The Liberal Patriot

Lessons From the Struggle – A Collection of Quotes on Freeedom

J. G. Schwam - June 30, 2005

Freedom lost, must be freedom gained, and again…

To preserve the freedom of the human mind … and freedom of the press, every spirit should be ready to devote itself to martyrdom; for as long as we may think as we will, and speak as we think the condition of man will proceed in improvement. The generation which is going off the stage has deserved well of mankind for the struggles it has made, and for having arrested the course of despotism which had overwhelmed the world for thousands and thousands of years. If there seems to be danger that the ground they have gained will be lost again, that danger comes from the generation your contemporary. But that the enthusiasm which characterizes youth should lift its parricide hands against freedom and science would be such a monstrous phenomenon as I cannot place among possible things in this age and country.

Thomas Jefferson to William Green Mumford, June 18, 1799.—Merrill D. Peterson, Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation, p. 616 (1970).

Our country, right or wrong. When right, to be kept right, when wrong to be put right.

Carl Schurz

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.

Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826), to Archibald Stuart, 1791

To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850 - 1894)

Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.

Lord Acton

On Blind Faith in Party

Patterning your life around other's opinions is nothing more than slavery.

Lawana Blackwell, The Dowry of Miss Lydia Clark, 1999

On False Patriotism and Fear

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790), Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759

The essence of freedom is personal

Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.

Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955), 'Out of My Later Years,' 1950

Freedom is the right to dissent

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

Adlai E. Stevenson Jr. (1900 - 1965), Speech in Detroit, 7 Oct. 1952

Inseperable

You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.

Malcolm X (1925 - 1965), Malcolm X Speaks, 1965

The brilliance of the on foreign intervention

Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her [America’s] heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will recommend the general cause, by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself, beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force…. She might become the dictatress of the world: she would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.

John Quincy Adams, An Address … Celebrating the Anniversary of Independence, at the City of Washington on the Fourth of July 1821…, p. 32 (1821).

No man is entitled to the blessings of freedom unless he be vigilant in its preservation.

Douglas MacArthur, A speech to the people of Japan, May 3, 1948, upon the first anniversary of the Japanese constitution.—MacArthur, A Soldier Speaks, p. 194 (1965).

The great German poet, Goethe, who also lived through a crisis of freedom, said to his generation: “What you have inherited from your fathers, earn over again for yourselves or it will not be yours.” We inherited freedom. We seem unaware that freedom has to be remade and re-earned in each generation of man.

Adlai E. Stevneson, “Politics and Morality,” Saturday Review, February 7, 1959, p. 12.

He quoted Goethe’s Faust, act I, scene i, “Was du ererbt von deinen Vätern hast, / Erwirb es, um es zu besitzen.” In Randall Jarrell’s translation, “That which you inherit from your fathers / You must earn in order to possess.”—Goethe’s Faust, p. 35 (1976).

On freedom in other lands at the expense of ours

If the fires of freedom and civil liberties burn low in other lands, they must be made brighter in our own. If in other lands the press and books and literature of all kinds are censored, we must redouble our efforts here to keep them free. If in other lands the eternal truths of the past are threatened by intolerance we must provide a safe place for their perpetuation.

Frankin D. Roosevelt, address to the National Education Association, New York City, June 30, 1938.—The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1938, p. 418 (1941).

On the Power of the Lowly Congressional Representative

The legislator is an indispensable guardian of our freedom. It is true that great executives have played a powerful role in the development of civilization, but such leaders appear sporadically, by chance. They do not always appear when they are most needed. The great executives have given inspiration and push to the advancement of human society, but it is the legislator who has given stability and continuity to that slow and painful progress.

James William Fulbright (1905–95) “The Legislator,” lecture delivered at the University of Chicago in 1946.—The Works of the Mind, ed. for the University’s Committee on Social Thought by Robert B. Heywood, p. 119 (1947).

On a Free Nation

I was born on July 4, 1776, and the Declaration of Independence is my birth certificate. The bloodlines of the world run in my veins, because I offered freedom to the oppressed. I am many things, and many people. I am the nation.

I am 213 million living souls—and the ghost of millions who have lived and died for me.

I am Nathan Hale and Paul Revere. I stood at Lexington and fired the shot heard around the world. I am Washington, Jefferson and Patrick Henry. I am John Paul Jones, the Green Mountain Boys and Davy Crockett. I am Lee and Grant and Abe Lincoln.

I remember the Alamo, the Maine and Pearl Harbor. When freedom called I answered and stayed until it was over, over there. I left my heroic dead in Flanders Fields, on the rock of Corregidor, on the bleak slopes of Korea and in the steaming jungle of Vietnam.

I am the Brooklyn Bridge, the wheat lands of Kansas and the granite hills of Vermont. I am the coalfields of the Virginias and Pennsylvania, the fertile lands of the West, the Golden Gate and the Grand Canyon. I am Independence Hall, the Monitor and the Merrimac.

I am big. I sprawl from the Atlantic to the Pacific … my arms reach out to embrace Alaska and Hawaii … 3 million square miles throbbing with industry. I am more than 5 million farms. I am forest, field, mountain and desert. I am quiet villages—and cities that never sleep.

You can look at me and see Ben Franklin walking down the streets of Philadelphia with his breadloaf under his arm. You can see Betsy Ross with her needle. You can see the lights of Christmas, and hear the strains of “Auld Lang Syne” as the calendar turns.

I am Babe Ruth and the World Series. I am 110,000 schools and colleges, and 330,000 churches where my people worship God as they think best. I am a ballot dropped in a box, the roar of a crowd in a stadium and the voice of a choir in a cathedral. I am an editorial in a newspaper and a letter to a Congressman.

I am Eli Whitney and Stephen Foster. I am Tom Edison, Albert Einstein and Billy Graham. I am Horace Greeley, Will Rogers and the Wright brothers. I am George Washington Carver, Jonas Salk, and Martin Luther King.

I am Longfellow, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Walt Whitman and Thomas Paine.

Yes, I am the nation, and these are the things that I am. I was conceived in freedom and, God willing, in freedom I will spend the rest of my days.

May I possess always the integrity, the courage and the strength to keep myself unshackled, to remain a citadel of freedom and a beacon of hope to the world.

This is my wish, my goal, my prayer in this year of 1976—two hundred years after I was born.

Otto Whittaker, “I Am the Nation,” Norfolk and Western Railway Company Magazine, January 15, 1976, front cover.

This was originally written in 1955 as a public relations advertisement for the Norfolk and Western Railway, now the Norfolk Southern Corporation, and did not contain the phrase, “the steaming jungle of Vietnam.” It has been widely reprinted, generally without attribution, has been set to music, is reprinted by some newspapers every Independence Day, and has been read into the Congressional Record several times. Ellipses in original.

Lest we not forget what it means to us

The Constitution is the sole source and guaranty of national freedom.

Calvin Coolidge, address accepting nomination as Republican candidate for president, Washington, D.C., August 4, 1924.—Coolidge, Address of Acceptance, p. 15 (1924).

Let them speak and they will speak themselves goodbye – Are you listening Karl Rove?

I have always been among those who believed that the greatest freedom of speech was the greatest safety, because if a man is a fool, the best thing to do is to encourage him to advertise the fact by speaking. It cannot be so easily discovered if you allow him to remain silent and look wise, but if you let him speak, the secret is out and the world knows that he is a fool. So it is by the exposure of folly that it is defeated; not by the seclusion of folly, and in this free air of free speech men get into that sort of communication with one another which constitutes the basis of all common achievement.

Woodrow Wilson, “That Quick Comradeship of Letters,” address at the Institute of France, Paris, May 10, 1919.—The Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson, ed. Ray Stannard Baker and William E. Dodd, vol. 5, p. 484 (1927).

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