Eleanor Roosevelt Quotes

Enron and 9/11 marked the end of an era of individual freedom and the beginning of personal responsibility.

Since no one but you can know what's best for you, government control can't make your life better.

This is a country for, of, and by the people not for, of, and by the government. If we turn it over to them we cannot complain about what they're doing because this is a natural course of men and we have to hold their feet to the fire.

Freedom is our most precious commodity and if we are not eternally vigilant, government will take it all away. Individual freedom demands individual responsibility.

Be most on guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent.

To uphold state security China like many other countries of the world has placed some restrictions on the Internet to protect the freedom of the majority of the people.

The preservation of freedom is in the hands of the people themselves — not of the government.

In the councils of government we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.

America, thankfully, is not an easy nation to commandeer.

Let eternal vigilance be the price of liberty and integrity of the country hereafter.

Well, that's exactly the wrong attitude. That is not the attitude they had in World War II. You're attitude is that freedom means you can do whatever you want whenever you want it. And that sacrifice is somehow un-American. [...] But the idea that we should also be defensive about our flaws and our weaknesses and our vulnerabilities is ridiculous.

No government has ever been beneficent when the attitude of government was that it was taking care of the people. The only freedom consists in the people taking care of the government.

In time of actual war, great discretionary powers are constantly given to the Executive Magistrate. Constant apprehension of War, has the same tendency to render the head too large for the body. A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty.

Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people. Those who have known freedom, and then lost it, have never known it again.

The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the government.

[In the event of war, Americans would] resort for repose and security to institutions which have a tendency to destroy their civil and political rights. To be more safe they, at length, become willing to run the risk of being less free.

Eternal vigilence is the price of liberty.

Liberty, as we all know, cannot flourish in a country that is permanently on a war footing, or even a near war footing. Permanent crisis justifies permanent control of everybody and everything by the agencies of central government.

Every time that we try to lift a problem from our own shoulders, and shift that problem to the hands of the government, to the same extent we are sacrificing the liberties of our people.

From the time of the Revolutionary War, when citizens stood forward to defend their liberties against the depredations of tyranny. All the way through Civil War, through the great World Wars, this nation has been defended by the tradition of common ordinary folks who come from behind the plow, come from the store-clerking, come from the classrooms, and so forth to get on the battlefields - ordinary citizens turned into heroes in defense of their liberty, because that's the potential of freedom.

Markets are born free, yet no sooner are they born than some would-be emperor is forging chains. Paradoxically, it sometimes happens that the only way to preserve freedom is through judicious controls on the exercise of private power. If we believe in liberty, it must be freedom from both private and public coercion.

I do not want any patronage, as I do not give any. I am a lover of my own liberty, and so I would do nothing to restrict yours. I simply want to please my own conscience which is God.

Some in Washington say that you have to trade your liberty for security.

There are just two rules of governance in a free society: Mind your own business. Keep your hands to yourself.

True freedom requires taking responsibility for your own life. That frightens the hell out of too many people. They prefer to have Big Brother holding a safety net for them, and they'll sell their own birthright and their children's as well to keep it.