Edmund Burke Quotes

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.

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

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

A democratic government that respects no limits on its power is a ticking time bomb, waiting to destroy the rights it was created to protect.

It is a clear truth that those who every day barter away other men's liberty will soon care little for their own.

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

The power of groups of men organized by incorporation ... or of small knots of rich men acting in combination has developed with unexpected strength in unexpected ways, overshadowing individuals and even communities, and showing that the very freedom of association which men sought to secure by law when they were threatened by the violence of the potentates may, under the shelter of law, ripen into a new form of tyranny.

He who opposes the public liberty overthrows his own.

Law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual.

There is no "slippery slope" toward loss of liberty, only a long staircase where each step down must first be tolerated by the American people and their leaders.

If you aren't free to protect yourself when the government puts its thumb on that freedom, then you're not free at all.

Freedom does not die from frontal attack. It dies because men in power no longer believe in a system based upon liberty.

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.

Millions of people have to restore liberty and have to understand the danger and personal risk they face in a police state.

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

Tyranny is the exercise of some power over a man, which is not warranted by law, or necessary for the public safety. A people can never be deprived of their liberties, while they retain in their own hands, a power sufficient to any other power in the state.

The road to tyranny, we must never forget, begins with the destruction of the truth.

With the tools of democracy, democracy was murdered and lawlessness made "legal." Raw power ruled, and its only real goal was to destroy all other powers besides itself.

Security without freedom means slavery.

Wherever liberty as we understand it has been destroyed, this has almost always been done in the name of some new freedom promised to the people

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!.

It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have been forged in controversies involving not very nice people.

I should like to be remembered as the man who raised a voice against... placing limitations on the freedom of the individual.

The government continues to erode our freedom.

The U.S. prosecution service is eating at the soul of the American republic. It is an absolute danger to everyone.