Herbert Hoover Quotes

Freedom is indivisible. As soon as one starts to restrict it, one enters upon a decline on which it is difficult to stop.

The government continues to erode our freedom.

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

There are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.

Independently of its misdeeds, the mere power, — the bare existence of such a power, — is a thing irreconcilable with the nature and spirit of our institutions

Freedom can be destroyed, not just by its retraction, but also by its abuse.

Also, when you escape a Communist regime, you treasure liberty and you understand that as government and state expand, liberty must contract.

Liberty may be endangered by the abuse of liberty, but also by the abuse of power.

Being born in Cuba, a country where freedom of speech is non-existent, it's startling to observe how Venezuela, where I was happily raised, is fast becoming Cuba's mirror image: Dismantling of fundamental democratic rights deserved by its people and citizens of the world.

There are men who strike at liberty under the term licentiousness.

If a free society is ever destroyed in America, it will be done in the name of one particular vision of liberty and freedom.

The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away for expedients.

He who opposes the public liberty overthrows his own.

... a step in the direction of tyranny.

America is just the country that shows how all the written guarantees in the world for freedom are no protection against tyranny and oppression of the worst kind. There the politician has come to be looked upon as the very scum of society.

Every stupid policeman, fanatical judge, or moralist for revenue, can successfully abridge freedom of speech by the lawless use of power, and the hysterical mob of pretending lovers of liberty and democracy will stand by an applaud, --so low have we fallen since our American Constitutions were written. We see how the very essence of tyranny thrives under the forms of democracy

It is a power that places the liberty of every man in the hands of every petty officer.

Our liberty cannot depend on the good intention of those in power.

We have buried the putrid corpse of liberty.

Liberty dies in the hearts of men and women: when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it.

When the president decides that he knows better than you know what's good for you or your family, we've got trouble in this country.

When an American government takes on characteristics that elevate the state above the individual, it must be vigorously opposed as a form of, or step toward, tyranny.

We can see our liberties vanishing here in the United States... A little bit here and a little piece there... We can see it, we can feel it, and we can hear it.

So this is how liberty dies. With thunderous applause.

When liberty becomes license, dictatorship is near.