“Roosevelt believed that liberty had more to it than the right to be let alone. It was the right to have a say in one’s nation, to help shape the future of the community one called home, to exercise the power and mastery of a citizen.”
“Theodore Roosevelt understood that our republic was a republic of the common person. This is what made it a republic of liberty. Now we must recall his example and make it so again.”
“Perhaps the most important thing in this life unamazing Is that you dance to a different song than the current one that’s playing.”
“The free man knows people don’t ask for him. They ask for things: work, your hands – never you.”
“I should be rather like the wild hawk, who, barred the free exercise of his soar through heaven, will dash himself to pieces against the bars of his cage.”
“But communism must be voluntary, freely desired, and accepted; for were it instead to be imposed, it would produce the most monstrous tyranny which would result in a return to bourgeois individualism.”
“There is one thing in the world more wicked than the desire to command and that is the will to obey.”
“Until all of us are free, none of us is free.”
“Formally and officially we are equal before the law, we enjoy the same rights as citizens but informally and unofficially that s another matter altogether”
“And then I understood: this was the real god of Benaras—this black mud of the Ganga into which everything died, and decomposed, and was reborn from, and died into again. The same would happen to me when I died and they brought me here. Nothing would get liberated here.”
“One sign of a troubled democracy is that it has taken “freedom” and “license” to mean the same thing.”
“Peace is an inestimable jewel; but it will be soon snatched from those who are not prepared with heart and hand to defend it.”
“The road to utopia is paved with the corpses of freedom lovers”
“This development of a theory of liberty took place mainly in the eighteenth century. It began in two countries, England and France. The first of these knew liberty, the second did not.”
“The necessity of finding a sphere of usefulness, an appropriate job, ourselves is the hardest discipline that a free society imposes on us. It is, however, inseparable from freedom, since nobody can assure each man that his gifts will be properly used unless he has the power to coerce others to use them. Only by depriving somebody else of the choice as to who should serve him whose capacities or which products he is to use, could we guarantee to any man that his gifts will be used in the manner he feels he deserves.”
“Liberty is our watchword. Liberty is what makes America unique. The left, by contrast, has all but abandoned liberty in favor of government-forced outcomes, though their agenda guarantees not only less liberty but less prosperity as well.”
“The [Leftists] reject our nation’s heritage, its values, and its very founding. They want to dilute our sovereignty by subsuming us in a larger international collective and by eradicating our borders. This is the key to understanding the left today. They don’t merely oppose specific American policies, they oppose our long-standing societal values, and they resent the institutions and culture that arose from those values. They have little use for liberty because it limits their ability to impose their political vision. They want to take more of your money and spend it on their priorities. And they want to dictate the most minute details of your life, decreeing what kind of straws you can drink from, what kind of lightbulbs you can use, and what kind of power your home can use.”