Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.
Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Through every generation of the human race there has been a constant war, a war with fear. Those who have the courage to conquer it are made free.
I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.
The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.
The opinions which Milton, Locke, and others have so ably sustained, I firmly believe to be correct.
We cannot choose our external circumstances, but we can always choose how we respond to them.
No man is free who is not master of himself.
Any person capable of angering you becomes your master.
Only the educated are free.
Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.
If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.
If socialists understood economics, they wouldn't be socialists.
From the fact that people are very different it follows that, if we treat them equally, the result must be inequality in their actual position.
Perhaps the fact that we have seen millions voting themselves into complete dependence on a tyrant has made our generation understand that to choose one's government is not necessarily to secure freedom.
The argument for liberty is not an argument against organization, which is one of the most powerful tools human reason can employ, but an argument against all exclusive, privileged, monopolistic organization.
There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to make them equal.
If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
To define is to limit.
I would rather be a beggar and single than a queen and married.
Except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power.
I would like to be remembered as a person who wanted to be free, so other people would also be free.
Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.
People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.
I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.
If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.
Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.
Just living is not enough. One must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower.
Posterity! You will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.
Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains.
Necessity is blind until it becomes conscious. Freedom is the consciousness of necessity.
Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you're a man, you take it.
You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.
A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both.
For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.
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.
The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom.
The worship of the state is the worship of force. There is no more dangerous menace to civilization than a government of incompetent, corrupt, or vile men.
It is vain to fight totalitarianism by adopting totalitarian methods. Freedom can only be won by men unconditionally committed to the principles of freedom.
If historical experience could teach us anything, it would be that private property is inextricably linked with civilization.
I will preach it, teach it, write it, but I will constrain no one by force, for faith must come freely without compulsion.
No man is free who cannot control himself.
Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution.
A free man thinks of death least of all things, and his wisdom is a meditation not of death but of life.
Nothing is necessitated whose opposite is possible.
