Explore the wonderful quotes under this tag
The price of freedom is the willingness to do sudden battle anywhere, any time and with utter recklessness.
Sep 10, 2025
Pain is part of the price of freedom.
The price of freedom is the probability of crime. The price of protection is the probability of slavery.
A small nation, faced with the denial of its sovereignty — indeed, of its very existence — reminded us that the price of freedom is high but never so costly as the loss of freedom.
The price of freedom is death.
Responsibility is the price of freedom.
The war for freedom will never really be won because the price of freedom is constant vigilance over ourselves and over our Government.
The price of freedom is to allow freedom. Very few people are willing to pay the price.
The price of freedom of religion or of speech or of the press is that we must put up with, and even pay for, a good deal of rubbish.
The price of freedom is still, and always will be, eternal vigilance.
Eternal vigilance, as they say, is the price of freedom. Add intellectual integrity to the cost basis.
The price of freedom keeps going up, but the quality keeps deteriorating.
Eternal vigilance is only part of the price of freedom. The maturity to live with imperfections is another crucial part of the price of freedom.
We have had no specific or credible threats, but we don't take that as any kind of comfort. We know we need to be ready and we know that, that vigilance is the price of freedom.
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.
Errors of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.
the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.
The prospect of a government that treats all its citizens as criminal suspects is more terrifying than any terrorist. And even more frightening is a citizenry that can accept the surrender of its freedoms as the price of "freedom".
All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.
Though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will, to be rightful, must be reasonable.
There was no one left to speak for me.
The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppose.
The price of freedom—of individuality—is attention to politics, careful planning, careful organization; philosophy is no more a barrier against political disaster than it is against plague.
The price of freedom is responsibility, but it's a bargain, because freedom is priceless.
History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.
As long as human beings are imperfect, there will always be arguments for extending the power of government to deal with these imperfections. The only logical stopping place is totalitarianism -- unless we realize that tolerating imperfections is the price of freedom.
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.
Government is best which governs least
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.
One day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.
There is in fact a manly and legitimate passion for equality that spurs all men to wish to be strong and esteemed. This passion tends to elevate the lesser to the rank of the greater. But one also finds in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to want to bring the strong down to their level, and which reduces men to preferring equality in servitude to inequality in freedom.
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.
A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.
Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.
I have sworn upon the altar of god.
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.
He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.
Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.
Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.
To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace.
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.
They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.