Smedley Butler Quotes

Our job here is to defend freedom.

We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.

I know that throughout their history, the people of the United States defended their freedom, their liberty, their justice, and their rights - if need be - with their lives. I think their courage is so admirable.

I have a right to nothing which another has a right to take away

Being a patriot doesn't mean prioritizing service to government above all else. Being a patriot means knowing when to protect your country, knowing when to protect your Constitution, knowing when to protect your countrymen, from the violations of and encroachments of adversaries. And those adversaries don't have to be foreign countries.

I have a personal belief that you never have to give up liberty for security. You can still provide security without sacrificing our Bill of Rights.

All of us in this country give lip service to the ideals set forth in the Bill of Rights and emphasized by every additional amendment, and yet when war is stirring in the world, many of us are ready to curtail our civil liberties. We do not stop to think that curtailing these liberties may in the end bring us a greater danger than the danger we are trying to avert.

So long as we govern our nation by the letter and spirit of the Bill of Rights, we can be sure that our nation will grow in strength and wisdom and freedom.

If we gave up our freedom as the price of security, we would no longer be the great nation that we are.

Government should work to insure the rights of the individual, not plot to take them away.

The building of America has had its fair share of mistakes, but it's a constitution that's the jewel of democracy, the envy of many, and it's the most generous nation in the world.

New Hampshire is one of the birthplaces of American freedom and independence - a place with a love and a passion for liberty.

America is great not because it's a team. America is great because it is a nation whose founding documents elevated the rights of the individual.

If a jerk burns the flag, America is not threatened, democracy is not under siege, freedom is not at risk.

Ultimately, I'm about liberty and I think you have to defend it.

How can you be conservative and justify wiretapping people without a warrant? We're supposed to be the party of personal freedom and civil liberties.

The American people need to know that there are folks here fighting as hard as they can for individual liberty, economic freedom, appropriate national security and the fundamental moral values that have made our nation the greatest nation in the history of mankind.

I feel like freedom of speech is one of the great things in this country and the freedom to do what you feel is right.

If one is going to err, one should err on the side of liberty and freedom.

The American people can be - and deserve to be - assured that actions taken in their defense are consistent with their values and their laws.

I seek to call America home to those principles that gave us birth.

Each generation must recreate liberty for its own times.

Those who won our independence... valued liberty as an end and as a means. They believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty.

Securing freedom has been a singular commitment of American presidents and patriots in and out of government for generations. But its perpetual continuation is not guaranteed.

With the blessings of liberty, we have responsibilities to defend it.