- Jacob G. Hornberger

topic: Mean, Government, Law, Individual Freedom, Free Society

I have no doubt that given a real choice, the vast majority of Muslims and Arabs, like everyone else will choose a free society over a fear society.

- Natan Sharansky

topic: Real, Choices, Doubt, Free Society

I think it's an intellectual duty for a person who lives in a free society to read material not only with which you agree, but with which you disagree. Because every so often somebody you think is wrong will actually turn out to be right.

- Tom Clancy

topic: Thinking, Intellectual, Duty, Free Society

Political economy is the science of free society. Its theory and its history alike establish this position. Its fundamental maxims, Laissez-faire and 'Pas trop gouverner' are at war with all kinds of slavery, for they in fact assert that individuals and peoples prosper most when governed least.

- George Fitzhugh

source: George Fitzhugh (1854). “Sociology for the South: or, The failure of free society”, p.7, [s.n.]

topic: War, Political, Fundamentals, Laissez Faire, Free Society

In a free society the state does not administer the affairs of men. It administers justice among men who conduct their own affairs.

- Walter Lippmann

topic: Men, Justice, Liberty, Free Society

Free speech is essential to education, especially to a liberal education, which encourages the search for truths in art and science. If expression is restricted, the range of inquiry is also curtailed... The beneficiaries of a free society have a duty to pursue the truth and to protect the freedom of expression that makes possible the search for a new enlightenment.

- Norman Dorsen

topic: Education, Art, Truth, Beneficiaries, Freedom Of Expression

But I'm mindful in a free society that people can worship if they want to or not. You're equally an American if you choose to worship an Almighty and if you choose not to. If you're a Christian, Jew or Muslim you're equally an American. That's the great thing about America is the right to worship the way you see fit. Prayer and religion sustain me. I receive calmness in the storms of the presidency. I love the fact that people pray for me and my family all around the country. Somebody asked me one time, how do you know? I said I just feel it.

- George W. Bush

topic: Faith, Christian, Country, Pray For Me, Free Society

A free society is a society in which all traditions have equal rights and equal access to the centers of power. A tradition receives these rights not because the importance the cash value, as it were) it has for outsiders but because it gives meaning to the lives of those who participate in it.

- Paul Feyerabend

source: "Science in a Free Society". Book by Paul Feyerabend, 1978.

topic: Rights, Giving, Cash, Free Society

People getting rich in a free society in general - with some scammy exceptions, which are rare - makes everyone else richer, too.

- Ben Stein

topic: People, Rich, Exception, Free Society

We're a free society; we've got television. We have radio. We have newspapers. We have the videocassette, which is coming into play. These are new freedoms.

- Ray Bradbury

source: Ray Bradbury, Steven L. Aggelis (2004). “Conversations with Ray Bradbury”, p.128, Univ. Press of Mississippi

topic: Play, Television, Radio, Free Society

Muslims must learn that if they make belligerent and fanatical claims upon the tolerance of free societies, they will meet the limits of that tolerance.

- Sam Harris

topic: Tolerance, Limits, Claims, Free Society

I repeat to you-my own view is, is that if a State-if people decide to-what they do in the privacy of their house, consenting adults should be able to do. This is America. It's a free society, but it doesn't mean we have to redefine traditional marriage.

- George W. Bush

source: George W. Bush “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, George W. Bush, 2004, Book 2, July 1 to September 30, 2004”, Government Printing Office

topic: Mean, Gay, Views, Free Society, Traditional Marriage

Yes, authority, coercion, and dependence rest on the mass, but never freedom or the free unfoldment of the individual, never the birth of a free society. The Socialist demagogues know that as well as I, but they maintain the myth of the virtues of the majority, because their very scheme of life means the perpetuation of power.

- Emma Goldman

source: Emma Goldman (2015). “Anarchism: Top Crime Collections”, p.42, 谷月社

topic: Mean, Majority, Coercion, Free Society, Life Means

It may be that a free society... carries in itself the forces of its own destruction, that once freedom has been achieved it is taken for granted and ceases to be valued, and that the free growth of ideas which is the essence of a free society will bring about the destruction of the foundations on which it depends.

- Friedrich August von Hayek

topic: Taken, Essence, Ideas, Free Society

Political correctness is one of the engines of nannyism. Allowing and even encouraging offensive ideas is vital for the intellectually health of a free society.

- David Harsanyi

topic: Ideas, Political, Offensive, Free Society, Correctness

Religious institutions that use government power in support of themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths, or of no faith, undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of an established religion tends to make the clergy unresponsive to their own people, and leads to corruption within religion itself. Erecting the 'wall of separation between church and state,' therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society.

- Thomas Jefferson

source: Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U.S. 38, 1985.

topic: Religious, Wall, Rights, Clergy, Christian Freedom

Because we live in a largely free society, we tend to forget how limited is the span of time and the part of the globe for which there has ever been anything like political freedom: the typical state of mankind is tyranny, servitude, and misery.

- Milton Friedman

source: Milton Friedman (2009). “Capitalism and Freedom: Fortieth Anniversary Edition”, p.9, University of Chicago Press

topic: Political, Typical, Misery, Free Society

It's hard to achieve that, especially in a free society, but it's been done, and that's the kind of thing that activists in the IWW have to work against, right on the shop floor. It's not so simple, but it's been done before.

- Noam Chomsky

source: Source: www.iww.org

topic: Simple, Done, Kind, Free Society

In a free society, there comes a time when the truth - however hard it may be to hear, however impolitic it may seem to say - must be told.

- Al Gore

topic: Truth, May, There Comes A Time, Free Society

To be human, at the most profound level, is to encounter honestly the inescapable circumstances that constrain us, yet muster the courage to struggle compassionately for our own unique individualities and for more democratic and free societies.

- Cornel West

topic: Struggle, Unique, Profound, Free Society, Constrain

Freedom is won by relegating religion to a purely private sphere remote from the body politic. In fact, the establishment of a free society is predicated on the idea that religion must be surgically removed from culture.

- William Anthony Donohue

topic: Christian, Religious, Ideas, Free Society

The draft is a monstrous violation of individual liberty, and even a good motive cannot make it otherwise. In a free society no one should be compelled to take up arms, or be forced to kill or risk being killed... But who can blame prospective volunteers from doubting that there is a threat from Iraq? The Bush administration has yet to make a persuasive argument to that effect.

- Sheldon Richman

topic: Iraq, Volunteer, Risk, Free Society

Diversity of opinion within the framework of loyalty to our free society is not only basic to a university but to the entire nation.

- James Bryant Conant

topic: Loyalty, Diversity, Opinion, Free Society

Freedom of speech is a principal pillar of a free government; when this support is taken away, the constitution of a free society is dissolved, and tyranny is erected on its ruins. Republics...derive their strength and vigor from a popular examination into the action of the magistrates.

- Benjamin Franklin

topic: Taken, Government, Support, Freedom Of The Press, Free Government

Freedom is messy. In free societies, people will fall through the cracks - drink too much, eat too much, buy unaffordable homes, fail to make prudent provision for health care, and much else. But the price of being relieved of all those tiresome choices by a benign paternal government is far too high. Big Government is the small option: it's the guarantee of smaller freedom, smaller homes, smaller cars, smaller opportunities, smaller lives.

- Mark Steyn

topic: Fall, Home, Opportunity, Relieved, Free Society

A free society depends upon a high degree of mutual trust. The public will not give that trust to officials who are not seen to be impartially dedicated to the general public interest, nor will they give trust to those high in government who violate the rule of law they ask citizens to obey at the expense of self-interest, or to those who present government as the place where one feathers his own nest, [or] exchanges favors with friends and former associates.

- Archibald Cox

topic: Government, Self, Law, Mutual Trust, Free Society

If freedom is to flourish the philosophic foundations of a free society must be kept a living intellectual issue and its implementation a task which challenges the ingenuity and imagination of the liveliest minds.

- Friedrich August von Hayek

topic: Issues, Imagination, Challenges, Free Society

The only way of living in a free society is to feel that you have the right to say and do stuff.

- Salman Rushdie

topic: Stuff, Way, Feels, Free Society