Noah Webster Quotes

If you know how to read, you have a complete education about life, then you know how to vote within a democracy. But if you don't know how to read, you don't know how to decide. That's the great thing about our country - we're a democracy of readers, and we should keep it that way.

Wisdom and knowledge, as well as virtue, diffused generally among the body of the people being necessary for the preservation of their rights and liberties; and as these depend on spreading the opportunities and advantages of education in various parts of the country, and among the different orders of the people, it shall be the duty of legislators and magistrates in all future periods of this commonwealth to cherish the interests of literature and the sciences.

Nevertheless, (Jefferson) believed that the habit of skepticism is an essential prerequisite for responsible citizenship. He argued that the cost of education is trivial compared to the cost of ignorance, of leaving government to the wolves. He taught that the country is safe only when the people rule.

Nine-tenths of the people are at present freeholders... The time is not distant when this country will abound with mechanics and manufacturers who will receive their bread from their employers. Will such men be the secure and faithful guardians of liberty? Give the votes to people who have no property, and they will sell them to the rich who will be able to buy them.

My country is a country of teachers. It is therefore a country of peace. We discuss our successes and failures in complete freedom. Because our country is a country of teachers, we closed the army camps, and our children go about with books under their arms, not with rifles on their shoulders. We believe in dialogue, in agreement, in reaching a consensus.

Freedom of the press is a precious privilege that no country can forego.

Under extremely difficult circumstances (Iraq) pursues the inherently complicated task of rebuilding the country. Yet Iraq continues, courageously, to reach for the promise of a democratic, federal and pluralistic state, where generations of oppressed Iraqis will regain their dignity, freedom and the right to join the civilized and progressive nations of the world.

For many of us we are always wanting more - we would be happier if we had such and such. Maybe we should pause for a moment and hear what some people in the third world countries would like to make them happier. 1. Having enough to eat so when you go to sleep at night your stomach doesn't ach. 2. Having shoes on your feet and any kind of clothing to keep the cold out. 3. Having a roof over your head. 4. Having the hope that you'll be lucky enough to get some kind of an education. 5. Believing that the dream of freedom, brotherhood, and peace for all mankind will someday come true.

This country to-day [is] the last stronghold of freedom, standing like a rock in a tide that is threatened to submerge the world.

In the years since then, those four freedoms - freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear - have stood as a summary of our aspirations for the American Republic and for the world.

Countries are not cultivated in proportion to their fertility, but to their liberty.

My notion of democracy is that under it the weakest shall have the same opportunities as the strongest... no country in the world today shows any but patronizing regard for the weak... Western democracy, as it functions today, is diluted fascism... true democracy cannot be worked by twenty men sitting at the center. It has to be worked from below, by the people of every village.

I would like to travel to my country again, to a country without a dictatorship, to a post-Putin Russia.

A country whose population has been trained to accept the government's word and to shun those who question it is a country without liberty in its future.

To blend, without coercion, the individual good and the common good is the essence of citizenship in a free country.

Fascism is more of a natural state than democracy. To assume blithely that we can export democracy into any country we choose can serve paradoxically to encourage more fascism at home and abroad. Democracy is a state of grace that is attained only by those countries who have a host of individuals not only ready to enjoy freedom but to undergo the heavy labor of maintaining it.

Freedom of press and freedom of speech: What a blessing for a country while in the hands of honest, patriotic men; what a curse if in the hands of designing demagogues.

Every single one of us as Americans need to remember that freedom did not come free, as we get on our knees tonight, thank God we live in a country where people are trying to break into, and not a country people are trying to break out of.

Pakistan is a peace loving, democratic country. Pashtuns want education for their daughters and sons. Islam is a religion of peace, humanity and brotherhood.

Swaraj for me means freedom for the meanest of countrymen.

I love the people of Venezuela. I want that country to have freedom. I want it to have human rights and to be banned by a dictator like Nicolas Maduro is, to me, a badge of honor.

The people of every country are the only safe guardians of their own rights, and are the only instruments which can be used for their destruction. And certainly they would never consent to be so used were they not deceived. To avoid this they should be instructed to a certain degree.

You can have economic freedom without political freedom, but you cannot have political freedom without economic freedom.

Democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife.

Conservatism is the antidote to tyranny precisely because its principles are the founding principles.