Samuel Adams Quotes

Just as man must have liberty to think and speak, so he must have liberty in food, dress, and marriage, and in every other thing, so long as he does not injure others.

I have a right to nothing which another has a right to take away

Why is freedom such a hard sell? That's the question. In this country, why has the idea of individual liberty and responsibility become such a hard sell? That's something I never thought would happen here.

I believe in Liberty for all men: the space to stretch their arms and their souls.

What a free society offers to the individual is much more than what he would be able to do if only he were free.

I love my liberty too well to be in a hurry to give it up for any mortal man.

I am a Canadian, free to speak without fear, free to worship in my own way, free to stand for what I think right, free to oppose what I believe wrong, or free to choose those who shall govern my country. This heritage of freedom I pledge to uphold for myself and all mankind.

I should like to be remembered as the man who raised a voice against... placing limitations on the freedom of the individual.

Ultimately, I'm about liberty and I think you have to defend it.

Is freedom anything else than the right to live as we wish? Nothing else.

What libertarians assert is simply that differences among normal adults do not imply different fundamental rights.

I'm a big advocate of freedom: freedom of speech, freedom of expression, freedom of thought.

The right of conscience and private judgment is unalienable, and it is truly the interest of all mankind to unite themselves into one body for the liberty, free exercise, and unmolested enjoyment of this right.

All I'm for is the liberty of the individual.

People have rights and government must be kept from trampling on them.

Wherever there is repression of the individual, wherever there are acts contrary to the nature of the individual, there can be no greater crime.

The individual is greater than the state.

I believe in limited government. I believe that government should be limited in many ways, …. No government has the right to decide on the truth of scientific principles, nor to prescribe in any way the character of the questions investigated. Neither may a government determine the aesthetic value of artistic creations, nor limit the forms of literacy or artistic expression. Nor should it pronounce on the validity of economic, historic, religious, or philosophical doctrines. Instead it has a duty to its citizens to maintain the freedom, to let those citizens contribute to the further adventure and the development of the human race

The right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness means that each of us is free to go our own way, even if the ways some of us may choose to go seem sinful or shocking to our fellow citizens.

… it [liberty] denotes not merely freedom from bodily restraint, but also the right of the individual to engage in any of the common occupations of life, to acquire useful knowledge, to marry, establish a home, bring up children, to worship God according to the dictates of one's own conscience and generally, to enjoy those privileges long recognized in common law as essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.

We have the right to be idiots.

I am a believer in liberty. That is my religion — to give to every other human being every right that I claim for myself, and I grant to every other human being, not the right — because it is his right — but instead of granting I declare that it is his right, to attack every doctrine that I maintain, to answer every argument that I may urge — in other words, he must have absolute freedom of speech.

I believe everybody got the right to live their own life the way they want to.

Why shouldn't I do what I want to do... I'm an American citizen.

The human's being right to do as he pleases without interfering with someone else's rights is a formula defining rights prior to social legislation.