Jeremy Bentham Quotes

Every law is an infraction of liberty.

We are in bondage to the law so that we may be free.

We cannot afford to walk down that dangerous path of government overstepping its boundaries into the most personal parts of our lives.

All government, of course, is against liberty.

Prohibition is a deathblow to the liberty of the individual …

This is the first step on the odious ground of conscription—a plan sir, which never will and never ought to be submitted to by this country while it retains one idea of civil freedom.

Every time you pass a law, it is a little bite out of freedom.

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

Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.

Personal liberty is not personal license.

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.

I don't like the idea that the government has so much of a say in things.

Liberty consists in the power of doing that which is permitted by the law.

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and for government to gain ground.

Law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual.

Liberty is the right of doing whatever the law permits.

We can restore liberty by taking government out of our bedrooms, our bloodstreams, our bladders, our brains, our businesses and our back-pockets.

Once the government starts forbidding things, then someone will come around the corner saying, “I’ve got it.”

We encounter the dilemma of freedom versus authority in all sorts of places but probably nowhere more frequently than in the area of Big Brother's ongoing efforts to protect us from ourselves – efforts that many people view as an invasion of their privacy or as infringement upon their God-given right to be stupid (though they don't usually put it that way).

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

I am not about to be a party to anything having to do with the law that is going to destroy individual freedom and liberty in this country.

If you aren't free to protect yourself when the government puts its thumb on that freedom, then you're not free at all.

Governments don't control people like they used to.

Anyone who wants to see a very free world does not want government. I also don't like being extorted or being aggressed against by others.

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