Patrick Henry Quotes

My goal for the Arab world is to change the status quo, which is horrible politically, religiously, economically, in every way.

You don’t go from tyranny to democracy overnight.

When the people contend for their liberty, they seldom get anything by their victory but new masters.

When one makes a Revolution, one cannot mark time; one must always go forward - or go back. He who now talks about the 'freedom of the press' goes backward, and halts our headlong course towards Socialism.

Tyranny is increasingly unsustainable in this post-cold-war era. It is doomed to failure. But it must be prodded to exit the stage with a whimper - not the bang that extremists long for.

We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed.

If we expose the Chinese to our freedoms, it may create a greater hunger for democracy, reform and liberties in China.

The free world should not wait for dictatorial regimes to consent to reform.

For politics to change … culture must change too --- and that takes much more than dispatching troops, holding elections, and writing constitutions.

We have to deal with the despotism of Princes. This increases every day. But then, the spirit of freedom breathes and sighs in every corner, and, by the assistance of hidden schools of wisdom, Liberty, and Equality, the imprescribable rights of man, warm and glow in every breast. We must therefore unite these extremes.

Now, when our nation to ruin's brink is verging, let us speak while there is time! Now, when the padlocks for our lips are forging. Silence is crime!

Where the disease is most deeply seated, there it will be slowest in eradication. In the Northern States it was merely superficial and easily corrected. In the Southern, it is incorporated with the whole system and requires time, patience, and perseverance in the curative process. That it may finally be effected and its progress hastened, will be my last and fondest prayer.

The slave begins by demanding justice and ends by wanting to wear a crown.

Is it possible that the people of the U.S. enjoying the blessings of freedom under the only republican government on earth have not virtue enough to support it?

Great political and social changes begin to be possible as soon as men are not afraid to risk their lives.

Democracy! Savage and Wild!—thou who wouldst bring down the virtuous to the level of folly and guilt! Thou child of squinting envy and self-tormenting spleen.

These wars and mass murders that the horrible Kaisers and kings with their authorities have been the source of, have in general been started to solidify their staggering thrones, or to suppress the people.

The government have sent the spirit of discord through the land, and I will prophesy, that it will never be extinguished, but by the extinction of their power. A nation as sensible as the English, will see that a spirit of concord, when they are oppressed, means a tame submission to injury, and that a spirit of liberty ought then to arise, and I am sure ever will, in proportion to the weight of the grievance they feel.

I am able and willing of my own accord to introduce and maintain such reforms as are calculated to entitle a rulers to the lasting gratitude of his subjects, and encouraging approbation of the paramount power as well as the public at large.

The Asylum they open to the oppressed of all nations should console the earth. The case with which the injured may escape from oppressive governments, will compel Princes to become just and cautious; and the rest of the world will gradually open their eyes upon the empty illusions with which they have been hitherto cheated by politicians. But for this purpose America must preserve herself from these illusions; and take care to avoid being what your ministerial writers are frequently saying She will be — an image of our Europe — a mass of divided powers contending for territory and commerce, and continually cementing the slavery of the people with their own blood.

The end of some of the harshest dictatorships has not necessarily spelled a more free world. The extinction of the thing we despise is not giving rise to the democracy we hoped for.

Across the region, those rights that we take for granted are being claimed with joy by those who are prying loose the grip of an iron fist.

One must expect and even hope that there will be a future upheavals to shock the seats of power and privilege and furnish the periodic therapy that seems necessary to the health of our democracy.

This city, of all cities, knows the dream of freedom…. When you, the German people, tore down that wall—a wall that divided East and West; freedom and tyranny; fear and hope—walls came tumbling down around the world. From Kiev to Cape Town, prison camps were closed, and the doors of democracy were opened.

I always think that reforms and turning China into a free country is a long and tortuous process. Despite this, in a totalitarian state, the fight for freedom comes from the accumulative efforts of the people; without such efforts, very little will happen.