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The price of peace is eternal vigilance
Sep 10, 2025
Eternal vigilance, as they say, is the price of freedom. Add intellectual integrity to the cost basis.
The price of metaphor is eternal vigilance.
Striving for happiness is a long, hard journey with many challenges. It requires eternal vigilance to win the victory. You cannot succeed with sporadic little flashes of effort. Constant and valiant living is necessary.
The preservation of peace and the guaranteeing of man's basic freedoms and rights require courage and eternal vigilance: courage to speak and act - and if necessary, to suffer and die - for truth and justice; eternal vigilance, that the least transgression of international morality shall not go undetected and unremedied.
It seems to me that the price of eternal vigilance is liberty.
The cost of freedom is eternal vigilance
Eternal vigilance is the price of sexual confidence.
Once you get a tyranny, you don't easily get rid of it. Much better to remember about eternal vigilance.
For those looking for security, be forewarned that there's nothing more insecure than a political promise.
But you must remember, my fellow-citizens, that eternal vigilance by the people is the price of liberty, and that you must pay the price if you wish to secure the blessing.
The greatest tyrannies are always perpetuated in the name of the noblest causes.
Voting is no substitute for the eternal vigilance that every friend of freedom must demonstrate towards government. If our freedom is to survive, Americans must become far better informed of the dangers from Washington -- regardless of who wins the Presidency.
The trade-off between freedom and security, so often proposed so seductively, very often leads to the loss of both.
If we become a people who are willing to give up our money and our freedom in exchange for rhetoric and promises, then nothing can save us.
Vigilance is not only the price of liberty, but of success of any sort.
The Romans used to say that courage is not the only virtue, but it's the only one that makes the other virtues possible.
It is weakness rather than wickedness which renders men unfit to be trusted with unlimited power.
The attempt to make heaven on earth invariably produces hell.
There is no safety for honest men, but by believing all possible evil of evil men, and by acting with promptitude, decision, and steadiness on that belief.
To fight for one's country, to offer one's very life to promote the well being of the United States, is truly a noble undertaking. But so is the vigilance of the citizen who carefully examines our leaders to see if political problems are being solved by wars simply because this seems to be the easiest solution.
I sometimes think that the price of liberty is not so much eternal vigilance as eternal dirt.
If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.
The price of eternal vigilance is indifference.
If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too.
We must have a government which is not only a guarantor of public order and safety and which preserves the right of White citizens to keep and to bear arms, which is the ancient hallmark of a truly free people, but we must have government which maintains an eternal vigilance against the enemies, both internal and external, of a White America.
The price of barbecue is eternal vigilance.
It takes a fierce devotion to defend your artistic space, and eternal vigilance over it, because the needs of others will grow like vines in your little plot and claim it back for the jungle.
It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become prey to the active. The conditions upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime, and the punishment of his guilt.
Kuwait needs tougher guarding. Guarding that's not limited to weapons, soldiers and border control, but extends to every Kuwaiti soul with awareness, vigilance and anticipation
A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse.
I own that I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive.
That government is best which governs least.
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.
In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.
A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.
I have sworn upon the altar of god.
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty; power is ever stealing from the many to the few. The manna of popular liberty must be gathered each day or it is rotten. The living sap of today outgrows the dead rind of yesterday. The hand entrusted with power becomes, either form human depravity or esprit de corps, the necessary enemy of the people. Only by continued oversight can the democrat in office be prevented from hardening into a despot; only by unintermitted agitation can a people be sufficiently awake to principle not to let liberty be smothered in material prosperity.
If men were angels, no government would be necessary.
Habit is a powerful means of advancement, and the habit of eternal vigilance and diligence, rarely fails to bring a substantial reward.
It is not the critic who counts...The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.
It is not the critic who counts
So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.
The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.
The majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society.
What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value.
These are the times that try men's souls.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.