Mahatma Gandhi Quotes

I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.

My feeling is that whatever people elect to do, insofar as they don't deny the rights of others, every effort should be made to defend their right to do it.

I don't think I should tell you what to do, nor should the government. As long as you enjoy your own personal liberties and don't infringe on the liberties of others, I don't care.

Real democracy means that no group or faction or leader can impose their will, their ideology, their religion, their desires on anyone else.

Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest.

The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it. Each is the proper guardian of his own health, whether bodily, or mental or spiritual. Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest.

It would bother me if a judge told me how I had to believe.

This is a free country, and to each their own.

One doesn't want one's identity coerced.

The sanctity of a woman's right to control her own destiny is a moral force of its own... I came to realize that the question of choice is to be answered, not by the state, but by the individual.

A necessary corollary of giving individuals freedom to choose how to conduct their lives is acceptance of the fact that different individuals will make different choices.

Why is my liberty judged of another man's conscience?

With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men's labor ... Each of the things is, by the respective party, called by two different and incompatible names—liberty and tyranny.

To assure our freedom we must allow others the same freedom, even if occasionally it produces conduct by them which we would hold to be sinful. We know that the price of seeking to force our beliefs on others is that they might someday force theirs on us.

It is essential that the young people of this country learn to respect the right of every man and woman to seek his or her happiness with minimal interference from the government.

I'm a lover of my own liberty, and so I would do nothing to restrict yours.

I am not in favor of imposing happiness on people. Everyone has a right to his bad wine, to his stupidity, and to his dirty fingernails.

Englishmen never will be slaves; they are free to do whatever the government and public opinion allow them.

To live and work successfully with others requires more than faithfulness to one's concrete aims. It requires an intellectual commitment to a type of order in which, even on issues which to one are fundamental, others are allowed to pursue different ends. It is for this reason that to the liberal neither moral nor religious ideals are proper objects of coercion, while both conservatives and socialists recognize no such limits.

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

The most basic principle to being a free American is the notion that we as individuals are responsible for our own lives and decisions. We do not have the right to rob our neighbors to make up for our mistakes, neither does our neighbor have any right to tell us how to live, so long as we aren’t infringing on their rights. Freedom to make bad decisions is inherent in the freedom to make good ones. If we are only free to make good decisions, we are not really free.

No society can possibly be built on a denial of individual freedom.

We can believe as we want, but we should not force our beliefs on others.

Never could an increase of comfort or security be a sufficient good to be bought at the price of liberty.

I don't conjure up ways of denying people freedom. I don't sit around and examine what people do that I don't like and try to figure out ways to get them to stop it, unless we're talking about lawbreakers, of course. But I'm a freedom, liberty, live and let live kind of guy. I might not approve of or like what people do, but have at it.