Harvey Milk Quotes

The liberal, emphasizing the civil and property rights of the individual, insists that the individual must remain so supreme as to make the state his servant.

Government should work to insure the rights of the individual, not plot to take them away.

Why is freedom such a hard sell? That's the question. In this country, why has the idea of individual liberty and responsibility become such a hard sell? That's something I never thought would happen here.

But America was founded on the principle that every person has God-given rights. That power belongs to the people. That government exists to protect our rights and serve our interests. That we shouldn't be trapped in the circumstances of our birth. That we should be free to go as far as our talents and work can take us.

I feel like freedom of speech is one of the great things in this country and the freedom to do what you feel is right.

The liberty of the individual is a necessary postulate of human progress.

America stands for individual liberty, but that means an ordered liberty.

Prohibition is a deathblow to the liberty of the individual …

How far are we to go in pursuit of greater security at the cost of essential liberties?

The enlargement of liberty for individual human beings must he the supreme goal and the abiding practice of any western society.

People have increasingly come to regard the government as a source of rights rather than as a defender of pre-existing individual rights.

Freedom Party International believes that the purpose of government is to protect every individual's fundamental freedoms, not to restrict them.

The individual is greater than the state.

Western democracy included individual liberty, as well as equality. The frontiersman was impatient of restraints. He knew how to preserve order, even in the absence of legal authority…. the individual was not ready to submit to complex regulations. Population was sparse, there was no multitude of jostling interests, as in older settlements, demanding an elaborate system of personal restraints. Society became atomic. There was a reproduction of the primitive idea of the personality of the law, a crime was more an offense against the victim than a violation of the law of the land.

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

… it [liberty] denotes not merely freedom from bodily restraint, but also the right of the individual to engage in any of the common occupations of life, to acquire useful knowledge, to marry, establish a home, bring up children, to worship God according to the dictates of one's own conscience and generally, to enjoy those privileges long recognized in common law as essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.

Freedom of movement is the very essence of our free society -- once the right to travel is curtailed, all other rights suffer.

I'm a big believer in freedom and people's rights to express themselves and not have government interfere in that type of thing.

I have a personal belief that you never have to give up liberty for security. You can still provide security without sacrificing our Bill of Rights.

Liberty is not collective, it is personal. All liberty is individual liberty.

Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it.

The worst way to defend our freedom is to let our leaders start taking away our freedoms! It is exactly during times like these [a national crisis] that we need more freedom of speech, a strong and critical press, and a citizenry that is not afraid to stand up and say that the emperor has no clothes.

One of the greatest perils to an extensive republic is the disregard of individual rights.

We must educate ourselves and others about our precious civil liberties to ensure that we never accept demands that we give up our Constitution so that the government can pretend to protect us.

The lesson that Americans today have forgotten or never learned - the lesson which our ancestors tried so hard to teach - is that the greatest threat to our lives, liberty, property, and security is not some foreign government, as our rulers so often tell us. The greatest threat to our freedom and well-being lies with our own government!.