Molly Ivins Quotes

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.

Liberty comes only after security.

I believe only a free society can ever be truly secure. The goal should be to make terrorists feel threatened, not the American people.

Security is no replacement for liberty.

Security and liberty are not mutually exclusive. We can have both

Benjamin Franklin once said, 'A people who would trade liberty for security deserve neither.' I think we can have both. We can keep our liberties. We can have our security.

America stands strongest in challenging terrorism when we do not give up an inch of our civil liberties.

You cannot barter security for freedom, or freedom for security.

We cannot make ourselves safer by making ourselves less free.

Liberty requires security without intrusion, security plus privacy.

Freedom without security portends chaos, perpetual anxiety and fear.

We can't simply scare people into giving up their rights, on the basis, oh, this protects us from terrorism.

I believe it is wrong to undermine public safety, and indeed public confidence in the concept of human rights, by allowing highly dangerous criminals and terrorists to trump the rights of the people of Britain to live in security and peace.

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

In the area of national security, I urge the swift passage of an anti-terrorism law that will protect rather than subvert, enhance rather than weaken, the rights and liberties that terrorism precisely threatens with extinction.

The issue of wiretapping raises the issue of the balance between human liberty and the requirements of national security. I would say that the weight should be on the side of human liberty and that if human liberty is ever to be infringed, the demonstration on the national security side must be overwhelming.

We all want security …. But we don’t need to simplify the debate to such an extent that we simply say we have to give up our liberties.

Certainly I support the Constitution, and I respect people's privacy, but I also think we need to err on the side of protecting us.

We must also reject the false choice of liberty versus security. We can and must have both.

Demanding domestic security in times of war invites carelessness in preserving civil liberties and the right of privacy. Frequently the people are only too anxious for their freedoms to be sacrificed on the altar of authoritarianism thought to be necessary to remain safe and secure.

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

We have sold our birthright of freedom and justice for a mess of national security.

One of the things we're going to have to discuss and debate is how are we striking this balance between the need to keep the American people safe and our concerns about privacy. Because there are some trade-offs involved. I welcome this debate, and I think it's healthy for our democracy.

To be safe at the expense of the liberty of other people is a difficult equation.

The balance between freedom and security is a delicate one.