Barack Obama Quotes

Without democracy freedom is a chimera

The democratic state can sometimes abuse its power as much as those who seek to destroy it abuse fundamental rights and democratic practices.

When there is state there can be no freedom, but when there is freedom there will be no state.

The price of freedom is less than the cost of repression.

Advocating the expansion of the powers of the state is treason to mankind

If dictatorship is the concentration of power, freedom consists in its diffusion.

Liberty... is there only when there is no abuse of power.

If a nation wishes, it can have both free elections and slavery.

Only oppression should fear the full exercise of freedom.

The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.

But there is a big difference in working for the West and working for a totalitarian state.

I have lived under totalitarian Communism, so I prize freedom as much as anyone and have long fought for freedom of conscience and speech.

The desire for liberty has also made itself felt as struggle against domestic tyranny or arbitrary rule.

There have been in this century only one great man and one great thing: Napoleon and liberty. For want of the great man, let us have the great thing.

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

It is harder to preserve than to obtain liberty.

Government, which does not and did not grant us our rights, must not now seek to deny them by using fear as its justification.

The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism –-- ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.

Our political life is closed, and our freedoms usurped, and our people are oppressed, and fearful… if you don’t say what the ruler wants, you’re exiled beyond the sun.

Tyrants of our day are the most dangerous preachers of liberty.

You will be emancipated from tyranny and oppression …

A global government would almost by definition abusive. As someone who escaped from Communist government, how would I escape from global government.

The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing.

When the tyranny of the state is combined with the hypocrisy of the church, you have a modern example of the twin vultures that have devoured man, and his rights, throughout the ages.

I think that democratic communities have a natural taste for freedom: left to themselves, they will seek it, cherish it, and view any privation of it with regret. But for equality, their passion is ardent, insatiable, incessant, invincible: they call for equality in freedom; and if they cannot obtain that, they still call for equality in slavery.