George Orwell Quotes

The right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness means that each of us is free to go our own way, even if the ways some of us may choose to go seem sinful or shocking to our fellow citizens.

The isolation of every human soul and the necessity of self-dependence must give each individual the right, to choose his own surroundings.

The most important thing in this world is liberty. More important than food or clothes - more important than gold or houses or lands - more important than art or science - more important than all religions, is the liberty of man.

Second, this law has become a special symbol of our Nation's most important purpose: to fulfill the individual - his freedom, his happiness, his promise.

We must introduce a new balance in the relationship between the individual and the government--a balance that favors greater individual freedom and self-reliance.

This I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual.

Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom.

The Public provides freedom...Individualism begins after the roads are built, after individualists have had an education, after medical research has cured their diseases.

The fact throughout history is that whenever government dominates the economic affairs of its citizenry, a free society is eroded, then destroyed, and a minority government ensues. Personal liberty without economic liberty is an absolute contradiction; the one cannot exist without the other.

The supreme belief of our society is the dignity and freedom of the individual. To the respect of that dignity, to the defense of that freedom, all effort is pledged.

[A] republic . . . [is] a government, in which the property of the public, or people, and of every one of them was secure and protected by law . . . implies liberty; because property cannot be secured unless the man be at liberty to acquire, use or part with it, at his discretion, and unless he have his personal liberty of life and limb, motion and rest, for that purpose.

Let these truths be indelibly impressed on our minds — that we cannot be happy, without being FREE — that we cannot be free, without being secure in our property— that we cannot be secure in our property, if, without our consent, others may, as by right, take it away — that taxes imposed on us by parliament, do thus take it away.

Government is about coercion. Limiting government is the single most important instrument for guaranteeing liberty. We're working on a third generation which has little in the way of education about what our Constitution means and why it was written. Thus, we've fallen easy prey to charlatens, quacks, and hustlers.

At the root of our civilization, there is the freedom of each person of thought, of belief, of opinion, of work, of leisure.

What a free society offers to the individual is much more than what he would be able to do if only he were free.

[A new all-encompassing national identification system] contradicts some of our most sacrosanct American principles of personal liberty and expectations of privacy and is far in excess of what is needed to provide us with the security and protections we all want.

The (Supreme Court) ruling that anyone who's arrested -- even accidentally -- can be strip-searched was decided five to four, with the votes for the searches coming from the Court's five conservatives. You know -- the 'defending personal liberty' guys. Which is weird because I'm not a constitutional scholar, but I'm willing to bet Big Government feels it's biggest when it's inside your anus.

Freedom is like taking a bath: You got to keep doing it every day.

You were born free by accident. You live free by choice. To die free is your responsibility.

No people can be truly happy... if abridged of the freedom of their consciences

No society can possibly be built on a denial of individual freedom.

The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom...

The freedom of Mankind does not lie in the fact that can do what we want, but that we do not have to do that which we do not want.

If there is a choice between absolute safety and freedom, then freedom must always prevail.