Edward Gibbon Quotes

Italy has changed. But Rome is Rome.

Rome - the city of visible history, where the past of a whole hemisphere seems moving in funeral procession with strange ancestral images and trophies gathered from afar.

Eternal Rome

I love Rome and the way that you can wander around and find something interesting around every street corner. You can smell the history.

You will in due season find your property is less valuable, and your freedom less complete.

There is no doubt that constitutional freedoms will never be abolished in one fell swoop, for the American people cherish their freedoms, and would not tolerate such a loss if they could perceive it. But the erosion of freedom rarely comes as an all-out frontal assault but rather as a gradual, noxious creeping, cloaked in secrecy, and glossed over by reassurances of greater security.

We are at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long climb from the swamp to the stars, and it has been said if we lose that war, and in so doing lose this way of freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening.

A small nation, faced with the denial of its sovereignty — indeed, of its very existence — reminded us that the price of freedom is high but never so costly as the loss of freedom.

In the second century of the Christian era, the empire of Rome comprehended the fairest part of the earth, and the most civilized portion of mankind.

Rome wasn't built in A.D.

The more freedoms Americans lose, the more dangerous government becomes.

What Roman power slowly built, an unarmed traitor instantly overthrew.

Still from the sire the son shall hear Of the stern strife, and carnage drear, Of Flodden's fatal field, When shiver'd was fair Scotland's spear, And broken was her shield!

Oh Rome! My country! City of the soul!

When you're in prison, you can't do anything about what's happening outside.

She had always been fond of history, and here [in Rome] was history in the stones of the street and the atoms of the sunshine.

Loss makes me feel vulnerable. I've had my share, less than so many though, but enough to feel empathy. It's tough and I see it so much on Earth, too much suffering. The loss of free will I find unacceptable - what most of us refer to as rights.

To experience commitment as the loss of options, a type of death, the death of childhood's limitless possibility, of the flattery of choice without duress-this will happen, mark me. Childhood's end.

If the great Western experiment fails and we end up living in totalitarian war-on-terrorism states, one day someone's going to say, 'Well democracy doesn't work because they had to give it up'.

Those who have known freedom and then lost it, have never known it again

I am in Rome! Oft as the morning ray Visits these eyes, waking at once I cry, Whence this excess of joy? What has befallen me? And from within a thrilling voice replies, Thou art in Rome! A thousand busy thoughts Rush on my mind, a thousand images; And I spring up as girt to run a race!

One of the biggest sacrifices in running for President, if there is one, is the loss of anonymity.

You ought to be extremely cautious, watchful, jealous of your liberty; for instead of securing your rights, you may lose them forever.

Once you cross the 50 you feel like an unsaddled horse.

The loss of liberty to a generous mind is worse than death.